A softball snafu brings the pain
By Matt Crossman
Illustration by Anna Keith
In the first 28-plus years of my life, I broke no bones, had no surgeries, never had so much as a stitch. Then I moved to St. Louis, and within two weeks had broken my arm, had surgery twice and bled so much in front of my wife that she nearly passed out.
It all started as I rounded second and headed for third in a company softball game. The ball beat me to the bag by a mile and a half. I slid headfirst anyway. Because that’s what men do.
I heard a pop and felt searing pain.
I thought the ball had hit my wrist.
But the ump called me out. If the ball had hit my wrist, I thought as I lay there facedown in the dirt, there was no way the third baseman could have caught it and tagged me. Plus ... didn’t the ball beat me to the base? What was that noise? It dawned on me that this was a good time to look at my wrist.
My hand pointed up, like I was telling someone to talk to the hand—only the bend started about three inches too early. I guessed that I had banged it on the ground, and that the pop I heard was the bone breaking.
Then I screamed. Because that’s what ... never mind.
Everyone gathered around, and the absence of even First Aid 101–level care made it clear that none of those guys would ever be on any Best Docs list. There were several candidates for Best Jerkweeds, though. One suggested I had dislocated my wrist, a medical impossibility. But that’s not my point. My point is, that was so annoying I would have punched him, except I couldn’t make a fist because, as I mentioned, my wrist was bent completely in the wrong direction.
Looking back, having an ambulance called was so drama queen of me, but it hurt even to walk. I called my wife, and she somehow found the hospital—though we didn’t know Florissant from Fontbonne at that point. There was no rush. Doctor after doctor misplaced my chart, lost his glasses, got distracted by ER reruns, etc.
Finally, the doctors reset my arm. It may not sound like much, but they called it surgery, so I’m calling it surgery. Apparently, when they snapped the radius bone into place, I yelled so loudly the doctor turned to my wife and said, “Don’t worry, he won’t remember this.”
By 3 a.m. I was OK to go. Picture this: I was wearing black sweats, which were filthy because I slid—then writhed—on the ground. My red softball T-shirt had been sliced down the right side. My face reflected the glazed look of someone heavily narcotized. My hair made Napoleon Dynamite look like he just left the stylin’-ist stylist in Ladue.
It was in this state that I went to buy a fresh supply of massive painkillers. The drugstore must’ve been questionable, because the pharmacist didn’t flinch. But that’s not my point. My point is, I looked like the star of a Pat Benatar video.
A few days later, my orthopedist—who truly does belong in this Best Docs issue—recommended that I have an “external fixator” put onto—and into—my arm. This was surgery No. 2.
An external fixator resembles a towel bar. A rod connected to four screws (two in my arm, two in my hand) held my arm in position so the bone could heal. I could have gotten a cast, but I’m way too much of an attention hog for that. The fixator was, without a doubt, the most spectacular conversation starter I’ve had in my life, until my daughter was born.
I have a memory of half-waking up in recovery, realizing I’m the guy in the room with screws drilled in his arm. Blood gushed out of my arm. My wife turned the color of dirty linoleum.
I wore the external fixator for six weeks. I was in attention-hog heaven. When the doctor finally took it off, the experience was surreal. First, he used a little crescent wrench to disconnect the towel bar from the screws. Then he used a T-wrench to take the screws out. At the time, I was awake and unmedicated. If you haven’t seen a man unscrew a screw from your body, you haven’t lived. I couldn’t feel it—the doctor told me there are no nerves in bones. That made me wonder why it hurt so badly when I broke the bone. My wife watched the removal of one screw, then turned an even dirtier shade of linoleum and became fascinated by the floor—which, by the way, was clean linoleum.
