It has been a painful 3 weeks
Three weeks ago I spied a loose rain gutter on my roof so I went and got my ladder and went up there to fix it. Suddenly one leg of the ladder collapsed into a subterranean mole run I had not noticed. That toppled the ladder and me. My ribcage landed on my hammer's head.Very fortunately (with hindsight) it was not the claw end, but the side I hit. Not that it made a difference at the time. It hurt so bad I just lay there barely able to breath and totally unable to move for several moments.
Eventually I got up, determined the skin wasn't broken, did a self exam and determined to my satisfaction, not flail chest, nothing seemed to be in an unusual place, but clearly at least two ribs had taken a major hit. I half crawled inside, debated a 911 call and decided against it. I called it a day and went to bed leaving the toppled ladder and pulled down rain gutter and the offending hammer outside. The next morning, it is very hard to describe the sensation when I woke up. Key word phrase is screaming pain. It took several moments to actually crawl off my bed to get to the bathroom. I was at that time totally incapable of any flexation of the abdomen or twisting of my rib cage in the fashion required to get out of bed.
In the bathroom I re-examined myself. Wanted to cough but couldn't. A very nice blue (later that day green) imprint of the hammer on my chest. No bony lumps. No symptoms of any major pleurisy issues. As I sat on the throne I discovered getting up without leaning on the sink wasn't probable. I found an old cane someone had once left here and used it for the next few days. Needless to say I canceled all work assignments for the next few days. Every time I sat, I needed the cane to get up. Feeding the cats required the cane to set their food down, etc. TG for flip flop shoes. Lots of vitamins, minerals and protein and collagen sources in my diet that week.
Later that first day I managed some weak coughing. Mot capable of any really deep breaths yet, I still tried at least once.
By day 3 I no longer needed the cane to get out of a chair. Observation, sleeping in a sitting position was much less painful than trying to rest my body prone. On day 5 I had a much stronger cough and was able to go outside and get the ladder out of the yard along with the hammer. Day 6 I decided I could drive and on Memorial Day went to a BBQ with a friend.
Back to work in the warehouse somewhere around day 8. I find picking up packages and the like with steady blood flow actually loosened up the stiffness. By week 2 the bruises were no longer visible and I could cough normally with only a little discomfort.
Comments (12)
P.S So, no cats were starved during your ordeal, huh??
As far as I know not much can be done. It has to heal by itself.
Perhaps a tight band would help?
No, from everything I have been reading (and was motivated a few weeks ago to do a lot of it), there is nothing a hospital would have done beyond giving me (and charging me for) an X ray to confirm I had cracked some ribs and probably tore some cartilage between them, but I durn sure already knew that. 40 years ago they would have taped up my ribs, but since the 1990s enough evidence has accumulated that binding the ribs invites pneumonia so American hospitals would just send me home if there was no evidence of pleurisy or lung or other organ damage. They would have given me something to reduce swelling, suggested cold packs, and maybe some non-steroidal pain meds such as asprin or ibuprofen. Amazingly I do have ice here for making cold packs and plenty of aspirin and the ilk. Touching on the cats.
That was another reason not to go to the hospital if I didn't really need to. My relationship with my cats is close after more than a decade with each of them, and they would need fresh food every day (the two big Toms eat an amazing amount) and water every day, plus since they know few humans they are scared of most humans. The nearest person I completely trust with a key to my place and full access to anything in it and who is liked by the cats is 80 miles from me. She likes me enough that she would do it if I asked her to come by every day for them, but it really would be a major inconvenience to her life. <She did scold me over this decision a few days later.> Local animal control would of course come if I called them, but they have so many animals in 10 days they would probably euthanize them rather than continue to feed them and even if not, it would be needlessly traumatic to the cats. There are ex female girl friends who got along with the cats of course, but there are reasons I use the word ex to describe those women, and therefore they were technically an 'in gravest extreme only' option and we weren't there yet.
Hindsight notation: A lot of the initial symptoms of a ruptured or bruised spleen overlap with the symptoms of a rib injury directly over the spleen.