The Tornadoes of May 19-20, 2013

I was in downtown Oklahoma City on the third floor of the Dean A. McGee Eye Institute when the sirens went off.  Everyone in the building was directed to the basement. There was a young woman of about 20 or so, checking her smart phone, saying, "My cousin says it's in Newcastle. My cousin says it's in Moore. That's so far from here. Why do we have to go to the basement?" She was born and raised Las Vegas, Nevada, with a surprisingly sheltered upbringing, and had certainly never experienced anything like this before. She really didn't understand what the big deal was all about. I just said, "Tornadoes travel, sometimes pretty quickly. Better safe than sorry."

The next morning when I saw her I said, "Did you watch any TV last night?" Tears in her eyes, she said "Oh my God, yes! How awful!" She was clearly shaken. I said, "So you understand, now, why everyone gets so excited when the sirens go off?" She certainly does.

South Oklahoma City is my old stomping grounds, and I went to high school in Moore. The storm tracked less than a mile from my first husband's house, and even closer to the homes of some of my other extended family. I am personally acquainted with at least two families who lost their homes and everything but their lives and whatever they could grab and carry to safety as they fled the storm. There's a few folks I haven't been able to speak with yet, but I haven't seen them in the obituaries, and I have news of some of them via Facebook.

(Deep sigh) I'm going to go check on the chickens now.

Down for the Weekend

We have a little metal oscillating fan in my office at work, and I think something is a little out of round because it makes quite a racket when we use it. The other day when we had a little splash of warm weather and wanted to use the fan, I set it on the carpeted floor in hopes it would be less noisy.

It was slightly less noisy. We used it a couple of days, and then the weather cooled off. I didn't trouble myself to move the fan, because we knew it would warm up again in a few days.

We're always thinking a few days ahead at work. The first thing we have to do is make sure "tomorrow's" charts are done, and we work on the next day's charts, and so on. Every day is busy, but certain days are extra busy clinic days, with a heavier load of charts to do. Any given Tuesday, for example, might have twice as many appointments as, say a Friday.  It was Thursday and we were working on the last of Friday's charts, looking forward to getting those done so we could start on Monday's and hopefully get enough ahead to start on charts for Tuesday.

 

Jimmy John's delivers, and we'd ordered lunch in so we could work through. I had just finished a hefty stack of charts and I got up to band that giant stack of charts together and move them to the "finished" place. When I got up, though, somehow I got tangled up in that fan. In the process of trying to get untangled I lost my balance, and in the process of trying to regain my balance, became more unbalanced, almost fell, caught myself on a chart cart, and twisted the heck out of my left knee. If the chart cart hadn't been there for me to grab I would've ended up all the way down on the floor. If it, being a wheeled conveyance, hadn't been in the corner like it was, the whole story might've had a much worse outcome than it did. 

 

Knee hurting like all get-out, standing on one leg, I somehow found my chair and plopped back into it. Scared a good ten years off my co-worker. She went for help and people started piling into our little office, including one of the doctors. He asked some questions about does this hurt, does that hurt,  and if I had an Orthopedic surgeon of choice. I do, but I don't know if he's still practicing, or if he's even still alive. I told Dr. H. that all my favorite doctors are old now. He said he's old too, and we laughed about that. Someone appeared with a wheelchair and I got a ride in the wheelchair to the hospital across the street. We must have looked like quite a crew, two women pushing another woman in a wheelchair across the street like that.

We entered through the Outpatient entrance on the south side of the building and threaded our way through the building to the Emergency Room  on the north side of the building. ER Waiting was full of folks I suspect may not have come in if it hadn't been so cold outside. I wouldn't say they weren't ill, but I got the feeling that several of them might have tolerated their dis-ease without spending the day in ER if the weather had been better.

Fortunately I didn't have to wait as long as I thought I would, and the good news is that nothing is torn or broken as far as they could tell. The knee "looks" perfectly normal from the outside, with little to no pain as long as I keep still and don't stress or twist it at all. 

 

Mike and Monica came to drive me home and help me get my car home, and then they brought my recliner and twin bed downstairs so I can stay on one floor. I can walk well enough with a cane (Thank you Steve for the nice cane), but I don't dare try to go up and down the stairs right now. I already feel tons better than this time yesterday, but I can sure tell when I've moved around "too much" (like now). And while driving wouldn't be at all difficult, getting into and out of my rather tall Honda Pilot seems a little daunting yet. I can't even think about that today. I'm hoping to enjoy enough recovery to go back to work on Monday.

 

So, there you have it. Twisted knee, down for the weekend.  

 

The oscillating fan, by the way, is back on the windowsill, off the floor. We'll just deal with the noise when we're hot.