I admit it. I have a love-hate relationship
with snow. I do love how beautiful it makes the city. So pure and beautiful. So
crisp and silent. It is wonderful to wake up to a white Christmas morning. Yet,
I still harbour a small fear of the wicked white stuff.
When I was a teenager, 15 to be exact,
newly off crutches from a broken femur for which I had spent 10 weeks in the
summer months into the fall in the hospital in traction (no quick surgery and
home you go at that time) due to a car accident, it began to snow heavily one
afternoon. I contemplated whether or not to call my dad for a ride home, but
decided not to since I knew he was at work. Besides, we only lived a few blocks
from school.
So, out the doors of the school I walked
carefully, down the small slope, and suddenly found myself sitting on the
ground. "How odd," I thought. I didn't remember falling or slipping.
I was sitting on my bottom with my knees bent and my feet turned to the right
(rather lady-like, at least). I lifted my right leg and put my right foot on
the ground to get up. As I tried to put my weight on it, I watched it simply
slide to the right. I tried again. It did it again. "It's not supposed to
do that," I said to myself, and tried once more. Again it slid to the right.
There was no pain, but it was obvious I wasn't going to be getting up either.
So I resorted to calling to the other
students around me for help. Someone got a teacher and they carried me into the
school. Then they called an ambulance. With all the snow - there must have been
4 inches by that time, which is enough to cause major disruption in BC's Lower
Mainland where snow is not really expected until January, if at all, it took
awhile for the ambulance to arrive. Then, splinted and bundled into the
ambulance, we embarked on a 3 hour ride to the hospital which was a mere 10
minutes away in better weather conditions.
At the hospital, they placed me on one of
their new gurneys, a frame into which straps were attached from the gurney
fabric beneath the patient so the patient could be placed on the bed or x-ray
table and the gurney frame could be moved, rather than having to slide the
patient from one to the other. Because the splint had been undone in order for
the staff to conduct their examination, and I was now waiting to go to x-ray,
but was in pain from muscle contractions, they tied my ankle to the gurney
frame to provide some traction and
relieve the pain.
My parents were contacted and finally made
it safely to the hospital themselves. My poor dad felt so bad because he had
thought about picking me up from school, but because of the snow he wouldn't
have even made it there in time.
After
a long wait it was my turn to go to the x-ray department. As the x-ray
technician undid the straps to remove the gurney frame, I tried to explain
about by ankle being tied to the frame, but not quickly enough. She lifted the
frame. YEOW! She put it back down very quickly and released my ankle. Huge
apologies.
Finally, x-rays done and several hours
later, I went into surgery and had a pin inserted cross-wise into my shin onto
which the doctors could attach a rope and 15 pounds of weight so that I could
spend another 8 to 10 lovely weeks (including Christmas) in the hospital. And
that's why I have a love-hate relationship with snow - mostly of falling in it.
