Everybody in the world feels for certain incidents that had happened in his or her life in the past and just keeps on pondering that if I had done this thing the other way then today I wouldn’t have been in such a situation. Well, I too harbour such an incident which makes me feel that only a split second of chance could have put me in a better physical position than what I am today or could have put me in a far worse condition than I could have ever imagined. To stop beating about the bush I come to the point that even today I vividly recall the day when I fractured my left arm; and just like any other individual I ponder that just a split second of chance wouldn’t have made me endure that ordeal for two months to follow on or could have made my life even more miserable than that my nightmares are capable of imagining.
The day was 14th of January,1999 only three days after our school reopened from the winter vacations. It was a very normal day like other days, we had two periods in the morning and the 3rd period was Computer Science. I was always excited about computer practicals, and to my luck our computer teacher announced that the new year's 1st practical classes would commence with the Group B. Suddenly I found myself arranging my pens and books, but I was a bit late in drinking water and didn’t want to miss the opportunity to sit with my best friend then- Rajat Hawelia who had already proceeded for the practicals. I came running out of the class in to the corridor which had a granite floor, in a hurry I accidentally slipped and my forehead banged with the glass pane of the Biology Laboratory just on the other side of the corridor. I fell down with left arm first on the floor in a precariously twisted condition. I did not feel any pain then, except for a sudden chill that went up from my forehand towards the shoulder, I rolled up the sleeves of my blazer to discover that my left forehand was bent downwards like and inverted bow. The chill gave way to a gripping pain to my shoulder and my astonishment to trepidation that I might have fractured my arm. I immediately alerted my teacher in class who took me to the Vice-Principal’s office and from there our P.E/Geography teacher Miss Roma Pal took me to our hospital- AG Church Hospital. There a doctor inspected me and asked me if I could straighten my arm and clasp my fingers inside, neither of which I was able to and there was a terrible pain. The school officials called my parents and they discharged me with a first-aid, a sling and a tight bandage along with an X-ray print showing the gravity of the fracture. I had fractured the Radius bone( the bone on the side of the thumb) of my left arm.
Then started a hectic two months ahead, I was initially made to undergo a minor setting of my bones without the application of scalpels in CMRI (alias Calcutta Hospital) to which the orthopedist was very skeptical and he did not misconstrue his thoughts. The result, after one month of plaster the bones barely came close to each other, the consequences being yet another visit to the operation theatre and this time the surgery demanded a vigorous use of scalpels. The doctors said that my bones were so thin that they had to revert to steel plates instead of a steel rod in which case the surgery would have been less painstaking for the patient. They put a steel plate with five bolts in order to get the fractured bones in one plane, and followed it up with 34 stitches(17 on either side of the cut). After one week they decided to cut my stitches and discharge me from the hospital, I gasped when for the only time in my life I saw what stitches looked like.
After that it took me 3 more weeks to be able to bend my elbow, but even till today I am unable to twist my wrist. Also my stitch marks looks awful like a centipede walking on the forearm and hence I always prefer wearing full sleeve shirts. Even today, every moment of that dreaded day is etched on my mind, if I was unlucky I could have easily banged on to glass pane and caused some lethal head injuries, and had I been luckier I wouldn’t have had that fracture. Whenever I meet Miss Roma Pal she talks about that incident. Before I left home for my job, I consulted my orthopedist enquiring that if it would be required to unscrew the plate from the bones as it had already been nine years, to which he said that as long as it doesn’t trouble me I should not bother it, and hence even after 10 long years I still have the plates intact. Today I only have an occasional pain(twice or thrice a year), a minor loss of strength, stitch marks and a bend along the length of the arm there is no other change that requires any medical attention.
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