Dang near met a fellow forum-ite

[earlmck]

Grizz is on the road headed for warmer climes, and we had arranged to meet up as he came through Prineville. Not much more than an hour from his arrival I got a call from oldest daughter -- her mom (my wife) had taken a fall and maybe broken an ankle. Wife is just a bit over a week post back surgery and is not not NOT supposed to be falling down. So instead of meeting up with levergunner Grizz I got to hang around the Emergency Room waiting and waiting for all the stuff that you wait for in Emergency Rooms.

Well, it was a danged poor time to come through here anyway as the buffalo range has deep enough snow you can't get in to shoot the steel menagerie. Though at this time we were not trying to get any shooting in -- just meeting up for a quick introductory visit.

Any of you fellers coming through this way, try to time it for a weekday with halfway decent weather and I'll get us out to bang 'n clang on some of our nifty steel buffalo targets at our local shootin' range. I haven't shot on other silhouette ranges but folks with wider experience tell me this is one of the finer ones.

[OldWin]

Sorry about your wife, and the missed visit.
Hope she is ok and on the mend.

[gamekeeper]

Hope your wife makes a speedy and full recovery... Shame the meeting couldn't take place.

[Bill in Oregon]

Earl, I am so sorry to hear about your bride's fall, especially in the wake of recent back surgery. I wish you and your family and your wonderful grandkids as good a Christmas as possible under the circumstances.

[Old Savage]

Best wishes on the recovery.

[Ysabel Kid]

I hope your wife gets well soon!

[earlmck]

The ankle wasn't broken and she apparently didn't do damage to the surgery. But of course it took about 4 hours of waiting around in different rooms of the ER to get 15 minutes of information. Ankle must be pretty danged sore as she surely doesn't want to put any weight on it. Got her a walker so she can hobble around and she is good to go. Tells me the three ambulance guys were "young and cute": but when you're married to something that looks like me, all the guys look "young and cute".

She lifted wrong back in early October and ruptured a disc. I had done the same thing 14 years ago, so we soon recognized the symptoms, the main one being unrelenting pain up there at the 8 to 9 level on the "10" scale. Finally got worked through the medical system (wait for appointment with primary doctor, wait for MRI appointment, wait for evaluation of MRI, wait for appointment with neurosurgeon, wait for steroid injection, wait for injection evaluation, wait for surgery) and had a "microdiscectomy" just a scosh over 2 months after the injury. She had to be triple-tough to make it that long; I was just about 2 weeks from my injury date until my surgery and thought it was by far the longest two weeks of my life. Would have been eating my gun if it'd looked like it would be another week longer. I think this just showed us how much the medical bureaucracy has bloated up over just the last few years.