I Fucked Up

But I'm Okay Now. Maybe. I'm not entirely sure.

It was exactly a month ago that I had my accident. People who know me IRL know about it. I thought I’d share it with everyone else because, well, what the actual fuck, you know? And also, it’s kind of fitting, because just a couple of months ago I did a post here thinking about death.

But first I gotta tell you, in case you don’t know, I’m less than 2 months away from turning 70. I’m not only working 50+ hours per week on bleeding edge IT projects, my company told me that they consider me mission critical - because I’ve succeeded in an area that 3 predecessors couldn’t handle. I’m still sharp, I’m still contributing, I’m still getting rated “exceeds expectations” in reviews.

And also I’m in far better health at 70 than I have any right to be, considering the lifestyle I’ve led. Think about it, first of all I’ve been smoking cigarettes for 50 years, and there were times that I smoked 2 packs a day. Back in the 70s and 80s, I might have done a lot of nudge nudge wink wink you know what I mean. In the 00s, I was basically an alcoholic, I was in bars 5-7 nights per week, I was getting drunk 5-7 nights per week, and I was doing stuff with people whom I shouldn’t have been doing stuff with in ways that I should have known better than to do.

Yeah, sure, I have a bunch of shit wrong with me. I’m almost 70. But even if you add them all up, these are not the kinds of things that will kill me (except if I forget to take my meds). My blood pressure is normal, my heart is okay, my lungs are clear. My cholesterol and blood glucose levels are both a little high, but that’s the kind of stuff I can control with pills and diet.

And I’m still standing. Except on February 6th, when I fell.

February 6th was a Tuesday. It was a bright, sunny, warm day in Austin. Lunch time, I went to the Levi’s store nearby to pick up some jeans I’d ordered online. I figured I’d grab lunch from someplace nearby. I realized that I hadn’t been to Shake Shack in ages and it was a 2 minute drive away, so fine. I drove to Shake Shack, parked the car and walked over to the entrance. They had big green signs in the window, “New Korean Menu!” and I’m staring at that and trying to guess what a Korean burger might taste like, and I don’t see The Step.

See the step there? I didn’t. It’s hard to tell from this picture (a screen shot I grabbed from Google Street View) but there’s a green stripe across the step. See the hand rails there? I didn’t put my hand on them. I walked straight toward the door, hit the step and started to fall.

When things go south, when you’re in a car accident or falling, everything goes into slow motion, right? Time is relative. We know this. And for me, as I was falling, things went into slow motion.

First I thought, I’m falling but I can regain my balance and not fall. Um, my body said no. And possibly because I thought I could somehow not fall, maybe my arms were reaching out for that hand rail, maybe not, but I couldn’t get my hands in front of me so that I would fall on them. Nope, I landed face first on hard concrete.

I heard the bones in my nose crack. I knew my nose was broken. But the first thing I did was check my glasses. Somehow they were intact. Perhaps because I was wearing a cap (a blue cap I’d picked up in Beijing with a big red star on it), possibly the brim of that saved my glasses. But it didn’t save my nose.

People came running out of the restaurant to help me. “Do you need help?” “Should we call an ambulance?” “You’re bleeding A LOT!” I simultaneously thought to myself, “Golly, people sure are nice in this town,” and, “This is fucking embarrassing. I don’t want this attention. I want everyone to go away.”

I pulled my bandana out of my rear pocket to cover my nose and stop the bleeding. I sat on the ground for a couple of minutes until the dizziness went away, then I stood up (by myself, thank you) and walked over to the restaurant’s patio and sat there bleeding and trying to compose myself and figure out the extent of the damage.

Now I had to figure out where to go. It’s not like Hong Kong here, there’s no subsidized government hospitals, at least not that I know of. I do have health insurance. But with dozens of private hospitals near me, which ones have emergency rooms and which ones take my insurance?

So I sat there, on the Shake Shack patio, blood streaming down my face onto my “Bronx Bombers” t-shirt (somehow that felt appropriate) looking on my phone at nearby hospitals, checking their websites, looking to see if they take my insurance. Fine, found one, just a mile and a half away.

I go back to my car and there are three old people (old? maybe younger than me) walking to their car very slowly, and their car is next to mine. “Excuse me, I’m sorry, I need to get to my car, this is an emergency!” and they stood aside, looking at the bleeding old man running to his car and probably wondering what the fuck was going on.

I drove to the hospital. The parking lot was really full. For a moment I thought, why don’t I just leave the car at the entrance to the emergency room and deal with the consequences later? But I’m not that selfish, I’m not that stupid, I found a spot the equivalent of two city blocks away.

(One week later, someone might have had a similar idea. Someone drove their car into the emergency room, stopping right where I had been sitting the week before. The driver of the car died, 5 other people were injured.)

