I broke and displaced four ribs on Saturday. Could Have Died

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Saturday, there was a really nasty ice storm here in Philly. A light rain was quickly freezing, creating black ice all over the sidewalks and streets.

I walked out of my house, on the walkway to the steps that take me to the sidewalk in front of my house. At the top of the steps I slid on a patch of ice and was up in the air. I crashed, with my full weight hitting the edge of the top step. After a few minutes of excruciating pain I managed to stand up and go back in the house. I could walk but the pain in my side was really bad.

I decided that I wasn't that bad and I'd wait until Sunday morning to go get myself checked out, with an X-ray, because I didn't want to wait many hours in an ER. It was a rough night. Laying down was hard, getting up was really, crying out loud painful. I slept in a chair that night.

I went to the urgent care facility and was taken care of right away. They did two X-rays.

They told me I had three broken ribs, with displacement, meaning the break had separation. Their policy was to treat a patient with three or more broken ribs as a trauma case and told me I should go to an ER, that an ambulance could take me. They told me that as a referred trauma patient I'd be seen right away and not to be overwhelmed if three or four people approached me at once.

I chose to let my son-in law drive me. I was able to walk and I walked in to the Torresdale ER/Trauma center at about 11:15 AM. They instructed me to sit down and wait to for an intake. That happened pretty quickly. Then they sent me back to sit-- they didn't even look at the X-rays. I sat for about 90 minutes and finally asked the triage nurse what was going on. I was not being handled the way I was told to expect. I showed them the images above, that I had on my phone. They started to move and set me up for a CAT Scan. The purpose of the scan was to determine if I had internal perforations-- of my spleen or lungs. As you can see, the broken edges look like sharp knives.

I have a pretty high pain tolerance and as long as I sat still I wasn't in much pain.

Before getting a CT scan I needed to get a blood test to be sure my kidney function was okay-- a requirement because of the use of radioactive contrast material so non-bony tissues can be seen. That was clear and I went for the CT Scan.

The hardest part of the CT scan was laying down and getting back up. It was done by about 4:15 and I was informed that I actually had four, not three broken ribs.

I had a lot more details written up but I lost them. Suffice it to say that after eight hours at the hospital, waiting for a bed, so I could see a doctor, I decided to say screw it and went home. The CAT scan found that I did not have any perforations, so I felt safe enough. After eight hours waiting I never saw a doctor.

The next day, one of my Facebook friends, an MD, suggested I might need rib plating-- a surgical procedure using plates and screws. I asked for more info and she suggested I contact a thoracic surgeon. Very quckly, another friend commented that her husband was one. and she messaged me with his phone number. I called and was in his office two hours later. He ordered a second CAT Scan to confirm that I had no perforations of my spleen or pneumothorax-- lung perforation, and to see if the distancing of the broken ribs was staying steady, in which case I wouldn't need surgery.

I had the second CAT scan yesterday and it was all good news. It's kind of amazing that with breaks like you see in the X-rays I will be able to heal without surgery. But my brother pointed out that if you look at a rack of ribs that. you eat, the bones are so tightly held by muscle, they really can't move much. Of course just that conversation made me laugh-- and laughing hurts.

So... I'll be sore when I move for at least a month, but thank goodness, when I'm sitting still, I have no pain. I still can't drive my car, which is a low slung Prius, which is too hard to get in and out of. And last night I was able to sleep in my recliner, instead of a chair. So... progress. And I'm back at the computer.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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