Sancho and I Return to the Scene of the Crime

PART ONE OF TWO:
On this, the last day until spring when any train is scheduled to pass through Wasilla when the sun is above the horizon, I decided to return to the accident scene: here where, four weeks ago to the day, Sancho crashed, tumbled into the creek and I fell and broke my arm. “What?” you exclaim, “you broke your arm? Why didn’t you say anything? How did it happen?”

See the birch tree at left? This is the tree Sancho crashed into and tumbled out of into the creek in the dark area just to the right of my copyright mark. I did not know where Sancho had crashed. The “find my drone” feature in my control unit narrowed it down to a circle about 30 feet across, half on land, half on water. I had to search through a thick entanglement of brush, roots and leaves on the steep slope of the bank. As I walked toward the tree just downhill from the band of light by the tree, my feet slipped out from under me.

I came down on my right forearm. I felt the stiff jolt all the way up through my shoulder - my artificial titanium shoulder.

After the initial shock, I felt only a dull, light, pain and thought maybe I had escaped injury. The pain intensified over the weekend and on Monday, I tried to call my orthopedic surgeon but could not reach him. On Tuesday, I tried to call my regular doctor, but she was out of town. An assistant concluded my surgeon had moved to Utah. I asked her to refer me to another good orthopedic surgeon but she failed to do so. On Wednesday, my regular doctor was back. She referred me to another surgeon but he was so busy he could not see me until Friday the next week - two days after I was scheduled to go through my recent plumbing surgery.