Naturally there was a line at the registration desk. I stood there holding the bandana over my nose. A nurse ran out from the Information desk, thinking I wanted a mask, until she reached me and, oops, no I don’t need a mask thank you.

While I waited, the bleeding stopped and I finally, I’m not sure if it was courage or curiosity, took a selfie so I could see just how bad things were.

No, that’s not the way my nose normally looks.

They did a CT scan and confirmed that I had multiple fractures to my nose and septum, they recommended a ENT specialist to me, gave me prescription for pain killers, and sent me on my way. I drove to the drug store to get the prescription filled, then I went home and, well, I was less than happy.

I was thinking to myself, “Is this how it’s going to be now? Now that I’m old? That I’m going to be falling a lot and breaking shit? Do I need a cane whenever I go out now? A hockey mask?”

I have the kind of health insurance that requires a referral from my “primary care provider” to see a specialist. I called my health insurance company. “Hey, I just came from the emergency room, multiple fractures to my nose, they told me to see an ENT specialist, do I still need a referral from my GP?” “Yes.”

I call my doctor’s office, give them the info on the referral, they send it off to the ENT clinic. I call the ENT clinic. The doctor I was referred to is on vacation. But they had lots of other doctors, including one who could see me the next day.

I called the insurance company again. “If I have a referral letter from my doctor to a doctor in a clinic, and that doctor is on vacation, so I will be seeing a different doctor but in the very same clinic, do I need another referral letter?” “Yes.” Do you wonder why people hate insurance companies?

The next day, I went to that doctor. She had the CT scan from the hospital, looked at the scan, looked up my nose, and confirmed that I had multiple fractures to my nose and septum. I had three options. First, just leave it and live with a bent nose, looking like some aging former boxer. Second, they could reset the nose then and there in their office, use some local anesthetic, and it would probably be painful as fuck. Third, go to the hospital, get general anesthetic, and do outpatient surgery. She recommended option three, and I agreed. The surgery would be done 4 days later.

I don’t know how it is in other places but here, when you go to the hospital and have an operation and get anesthesia, they don’t let you just hop in an Uber to go home. They want you to have someone pick you up, bring you home, make sure you’re okay, preferably spend the next 24 hours with you. There is a medical taxi service, I used them before, they charged $100 for the ten minute drive from the hospital to my home.

But the hospital also wanted the name and phone number of a local emergency contact. Well, my wife’s not here. There’s a couple of local people I know, but I’ve seen them maybe once in the past year. I have a cousin who lives here, but she travels for business and can be gone for months at a time. I messaged her and was told that her SO would be able to handle everything - pick me up from the hospital, bring me home, etc.

Anyway, to make a short story long, the surgery went well. I went back to see the doctor a week later, she looked up my nose again and said it was healing well. I told her, “I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like my nose any more,” and she laughed.

Another week and the black eyes cleared up, the nasal splint was off, the scab on my forehead came off and I looked as good as I’m going to look, I suppose.

But really, it slowed me down like crazy for a couple of weeks. I actually only took sick leave on 3 days from work. I was working two days after the accident and one day after the surgery. I just didn’t turn on my camera for meetings.

I thought to myself, maybe this is my shot at the big time. I googled some accident lawyers, the “you only pay us when we win” type of lawyers. I told them what happened, sent them photos, and they said they weren’t interested in the case. So, no, no millions for me. Back to the grindstone.

Is there some moral to this story, some lesson learned, some funny anecdote to wrap everything up? Nope. It is what it is. I’m back to my full work schedule. I’ve got a business trip coming up next week.

So I’ll end this with my usual shit, some recommendations for you.

Three movies from 2023 that I watched in recent weeks that blew me away. American Fiction (which I wrote about previously), The Zone of Interest, and Poor Things. When I try to describe Poor Things to people, I’ve found the best I can do is “Terry Gilliam and The Iliad and a shit ton of sex.” This clip, fabulous as it is, only hints at how wonderful the picture is.

I saw Dune Part Two in IMAX. I was blown away. As much as I loved Part One, Part Two is even better. And really, it’s a movie that benefits greatly from the huge IMAX format. I was tempted to go see it again the next day.

I don’t read much fiction. But I’m halfway through The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride and it’s completely fucking blowing me away. The NY Times: “a charming, smart, heart-blistering and heart-healing novel. Great love bursts through these pages … McBride brilliantly captures a rapidly changing country, as seen through the eyes of the recently arrived and the formerly enslaved people of Chicken Hill. He has reached back into our shared past when, by migration and violence, segregation and collision, America was still becoming America. And through this evocation, McBride offers us a thorough reminder: Against seemingly impossible odds, even in the midst of humanity’s most wicked designs, love, community and action can save us.”

And finally, this long feature article in The Atlantic, The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending, scares the shit out of me because I think the author, Franklin Foer, may be right.