By Raffaela Kenny-Cincotta, News Staff
As the X-ray machine projected a grid across my aching left arm, I used my free hand to hold the back of my hospital gown together in the hopes of preventing an untimely nip slip. It is a vivid memory I’m sure will not fade over time. The pose the X-ray technician told me to hold beneath the large camera was awkward and painful. “Hold your arm like this,” she said as she shifted my elbow and my face contorted in pain. “Perfect! Only five more to go.”
Breaking a bone is a milestone that until recently I had yet to experience. While I have been unreasonably accident prone my entire life, constantly stubbing toes and jamming fingers, I always seemed to magically emerge from these bouts of gracelessness unscathed. That is, until I broke my elbow on Huntington Avenue.
The story is typical. I was cruising across Huntington Avenue on my skateboard when I unexpectedly hit a curb. My board instantly halted causing my fragile body to fly toward the harsh brick sidewalk unprotected. Thankfully and painfully my elbow broke my fall. What’s atypical about this story is how I went about getting medical help.
Up until this point in my life, I had never sustained an injury without the immediate intervention of a helpful grown-up willing to take hold of the situation. Laying on the sidewalk after my crash, there was no parent or trusted adult there to dust me off and survey the damage. The people passing by the scene of my untimely fall ignored my suffering and only seemed peeved that my outstretched body was blocking their way into Boloco.
Fully aware that I needed to take responsibility for my injuries, the first thing I did was go to a nearby friend’s apartment and cry. Realizing that this did nothing for my physical pain, I tried a different approach. With the help of the world wide web, I made a sling from an old sweatshirt. It alleviated some of my pain and things seemed to be looking up. At this point in the story, I wholeheartedly believed that my arm was going to heal normally using this example of makeshift first-aid. While the combination of tears and half-baked Internet advice usually fosters genius, over the next three days I could tell my sling wasn’t cutting it and my arm only became more swollen and inflamed.
It was three days after I fell that I finally saw a doctor. I consulted my insurance provider and debated treatment options with the doctors of Brigham & Women’s Hospital: things that are definitively in the realm of adult responsibilities. The official prognosis was a fracture of the radial head. In layman’s terms, I cracked my elbow pretty good and I’ve been sentenced to four weeks in a sling. Is there a lesson to be learned from my weekend of pain and misery? If you’re 20 years old and still acting like a kid on a skateboard, at least be grown up enough to deal with the consequences.
Spotlight Playlist: Broken Bones
“Somebody Get Me a Doctor” by Van Halen
“Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” by Robert Palmer
“Good Lovin’” by The Grateful Dead
“The First Cut is the Deepest” by Sheryl Crow
“Hurt” by Johnny Cash
