April 15, 2019. I’m out skating around Central Park when I take a tumble—around 4 PM, I think. I figured, hey, I'm fine, no big deal, and just kept rolling. I made it home all right, but then, by 9 PM, my arm starts aching. It wasn't even that intense, but, well, being paranoid, I decided to head over to the ER at the local University Hospital in Draškovićev. They send me off for an X-ray, and I’m sitting there smiling to myself, thinking, "Oh, it's probably just a little sprain," only to be hit with these two diagnoses:
Fracture of the left scaphoid, non-displaced.
Intra-articular fracture of the left radial head, non-displaced.
Based on that, they slapped me into a scaphoid splint and an upper arm cast, and suddenly, it wasn't so funny anymore. The doctor just tells me, "No surgery needed for now," without even bothering to explain what would actually trigger a surgical intervention. On the ride home, it hits me—they never even disinfected my wound. I started panicking about infection since it was going to be trapped under the cast for ages, and this is my arm we're talking about! So, I trek back to the ER. They reluctantly take the cast off to clean the wound, but they give me this look, criticizing me like it's somehow my own fault for showing up, as if nobody else has ever come in for something even more ridiculous. That day, the pain is manageable. The next day? I am literally crying and screaming in pain. My arm is swollen, and my fingers look like literal potatoes; even the painkillers aren't touching it. April 23, 2019. I show up for a follow-up and they switch me from the splint to a full circular cast. I had to wait eight hours in line because apparently, someone messed up the patient files at the intake desk. My fingers stayed swollen for another week, especially whenever I tried to lie down. May 7, 2019. Time to transition to a forearm cast. This time the wait was slightly shorter—six hours—mostly because one woman spoke up when she noticed people arriving after us were being seen first. They told me I need to work on elbow mobility. The swelling has subsided a bit; when I'm lying down, it’s basically gone. May 21, 2019. Another eight-hour wait, even though I make sure to be one of the first three people there at 6 AM. The doctor says if the scans look good, I can get the cast off in seven days. May 28, 2019. Cast comes off, and I'm prescribed physical therapy. That was my shortest wait, and honestly, that was the day I finally lost my cool. Every single appointment involved an eight-hour wait. Twice, they had to re-take my X-rays because the angle wasn't exactly what the doctor wanted, which tacked on another two hours of waiting just to satisfy his specific requirements. You wait eight hours for absolutely zero feedback on how your recovery is actually progressing, and God forbid you ask a question—they get annoyed. Honestly, the most information I got was from the technicians in the casting room; they were the only ones actually trying to treat me like a human being by explaining roughly how long the cast would stay on and what I could or couldn't do. I guess the doctors just assume we're all medical experts who already know everything.
My arm is doing great now after two months; I can do pretty much anything with it. The swelling was normal, though—it was there for all 46 days unless I was lying flat. It didn't itch at all, maybe because the heat hadn't really kicked in yet. Initially, they told me I'd be in a cast for eight weeks, but since everything healed up so well, I ended up wearing it for only 46 days. So, yeah, that’s my experience dealing with a scaphoid and radial head fracture. Maybe it'll help someone out.
