Yesterday, after church at Grace Episcopal Church, I was walking down the sidewalk outside the church, having collected the signs that we put out by the street (W. Belfort Ave. just West of Stella Link) to encourage passing motorists to stop in for a visit, and I somehow managed to trip on the sidewalk and fell heavily (and gracelessly) on my left arm and shoulder on the grass. I'm lucky I wasn't impaled by one of the signs! An intense, sharp pain in my left shoulder let me know that this was a bad fall, indeed! I was sure that I'd dislocated my shoulder! Caroline drove me to the Emergency Room (ER) at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) because we were worried about my brand-new implanted Bard Power Port, even though it is installed just below my clavicle (collar bone) on my right side--we wanted to make sure the port wasn't damaged in the fall!
Fortunately, there weren't many people waiting to be seen at the MDACC ER and we were able to get right in! The x-rays revealed that I'd fractured my humerus (upper arm bone) at its "surgical neck" where the long cylindrical part of the upper arm bone joins its knobby "head" that sits in the shoulder socket. The surgical neck is the weakest portion of the humerus and is the place where most fractures occur. Sure enough, my x-rays clearly showed a lateral displacement in my humerus at its surgical neck!
The good news is that I probably won't have to have any surgery to fix it. As long as I keep my left arm completely immobilized in an uncomfortable (and marginally effective) sling, my bones should be able to knit themselves together again on their own and be almost as good as new (after excruciating rounds of physical therapy, no doubt)! The bad news is that the only thing they can give me to assist the healing process is some woefully inadequate pain medication! The 4 mg of morphine I got yesterday in the MDACC ER through my Power Port (which was working perfectly, by the way, completely unaffected by my fall!) barely registered at all--I wasn't even sure whether I'd gotten any morphine! Fractures of the humerus at the surgical neck are among the most painful, or so I was told today by a physicians assistant!
Although this is the first bone I've ever broken in over 52 years of life on Earth, I can certainly attest to the painfulness of it! I also lament the loss of use of my left arm! Sometimes you never appreciate what you have until you don't have it for a while! Farewell to arms (plural), indeed, for at least the next two weeks! Of course, the chemotherapy that I'll be starting this coming Friday morning (bright and early at 7:15AM!) may well prolong the bone healing process, but so far there appears to be no good reason to delay the start of the chemotherapy!
For those of you who are curious about the exact make-up of my "chemo cocktail," I'll be on the "FOLFOX" regimen supplemented (or complemented) by the non-chemo Avastin anti-angiogenesis treatment. The potential and possible side effects of these medications are truly awful, a veritable litany of horrors, so I intend not to have any of these side effects! I'll let you know how that works out for me!
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