A Bit Of A Trauma At The Time, But In Perspective?

This morning in Florida it is dark, rainy and thundery and I don’t mind a bit. It’s very early and I am writing this lying in bed. Out of the window, assorted powerboats lie moored side by side near docks in a small, river harbor. My friend, Margaret and I are in Vero Beach.

I have to keep adjusting myself because my tailbone hurts. The meds have worn off overnight. The day before leaving for FL I had lunch with a friend and when we were finished, I slid off the slippery banquette at the Village Bagel Shop and because the seat ended before the edge of the table, and because I was still talking to Alice and looking at her, I went straight to the floor.

I flew here with a sore coccyx and after two days Margaret and I went to Corey’s Pharmacy and stood in the little alcove marked, Consultation, where Mrs. Corey, a short, brown-haired, late middle-aged woman, swiftly appeared and asked how she could help.

It was truly a consultation. “How did it happen?” She asked. “Where exactly is the pain? What, if anything, have you been taking for it?” (I was clutching a new bottle of ibuprofen, having used up the little I had brought with me.)

And then: “I want you to go to my favorite doctor at the Walk In clinic off the 17^th Street bridge. Dr. Olleneck. He will take good care of you. I really like him. You may need to have your back X rayed and Vero Diagnostics is right near his office.”

I am standing there, nodding dumbly while Margaret, clever woman, is writing down directions.

Yikes! There is really something wrong with me?

It turns out there is. The “very nice” doctor visit and an X ray later, and I have a fractured coccyx, which makes sitting a bit grim-even with the script ibuprofen I am now taking three times per day, but, hurrah! There is nothing that needs to be done about it except for my mustering a patient tolerance of the eight weeks healing time the fracture demands. I can walk, trot, and canter; I just can’t sit.

 Here’s what I now know. If you are going to hurt yourself, Vero Beach, Florida, is the place to do it. From Mrs. Corey of Corey’s Pharmacy to Dr. Olleneck at the Walk In, to the efficient and speedy X ray technician, I was kindly taken care of in every way. When I went to buy the special cushion to sit on I walked into the world of senior citizen—and other—rehab possibilities.  

The very sympathetic woman who waited on me also suggested a wrap-around heating pad. “You are going to LOVE this!” she sparkled. And then some roll on stuff called Bio Freeze which I haven’t tried yet. “I’m not trying to sell you stuff,“ she assured me. “These are products I know will help you”

And they do.

Now for the uncomfortable eight weeks to pass: I am already counting.

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But this from Nigeria? Can you imagine this life? (The NY Times on February 6, 2015)

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — They came in the dead of night, their faces covered, riding on motorcycles and in pickup trucks, shouting “Allahu akbar” and firing their weapons.

“They started with the shootings; then came the beheadings,” said Hussaini M. Bukar, 25, who fled after Boko Haram fighters stormed his town in northern Nigeria. “They said, ‘Where are the unbelievers among you?’ ”

Women and girls were systematically imprisoned in houses, held until Boko Haram extracted the ones it had chosen for “marriage” or other purposes.

“They were parking” — imprisoning — “young girls and small, small children, parking them in the big houses,” said Bawa Safiya Umar, 45, whose 17-year-old son was killed when her town fell under Boko Haram’s control. “They parked 450 girls in four houses.”

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The above makes a sore coccyx a complete joke!

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Oh Lord, we are one world with one God and yet look at what we do in Your name. Forgive us when we imprison others in our rigid concepts and help us to create peace with one another.