If hell could freeze over, it would be called black ice, the spawn of Satan.
I had my first car wreck because of the stuff.
An acquaintance of mine fell on black ice, broke her knee and had to have surgery. She ended up on disability.
I start out about 7:45 am, eager for a walk on our local rail trail. Our last snowfall of the winter had been melting during the day and freezing during the night. Of course, I don’t think about the ramifications of this. A few yards in, a patch of black ice grabs my feet and yanks them out from under me. The rest of me follows and the back of my head slams against the blacktop. Hard. The world spins. I struggle to sit up but the same intense vertigo pulls me back down.
“Okay,” I think, “I’ll just lie here awhile. It’s cold down here by the way.” Out loud I say, “Oh, this is so not good.”
And in my poor ringing ears, I hear the echo of evil. “Moo ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa.”
After a minute, I crab walk backward off the patch of ice. I manage to stand and make my way to my car. Since I can see and think clearly and walk straight, I decide to drive home. Admittedly not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I should have parked my little fanny on my car seat (pun NOT intended), pulled out my cell phone and called 911.
Cause less than thirty-six hours later, a CT scan done at my local ER diagnoses a minor occipital skull fracture. Due to the fact that I’d thrown up that morning after a wave of nausea and dizziness, the attending PA is concerned something more serious might be going on. I am to be transported to the larger hospital in the city that can offer me more specialized care if needed.
The closest ambulance is summoned. After about ten minutes, an EMT enters the tiny hospital cubical where I lie on a bed, a cervical collar (incorrectly applied by the nurse I soon learn) around my neck.
He introduces himself. “Hi, my name is Joel and I’ll be your EMT for tonight. Would you like to start with a nice saline drip?”
“Sure,” I say, “Does that come with an oxygen mask?”
“Yes. it does. With a nice set of electrodes on the side.”
“Okay. I’ll take that.”
“I’ll be right out with it.”
Well maybe that conversation didn’t actually happen but this is comedy so I thought I’d go for the extra chuckle.
I am transferred to an ambulance litter that must have been designed for victims of anorexia it’s so narrow. I’m not that big and even my arms hang over the sides.
A second EMT has been asked to ride along in the back of the ambulance. This does not bode well for me. Either they fear I might go into crisis at any moment or they think I might become a “problem patient.”
As the journey begins, Joel attaches stickers to my legs and arms, probably for monitoring of vitals or something. I knew there was a reason I shaved my legs and put on clean underwear this morning.
At the hospital, I am wheeled into the trauma ER. One of the female nurses removes my shoes and socks, then goes to work on my jeans.
Thanks for not cutting them off me, honey. Let me help you pull my pants off while I pull the blanket up. I know they’ve “seen it all” many times but I prefer to keep as much of my “all” covered as I possibly can for as long as I possibly can. I prefer to be unconscious if they do have to see my “all”.
The head doctor is an older gentleman. He introduces himself twice. Wait, I have the head injury here. Aren’t I supposed to be the confused one? I find it rather amusing that I had to wear the cervical collar and that the staff “log rolls” me on the litter to check if I have any injuries to my neck or spinal column. Apparently, the staff back at the small town ER did not communicate the fact that I’ve been walking around with this injury for more than twenty-four hours.
Later, I picture this conversation with a fellow patient.
“Hi there. I am being held for observation after slipping and falling on demonic black ice and breaking my head. What are in for? Embezzlement and grand larceny you say? Wait. Can someone recall those EMTs? They took me to the wrong place!
I am wheeled from The Big Room to a cubicle in the ER where I wait–and wait. Finally, a burly, fiftyish male nurse arrives with a wheelchair and asks if I would rather go up to my room on the litter or in a wheelchair. How I ride upstairs determines whether I’m allowed to use the “normal” toilet or whether I have to deposit my offerings in a bed pan. I utilized one of those gizmos at the small town ER and feared overflowing onto the sheets. I cast a longing gaze upon the wheelchair.
By the way, why do they call those wheeled bed thingys “litters” anyway? Is it because if they accidentally dump you onto the floor, someone can look at you lying there and go, “Hey, would someone please clean that litter off the floor?”
I say we should try the wheelchair and see how it goes. I sit up and swing my legs over the edge of the bed. I grab hold of the arm he offers me and we both wait patiently for my wave of dizziness to pass. Okay, maybe I can do this. But when I attempt to lean forward and stand, vertigo lays me right back onto the bed.
Righto. Banish the chariot. I shall be carried on my litter by my loyal slaves, past my adoring subjects to my golden throne. My royal bedpan awaits.
I pull the blankets back over me. I learn the nurse has a second job as a bartender. Well then. He would be familiar with picking people off the floor who can’t stand up on their own anymore Oh, you’ve got such a sense of humor, Lord. I tell the nurse my joke about hell freezing over and turning into black ice. I then declare I really don’t like to joke about hell because it’s not a very funny subject.
He goes on to say that if you read the newspapers, some people seem guaranteed a place in hell. I meekly mumble that none of us were meant to go to the hot place and that there is a way out. I kick myself for not drumming up the courage to at least name the way out: Jesus.
In my sixth floor room, Mr. Bartender Nurse and two others slide me from the litter onto my bed. A bit later, with assistance, I am able to use the “normal” bathroom. There’s a dent in my very clean, very dry royal bedpan; I kicked it across the room.
It’s a long night. A nurse does a neuro-check on me almost every hour. I pray with my roommate who has been admitted for the second time in one week with severe back pain. When the shift change occurs around 11 pm, I am delighted when the nurse assigned to me for the rest of the night turns out to be a friend from my church.
I get zero shut eye but my dizziness decreases and I am able to keep down a hearty breakfast. I am released late that morning.
So what did I learn from this experience? Never go walking without your cell phone before lunch in March. Well, yeah, but…..
A well-known Christian speaker once said, “Tell yourself every day, ‘God loves me unconditionally and something good is going to happen to me today!’”
But what do we do when disaster strikes? Misfortunes can range anywhere from being late to an appointment to horrendous injustice and tragedies like an entire family dying in a wreck caused by a drunk driver. At such times, the idea of any good thing happening seems a cruel joke and we can be tempted to doubt God’s love, goodness or power.
In one of my November posts, “Grace and Laughter in the Dark,” I shared how I experienced the love, presence, and provision of God during and after my serious auto accident.
The theme is redundant here but we all need reminders. I thank God my injuries weren’t worse. I could have broken my neck. I could have been lying in a coma. (Someone accidentally added an extra “m” once to “coma” in a report about an accident victim and had the poor fellow lying unconscious in a punctuation mark.)
And besides all the blessings I already mentioned, my time of discharge dovetailed with my cousin’s schedule who shuttled me home. And through it all, I remained pain-free.
Perhaps it’s not so much that we need to expect good things to happen at the exclusion of the bad. It is naive and unbiblical to believe God’s love and favor are evidenced only by a life free of pain and suffering. Instead, we can seek out and focus on the blessings in the midst of the fear and pain, to look for God’s hand and heart in the circumstances, opportunities, and people he engineers into the situations.
Someday I may encounter a situation too painful to find an opportunity for laughter. But for now, perhaps, I hope I’ve made you chuckle, at least a little.
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