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Wreck update 3 - now with medical stuff!
May. 27th, 2006 03:47 amWell, nothing more has happened, insurance-wise, with the wreck. I hadn't expected it to, since they might not have even retrieved my car until today, and then they have to do an analysis and all that.
Health-wise, it's a mixed bag. My knees were very sore from getting knocked around on Thursday, somewhat less so Friday morning, and are now pretty much back to normal except for some tenderness on the actual bruise sites. The abrasions on my hips/upper thighs (from the lapbelt) have stopped suppurating, and are now kind of fun to watch as they change colors -- sorry, I tried to take pictures, but I just can't get the angle right. The airbag friction burn/abrasion on my left inner elbow continues to be a source of distracted amusement, as I am continually able to pull off the little blobs of dead skin that pill up like lint on an old blanket.
But my ribcage, oy. It had been feeling pretty good, albeit bruised, and then I sat up tonight and it felt like there was a pop or something, though honestly I may have imagined it. The pain has come back more now (concentrated on the right side, I think the 9th rib, right where I would have knocked into the console), and I'm wondering if I have a cracked rib. I had hoped to go in tomorrow to the Student Health Center (despite no longer being a student, my insurance premium's paid up through August), but they won't be open on Saturdays again until fall semester. Really, though, I don't know what good it could do to go in, other than getting some prescription painkillers (which seem uncalled for, since the pain's not really that bad). I know self-diagnosing patients are the bane of a doctor's existence, but I've been doing some reading up on it, and really it doesn't much seem worth it to go to the emergency room, since from what I can tell from the literature, the treatment for a cracked rib that isn't causing pleural damage (again, self-diagnosis bad, but it doesn't hurt to breathe deeply except insofar as the ribcage is expanding) is pretty much to tell the patient "If it hurts, don't do that," the bone being naturally splinted by the other ribs and the intracostal muscles. I really have no desire to sit for hours in an emergency room just to get told not to perform actions that cause me pain, and I have no other reason to get it X-rayed or whatever: it's not like I'll need it for a legal proceeding against myself [me being the at-fault party]. So, yeah. Any medical types want to weigh in, with the understanding that any such weighing in would in no way hold the weight of a medical opinion based on an actual exam and should not be construed as medical advice?
Anyway. I'm going to go to bed and try not to cough. Or laugh. Or move. Or worst of all, sneeze -- I've found sneezing to be a safari through the jungle of sudden surprising ouchies.
Health-wise, it's a mixed bag. My knees were very sore from getting knocked around on Thursday, somewhat less so Friday morning, and are now pretty much back to normal except for some tenderness on the actual bruise sites. The abrasions on my hips/upper thighs (from the lapbelt) have stopped suppurating, and are now kind of fun to watch as they change colors -- sorry, I tried to take pictures, but I just can't get the angle right. The airbag friction burn/abrasion on my left inner elbow continues to be a source of distracted amusement, as I am continually able to pull off the little blobs of dead skin that pill up like lint on an old blanket.
But my ribcage, oy. It had been feeling pretty good, albeit bruised, and then I sat up tonight and it felt like there was a pop or something, though honestly I may have imagined it. The pain has come back more now (concentrated on the right side, I think the 9th rib, right where I would have knocked into the console), and I'm wondering if I have a cracked rib. I had hoped to go in tomorrow to the Student Health Center (despite no longer being a student, my insurance premium's paid up through August), but they won't be open on Saturdays again until fall semester. Really, though, I don't know what good it could do to go in, other than getting some prescription painkillers (which seem uncalled for, since the pain's not really that bad). I know self-diagnosing patients are the bane of a doctor's existence, but I've been doing some reading up on it, and really it doesn't much seem worth it to go to the emergency room, since from what I can tell from the literature, the treatment for a cracked rib that isn't causing pleural damage (again, self-diagnosis bad, but it doesn't hurt to breathe deeply except insofar as the ribcage is expanding) is pretty much to tell the patient "If it hurts, don't do that," the bone being naturally splinted by the other ribs and the intracostal muscles. I really have no desire to sit for hours in an emergency room just to get told not to perform actions that cause me pain, and I have no other reason to get it X-rayed or whatever: it's not like I'll need it for a legal proceeding against myself [me being the at-fault party]. So, yeah. Any medical types want to weigh in, with the understanding that any such weighing in would in no way hold the weight of a medical opinion based on an actual exam and should not be construed as medical advice?
Anyway. I'm going to go to bed and try not to cough. Or laugh. Or move. Or worst of all, sneeze -- I've found sneezing to be a safari through the jungle of sudden surprising ouchies.
