Last November, I blogged about breaking the fuck out of my arm (http://www.ebaumsworld.com/user/blog//view=80816975/). I broke it in three places and had a long and painful rehab.

Last week, my wife fell while rollerblading and badly broke her arm. She only had one break, but she made up in quality for what I had in quantity. She was totally trying to show me up for the low quality of my broken bones.

She had already been skating for a while and had just purchased some new, more aggressive skates. Against my know-it-all counsel, she went out without pads to try them on. The skates came out from underneath her. She landed on her tailbone and tried to break her fall with her right hand. Her radius (the forearm bone that hooks up to your thumb) snapped just below the knob on the end. The bone then went diagonally through her arm and came out of her wrist on the pinky side. She took off her skates and walked half a mile back to our house because she didn't take her phone with her.

"Tom, you have to take me to the emergency room, I broke my arm."

From all the way across the house I can see her arm has a zig-zag just behind her wrist. She's bleeding where the bone has popped out. I put her in the car and drive her to the ER at the hospital where she works. It's literally five minutes away. This is the same ER where I was treated for my broken arm.

It took her almost two hours to get her first shot of morphine. After triage and assessment, the nurse finally comes up to us with a single Lortab for her pain. I lose it.

"What the fuck is this? During the assessment, my wife characterized her pain as a ten out of ten on the pain scale. She said it was 'the worst pain of her life' and has a visibly broken arm. You bring her a Lortab. That means 40 minutes from now she might get some mild relief from the worst pain of her life. What the fuck are you saving the morphine for?"

Now remember my wife works here. I also realize that the nurse didn't prescribe the medicine and I'm freaking out on the wrong guy. While my wife is in X-ray I manage to find a supervisor and explain that the nurse practitioner that did my wife's evaluation is a retard. She got her shot though.

Now I know many of you have a problem with health care reform saying that it will lead to long waits and rationing of care. I just want you guys to know that my wife had to wait 7 days for her surgery. Her bone was unable to be set. She's been sitting in her bed with an essentially unaligned bone improperly healing. The pain is so bad that she's tripping out on Percodan and medical weed waiting for the procedure. This is something that would normally be done the day after the injury. They're going to have to re break the bone and install a plate that will be removed in six months.

All the rehab she's done so far has been for nothing. Her healing doesn't properly begin until after the surgery. If you're afraid of the day when we'll have to wait inappropriately long to get treatment, don't worry, our system already has that built in. You won't notice a change at all. Seven days is long enough to where her recovery can be impaired by the length of time between injury and surgery. You really couldn't wait any longer if you actually planned on doing anything.