Feb 13, 2011

थे इक्य डे स्टोरी गेट्स The Icy-Day Story Gets Worse

Translation of Canadian writing (above): The Icy Day Story Gets Worse, a Dis-ICE-terous Follow-Up

When you last tuned in, my son Alfredo had slipped on the ice as he went to retrieve the mail, and you readers were left to guess at his fate. Fear not. I'll fill you in.

To recap, after his fall, Alfredo said it hurt to move his left arm. We told him to move his right arm instead. In retrospect, that was not the best advice. The next morning, Alfredo woke up in pain and had no mobility in his left arm and shoulder at all. We decided to take him to the ER after school to get some x-rays. Dr. Wu (who later turned out to be a custodian impersonating a doctor) told us Alfredo didn't have any fractures, but that he did injure his growth plate. The "doc" stuck Alfredo's arm in a crumpled-up looking sling that he pulled out of his pants' pocket. Wu then mopped the floor around our feet and propped up a yellow sign that said, "Caution: Wet Floor" in many languages. It should have aroused our suspicions, but we were too worried to notice such a subtle clue. Before he walked out the door, Dr. Wu told us to see an orthopedic surgeon in a week. He recommended his cousin, Abe, who works out of a pawn shop downtown, next door to "Pizza Village," home of the $7 party-sized pepperoni pizza.

When I went home and told my husband all that had happened, he became worried. Our family has some height challenges, so an injury to a growth plate would mean this son might have an arm that would not grow to potential. As it is, our whole family tends to not grow to potential, so this was yet another blow to the ego. But, like all smaller people, we quickly laughed it off and moved on.

By Wednesday, Alfredo began to move the arm little by little. His mobility increased in leaps and bounds throughout the following day, but we told him to limit his jumping after that.

On Friday, we couldn't get an appointment with Wu's cousin, so we settled for consulting with a Dr. Beakman. "The Beak" as I jokingly called him (though he didn't laugh), examined Alfredo's arm and shoulder. He had him do various exercises to reveal his degree of mobility. He had Alfredo raise his arms above his head, to the side, and do a few pushups. Next, he asked Alfredo to carry all the hazardous medical waste from the examining rooms and throw them in the cardboard-recycling dumpster behind the building. He explained that this would test if Alfredo had regained strength in his arm and shoulder. I waited anxiously for Alfredo to return. When my son came back with a giant smile on his face, I knew he was ok. The doctor smiled for the first time too, proclaiming that Alfredo's growth plate was NOT injured. He said the first x-rays were not well defined and it was probably just a strain all along. He chuckled as he quipped about all the medical mistakes he had made in his own career. He wrote a doctor's note to give Alfredo the clean bill of health and told him he could resume all normal activity immediately. "I can even make ice angels and ski?" asked Alfredo?

"Of course you can, my boy!" the doctor responded. We invited the Beak to go skiing with us the next day, and that's just what we did. My husband and son and the doctor met in the morning, lost the free ski-lift passes that the kids earned for getting As, and then had to pay full price. As Shakespeare said, "All's Well That Ends Well."

P.S. The title of this posting is, "The Icy Day Story Gets Worse." For some reason, as I wrote each word in the title, the computer automatically it to Canadian or some kind of foreign language where they put numbers and musical notes on horizontal lines. Whatever the language, they don't have a translation for the word worse. What a shame. I know I don't have a lot of Canadian readers who will understand what that funny title means, so I will look into changing the titles back to English for the next posting. And might I add that I am very impressed with Google, who has created blog templates that arbitrarily change text to different languages. Visionary!

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