Broken Ribs

Broken Ribs

I think I have just become a more interesting person.

Shy of my sixty-eighth birthday by a month, my brain decided to take a holiday and have a seizure – while I was driving my car.  This was not fun.

First of all the inter-brain seizure experience was worse than having ether used as a anesthesia.  Something I have experienced, more than once actually. 

We were living in England at the time I was a lad of eight and determined that I could do judo.  My first victim happened to be another eight-year-old lad who also happened to be considerable larger than myself.  I got him up in the air in a judo flip and brought him down directly on my extended arm.   Snap!

When it got purple and about the size of an Arizona watermelon (very large) and was sticking out straight from my shoulder, such that I was dribbling my soup on the tablecloth at dinner, my father noticed it.  At the hospital, the English (British) hospital in the 1950’s, medical practices were still stuck at around 1910.  As an anesthetic ether was the common knock-out juice (gas).

“Don’t ask me.  They were the Doctors and that was the hospital.  I was a kid.”

Ether, if you are unaware of it, is basically horrible.  Ether does kill the pain of whatever god-awful injury you’ve got, but it works by inflicting worse pain.  Mostly in the head.  With your brain in a quisinarte, your eyes on fire and your ears ringing like a car alarm, any other physical considerations become moot.  

Have you ever seen one of those toys with a spinning propeller at the top of small rod with a spring-loaded flint thingy?  You push on a thumb lever and the propeller spins while the flint creates and throws sparks on the propeller?  I hate those toys.

With one of those things duct taped to each eye and a large brutal man marching around the room whanging on the largest brass cymbal he can hold, you begin to get an idea of ether.  This stops.  Then it starts all over again.  Over and over.

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“szzrrerrrr-szZZRRERR!!!  Whang!!  Whang!!  Whang!!!!”

“Jeezuz!  Just kill me!”  “Leave the arm broken!  Cut it the fuck off!”  “Just turn off the freakin’ ether!”

Later that same year I got a toothache and had to have the tooth pulled.  The British (English) dentist used ether (!) to help me with the pain.

Flash-forward, and I do mean flash, and after over a full half century, my brain goes on the fritz and it feels just like ether has been shot straight into both of my temporal lobes. 

All in all it could have been worse – ha ha – no it couldn’t have been worse.  I was driving at the time.  I’m driving.  Ether is shot into my brain.  I am crawling out of my car, which is nose into a tree. 

There is a full on medical explanation as to why it happened, but that is not important in this blog.  What is important is that while safety belts “save lives”, they do, apparently, also “break ribs”.  Better broken ribs than dead.  Yes … I agree.  But the ribs still really hurt.

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Dale Clarence Peterson © 2014

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