When the available emergency room also has a sleeper berth, steering wheel, windshield, 35 tons of hay following and a grumpy helper.
Other than a flat tire, it started out being a normal day of hay hauling. I think we were in Mountain Home, Idaho. I don’t remember if we were loaded or empty. One of the lug nuts on the affected wheel was being obtuse. I found a 4-foot length of pipe to use as a cheater on my lug nut tool.
My thought was to be able to stand on the end of the cheater pipe and bounce on it until something happened. After a couple of attempts, I realized that this was not a stable perch, so I positioned it at the best height to put all my weight on it via my hands and arms. As I bounced on it, my end of the cheater pipe was moving about a foot with nothing happening on the other end. Watching the rod through the hole in the lug nut tool flex, I figured something was about to break loose.
Then, with my feet off the ground and giving it all the bounce I was capable of, I felt a horrible sharp, shooting pain in one of my hands. I don’t remember the “bang” as something on the other end moved. My involuntary motion from the pain in my hand caused me to be on my knees with the pipe on the ground.
The lug nut had moved. It also generated a shock wave that was amplified to the other end of the cheater pipe, which I had been pushing on. The center of one hand was now throbbing with pain. I checked it out but couldn’t see an obvious break in the skin or signs of a fracture.
Possibilities for first aid were duct tape and vet wrap, the self-adhering elastic wrap used in veterinary medicine for decades before it started showing up for human use. A tight wrap eased the throbbing, but it took most of an hour plus a handful of aspirin before I could connect two rational thoughts other than the pain.
We did get loaded, home and unloaded. I decided that the next couple of days’ schedule were not as pressing as they had been, so Old Yellow stayed in the yard. I was able to negotiate with Elli to put off having the hand X-rayed until we could see how it was the next morning. Then I was able to convince her that it was really much better. I don’t think Elli believed me. Forty years or so later, neither hand showed a history of anything broken at an X-ray exam for gouty arthritis.
In my late 60s, I had a right-side hernia repaired. The surgeon asked about a history of appendicitis. He said the presurgery scans showed an abnormality of the appendix, typical, he said, on someone who had survived appendicitis without medical intervention. I asked what the symptoms would have been that I missed.
When he listed them as chills and fever, diarrhea, nausea and extreme weakness, I told him I thought I remembered that night. I thought it was truck stop food poisoning. That was the sickest I remember feeling, either before or after. I was afraid I was going to pass out just walking from the parking lot at the truck stop inside to the restroom.
For the next six weeks, I passed everything on the freeway except rest areas. I finally went to see a doctor about it. He also assumed food poisoning, gave me some pills and said that they would prolong the diarrhea but make my life livable in the meantime.
I learned to keep a retired pair of cowboy boots in the truck early on and some form of a walking cane. Nothing like a sprained ankle 300 miles from home. The procedure is to first get whatever footwear you were wearing off of the injured foot. Then after ice or whatever you have to deal with the swelling, wrap the injured ankle. Slit a retired boot from almost to the toe clear up the topside. You now have something you can get the wrapped, injured foot into – something the foot is used to the positioning of. Next, wrap tightly over the area of the injury with duct tape, pulling the leather of the boot snug against the foot inside it. You still won’t be fit company for man nor beast, but you’ll be able to hobble around.
So, some vet wrap, duct tape, adhesive bandages, old boots, walking stick, aspirin, antiseptic, at least a little clean water, a complete change of clothes and a mindset that since your mama didn’t raise you to be helpless, you’re set.
Add to this, weather-appropriate items to deal with upsets that strand you due to the weather. Don’t forget the can opener, since you already keep half a dozen cans of chili on board.
