Looking back at the day I was injured. |
My whole world changed overnight, or perhaps I should say afternoon, when a warehouse door fell on me crushing and breaking my lower back, that “small” area called lumbar, transverse fracture, medically said, (so fortunate for me I survived) yet they shot me full of morphine to mitigate that awful pain. Nerve headquarters defines the spine, and spasms of flesh like a night crawler pierced, and every three hours that hypodermic came to sooth, yet its effect was fair to poor, as muscles spasmed like strained knots pulled by the anger that is trauma. I can still hear the guillotine that was the door, five hundred pounds which sought prey, that airman me as enlistee, a soldier long ago when Vietnam was going strong, and many others bled and died. As fortunate, I am still alive despite the marksman that was weight, a most defective mass of metal, wheels on tracks yet one had broken, condemned, the door, then held on forks of a tow-lift pressed to service… (how cold winds blew in winter’s grip; the Colonel said to lift the door with forklift though it wasn’t safe, and it had been condemned all right.) So it found me one afternoon, and three months in the hospital upon a Stryker Frame (thin board) tied down, a body-cast later on; learned to walk again, (well grounded), residuals, arthritis mostly, yet the nerves act up in anger, though I grin this day of living. 40 Lines Writer’s Cramp 3-25-20 |