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If you follow my communication on Facebook, you’ll know that last week, I injured my knee pretty severely in a mundane household accident. (My older son, The Blond Ravin’, says that’s proof that no one should undertake home improvements, but that’s another post I’ll have to figure out how to connect with “communication.”)

I ended up spending two days in the hospital — not two solid days, but two interrupted days, requiring several trips back and forth. The experience provided me with several observations about communication in action. And as you probably figured, ample time in waiting rooms, which afforded opportunities to get some writing done.

What happened

I simply slipped on the stairs as I was taking down some dangling glass plates, about 9 x 22 cm, in preparation for replacing a chandelier. I have taken down those plates for cleaning many times without incident.

But last Tuesday evening, when I had about five of the plates in my hand, I thought that was enough to carry down in one load for fear of dropping them on the stairs. I was standing on about the ninth or tenth step at the time. I turned, my heel slipped over the edge of the stair, and as I started to fall, all I thought was “Don’t drop the glass!”

I don’t know whether I went down one step or two. But when my heel hit the lower step, my right knee bent the wrong way. I felt a pain in my kneecap that made my vision go completely white.

And I dropped the glass plates, hearing at least two shattering on the hardwood floor below.

(“See?” my younger son, Super Nicolas said later. “That’s the trouble with hardwood. It’s super slippery, and it’s hard.)

The whole family came to see what had happened and my sons helped me down the remaining stairs. I limped to a couch and sat, as the family cleaned the shattered glass.

That was the end of my home renovation work for the day. And as it was already getting late, I decided not to seek medical attention at the time, as that would require going to the hospital emergency room. And you know what that means: hours of waiting.

So, I took some Tylenol and iced my knee, and then went to bed.

The next morning, I saw just how swollen my knee was. I found a pair of crutches we had bought for Super Nicolas after he injured his ankle in some kind of sport (I don’t remember whether it was cross-country bicycling, rock climbing, hiking or what) and managed to adjust them so they were short enough for me. Then I went to work in my home office, interrupted several times:

• the arrival of the contractor who came to replace the chandelier
• his dropping and breaking of at least on more of the glass plates that I had left dangling on the old chandelier after my mishap
• the arrival of a repairman for the clothes dryer
• calls to and from two different IT specialists to figure out why a client’s computer would not connect to my home WiFi network.

As you can understand, I didn’t make a lot of progress that day. But all the limping across the house on a crutch sure didn’t make my knee feel better.

By the end of the day, despite aspirin and icing to reduce swelling, my knee wasn’t smaller. Super Nicolas compared it to a large grapefruit.

(Actually, he said “Dad, you should go to the hospital for your knee.”

“Why?” responded.

“Well, it’s the size of an apple.” He went to the kitchen to fetch an apple. “Oh, knees are about the size of apples. Okay, it’s the size of a grapefruit.”)

He was right. I resolved that if the swelling did not go down after another night of aspirin and ice, I would seek medical attention.

The next morning, the knee was no better. I managed to get an appointment in the afternoon with my family doctor. (She’s great. Shout out to Dr. Anne Fraser at the Westend Family Care Clinic!)

In the late afternoon, my wife drove me to the clinic. Using Super Nicolas’s crutch I limped in.  Dr. Fraser described my knee as “spectacular. The red colour and the size — spectacular!” She also said that in her 30 years of practice, I was the first to walk in, even using a crutch, with that kind of injury. (I told you I was badass.)

She advised me to go for immediate x-rays. On the requisition chart, she wrote “In case of boney trauma, send patient to emerg. immediately.”

Well, I decided to go home for supper first. Roxanne then drove me to the hospital for x-rays. I told her not to wait — I had my iPad, and I discovered that the hospital near me has gotten over its irrational fear of cell phones and actually installed a free guest WiFi network!

The x-ray area had no waiting, and the technician called the radiology doctor, the one qualified to interpret the results, at home right away. Within 40 minutes, the radiology department receptionist told me to go to emergency.

“Do I have boney trauma?” I asked her.

“I’m sorry. I’m not allowed to pass on that kind of information to patients. But your form says to refer the patient to Emergency immediately if any bone damage is found.”

In other words, add two and two, idiot. I mean, patient.

The communications lesson

In Canada, at least, and probably in the U.S. and most of the world that has adopted the Western medical philosophy, medical professionals seem to have a policy of not sharing information with patients. Have you ever tried to look at your own chart? I did once and the nurse in the ward yelled at me for it. (Not this time — that was some years ago, in a different hospital and a different city.)

Non-medical people cannot dispense medical information in a hospital. And doctors are notoriously hard to talk to, because they’re just so busy. So the person with the least information is the patient — about his or her own health!

The next step was to crutch-walk to the Emergency department, which offered more observable moments in communication. But I see that I’ve rambled on for quite long already, so I’ll tell you that whole story in my next post. I will say here, though, that I was very impressed by the courtesy and care I received at the Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa.

But I will end by saying that I spent long periods over the next couple of days sitting or lying in a number of different rooms in the hospital. I finished the last chapter of my next book, Dead Man Lying: A Lei Crime Kindle World novella. So something came out of it.

Kathleen Valentine, a wonderful writer and good friend, tagged me in a Facebook “7-7-7 Challenge,” where I post seven lines from page 7 of my work in progress. You can read that here.