How I became “Princess Broken Rib. . .”

Have you ever had one of those days when the universe literally decides it wants to test the strength of your entire physical body to see just how much agony and pain you can withstand? Well, this past Monday, the ‘Gods of the Universe’ decided to pick me out of a billion people to put the challenge to the test! (I guess that statement might be a little grandiose, but hey, I admit I think the universe sometimes revolves around me! LOL).

It all started a week ago Monday at 2:00 a.m. – when I swung out of bed with a tooth ache that literally pierced my entire body. . . I ran to the bathroom medicine cabinet to find I was out of Advil! UGH! So I quickly put on my sneakers, sweats, a shirt and the first coat in sight then ran out the door, down the hill to the only 24 hour bodega that was open. And let me tell you it was damn cold outside! The blistering chill in the air was mild compared to the agony my tooth-ache was pounding into my body!

I get the Advil PM – and start running up the hill back to my apartment – wasting no time to tear open the little Advil pack and swallow those pills without water! I couldn’t take the pain for one more second! Back to my apartment I arrive, back in bed and finally, fall asleep! Shweeeeeew!

Seven O’clock a.m. rolls around, I wake up and the damn pain is back and this time even worse! I am on the phone with my friend Marty, I could barely concentrate on my words – he runs over with pain killers and in the meantime I am calling my dentist who I finally reach, and tells me he no longer takes my insurance! WTF??? (Oh in between all this I managed to get to the gym to try and lift weights thinking if the adrenaline was full speed ahead in my body, the pain would just stop. . . CLEARLY STUPID!)

So here I am – Martin Luther King Day – and I need to be seen NOW by a dentist, because I am supposed to be packed and out the door the following day on a weeklong trip to see friends Upstate, NY. Well, thank goodness for 1-800-DENIST – they were able to find me a Dentist who took my insurance and could see me same day – the only catch – it was an hour trip by NYC Transit to get there! So. . . I am off!!!

I have to take two busses to this Brooklyn based dentist. The first bus stops right at my front door – so easy done! I am on this bus for about 30 minutes, then somehow in looking for the next transefer stop, which I clearly missed, I stopped the bus immediately, got off and figured I would hopefully be close enough to find the transfer stop by walking. Well in my attempt to look cool as ever walking the streets of NYC, looking for the transfer stop, I tripped on a sidewalk, went flying through the air and slammed the left side of my body into the ground, knocking the wind out of me. I layed there for a couple minutes - watching people walk-by! ("Thanks fellow humans for taking the time to NOT STOP and see if I was okay!") Anyways, when I was coherent enough to begin standing up, I could barely move, the pain was piercing . . . soooooo piercing that I could barely breath or cough and I certainly could not move any upper-body part(s) an inch. F**K the pain. I swear this is like a really bad sequel to Humpty Dumpty! (And I said before, ALL the king's horses men just walked on by.)

So, I finally make it to the transfer bus; arrive to the dentist, sitting in the waiting area in agony – soooo much agony. He finally sees me and after he takes x-rays,, he says, “Daniel you need a root canal. I am going to start that now and we will finish it when you get back from your trip.” I was like, broken rib (I knew it was definitely broken at this point, didn’t need an x-ray for that!) – but to add a root canal on top of that! Great!! Well, things certainly couldn’t get any worse. . . So he starts the root canal process and magically gets rid of the tooth pain! YEAH!!!!!  BUTTTTTT then he looks at me with this ‘evil dentist smile’ and says "Daniel the upper right Wisdom Tooth has to come out. It is probably causing a lot of the pain as well. I have to take it out right now." Again, thinking to myself “WTF>???????”  So OUT goes the Wisdom Tooth!

Seriously! A Tooth ache that leads to a broken rib, a root canal, and an extracted wisdom tooth all in a 3 hour time frame????? REALLY!! What more could be thrown at me!!!!

Thankfully the dentist hooks me up with a myriad of pain killers and anti-biotics, and I am on my way back home to pack. 

Packing was painful enough! I could barely move to get all the items I needed to throw into a duffle bag. And let me tell you, waking up the next morning was even more painful. I could barely move, hiding the pain of my rib – though I will tell you my friends upstate, NY knew I was coming pain or no pain. I needed the time away to work on my book and haven’t seen them in a while. 

I get up there, and of course my friends are waiting on me hand-and-foot (more than usual – in my life style! As my friends usually think I am the Diva! – LOL) Oh well! So during the course of the trip – leave it to my friends to make fun of me for not doing a darn thing! (Except to lift my hands to pop pain killers every four hours).

(Oh I clearly got nooooo work done on my book - I couldn't concentrate at all!)

Ok yes, I was in pain, and it was nice to have my friends wait on me! It was not nice that they joked about it every second of the time I was there (even though I know it was all in jest).  We did have a lot of fun – and then towards the end of my stay, they say to me, “Oh Daniel, we have decided to give you a new nick-name.” Thinking to myself, Oh boy, what the hell did they come up with?!?

Daniel you have been inducted into your own Indian Tribe, now known as “Princess Broken-Rib.”

The moral to this story and my experience – if you ever break a rib, or go through a day of hell, and your friend’s pick on you! Let them! Just make sure you soak up all the “waiting on you hand and foot” you can – because in time you may earn your princess name – and honestly it will all be worth it!

Well, I guess no more straight-jacket practicing or escapes practicing for a while! This sucks!

To the ‘God’s of the Universe’, I passed your test; I am still standing through all your pain and the slurs of jest by the mortals!  What’s next??

I am Daniel, I am living pozitively! Thanks for following my blog!