I remember I broke my arm in junior high. We had two
tetherball posts in the school yard. The
game was fun, but physically challenging. The area was sand pit with a tall
metal pole in the center. Tetherball is
a game for two opposing
players. I was playing against a guy bigger named Cullen. He outweighed my by
at least 30 lbs and he was taller too. The equipment consists of a stationary metal
pole, from which a volley ball is hung on
a rope, or “tether”. The two players stand on opposite sides of the pole. Each
player tries to hit the ball one way; one clockwise,
and one counterclockwise. I was
chubby and not really able to reach up high or jump up to block the ball from
spinning around the pole. But I could hit it hard. The game ends when one
player manages to wind the ball all the way around the pole so that it is
stopped by the rope. To me, height was the key to winning the game. Cullen and I played and he was winning, no
big surprise. The game got heated and several times we wrestled over control of
the ball. We would jump and try to hit
the ball in our respective opposite directions.
I knew I may lose, but I kept trying.
At one point, we both jumped up to intercept the ball as it spun around
the pole. The big Ox knocked me backwards
and I fell hard. At the same time, he lost his footing and landed back ward on
top of me. It was an accident. And yep, you guessed it, the fall and excess
weight broke my arm just about four inches above the wrist! Ouch! A broken bone in my forearm caused immediate pain. I had to support
my injured arm with your other hand and went to the school office. I knew they would call my mother. She came to
get me. The injury began to swell and I could not rotate my arm without
pain. She took me to the local hospital
for an X-ray. X-rays are the most common
diagnostic imaging technique and can show if the bone is broken and whether
there is displacement (the gap between broken bones). They can also show how
many pieces of broken bone there are. The radius was fractured but not out of
alignment.
This
was a simple fracture, but it sure hurt a lot.
The ER then sent us to the clinic to have a cast put on. I chose the
color red because it was our school color.
They first wrapped my arm in cotton gauze. They applied a rolled fiberglass bandage mesh
over it. This synthetic material contains polyurethane and sometimes bandages are thermoplastic. These are lighter and dry much faster than plaster
bandages. This would form a hard shell they would keep my arm in place
while the bones healed. It was not the
old fashioned plaster cast I remembered a classmate having in first grade. It smelled funny, I guess from the chemicals
in it. But after a few days the smell went away. I would have to wear it for about six
weeks. Sometimes it would itch. I would have to take a wire hanger and scratch
inside the cast. I would also have to
shower with my arm in a bag to keep it from getting wet. A few times, I was in a hurry and just stuck
my arm outside the shower curtain. Friends
at school, had signed it and after six weeks, I was glad to get the darn this
off. I looked funny with one skinny, white
arm. It would eventually return to it
former look. My dad suggested riding with my arm out the car window so it would
get tan in the sun. This was his attempt
at fatherly humor.
