A few of you already know about this but I've decided to let you all in on the secret. On Sunday evening, January 21, I broke my left ankle. I'm home now but I spent five days in a hospital and the rest of the time since then in a rehab center. The ankle is far from fully-healed. That will take months. But it's healed enough that I'm writing this on the computer in my home office, whereas everything else here since 1/22/24 was written on my iPad or even sometimes my iPhone and usually from a hospital-style bed via two-finger typing…or sometimes one.
I'll tell you the whole story but first, I need to tell you why I kept this (mostly) a secret. Put bluntly, I didn't want and still do not want everyone's medical advice or their stories about their busted ankles. I have really good doctors and while I don't believe they're infallible, I think they're a lot less fallible about this stuff than anyone who hasn't graduated from an Honest-to-Hippocrates medical school.
When I underwent Gastric Bypass Surgery in 2006, I received — and I'm going to be blunt about this — some of the stupidest fucking "medical advice" from non-doctors. Much of it was well-intended and full of first-hand testimony. None of it was of any use to me and some of it cluttered my thinking when I had to make important decisions.
The worst and most unnecessary "advice" may have come from a comic book writer who stopped me at my first post-op Comic-Con and told me that he was an expert — i.e., he'd read some articles online — and that I'd made a horrible mistake and would certainly die with a few years because of that surgery. What a lovely, helpful thing to say to someone.
Just for the record: I am still here. This writer died in 2019.
As I said, a lot of the unsolicited help was well-meant and I don't mean to insult anyone who earnestly wanted to be of aid. I just have learned that when I have to deal with doctor-type issues, I'm better off confining the input to medical professionals I have reason to trust. None of what follows here is meant to instruct you. If you need to learn how to deal with this kind of thing, you shouldn't learn from me either. I sure wouldn't. That said, and with the hope you will find what follows interesting and maybe even amusing, here's the story…
It started around 9 PM that Sunday evening, maybe a bit later. A Lovely Lady Friend would be arriving at my home shortly so that we might enjoy each other's company. I was upstairs in my home — in the Master Bathroom of which I am the Master, getting ready when…
I don't know how, I don't know why, I'm not even entirely sure about when…but I was suddenly on the tile floor. No part of me was injured except for my left ankle but it was really injured…as in "broken."
And boy, did it hurt. I can't remember anything more painful in my just-shy-of-72-years-long life. Throughout the next few paragraphs, I shall spare you descriptions of how much it hurt. Just keep it in the back of your mind and I'll let you know the point in this story when I stopped being in absolute agony. Lying there, seeing my foot bent at an impossible angle, I instantly decided I had two options…
- Start crawling into my bedroom. I thought (I wasn't 100% certain) that my cellphone was in its little stand on my bedside table. If I could reach it, I could phone for help and I could also use an app on it to unlock my front door downstairs so help could get in to help.
- Or I could just die there on the bathroom floor, probably after several days. The L.L.F. would get there, ring the bell, get no response, probably call and get no response and then finally go home, leaving me there until God-knows-who found my body God-knows-when.
There did not seem to be a third option so I decided to go for #1.
But I didn't exactly crawl. I couldn't get any traction with either leg, especially the left. What I could do was more of a slither, using my arms to grab onto chair legs and other pieces of furniture and drag the rest of me towards the nightstand. I don't know how long it took but I got there —
— and fortunately, my cellphone was right where I hoped it would be. I was able to reach it, call 911 and talk with a nice lady who said she'd send Batman. Or maybe she didn't say she'd send Batman. The point is that she said she'd send someone. At that moment, I would have settled for a couple of Girl Scouts selling Thin Mints.
Then I unlocked the front door. Boy, am I glad I have that app on my phone. Then I called the L.L.F., thinking I might catch her before she left her house. I was too late for that. Here, verbatim, is how that conversation went:
HER: Oh, Mark! I'm about ten blocks from your house. We're going to have such a good time tonight!
ME: No…we…aren't!
I explained to her what had happened and she gasped and said she'd be to me in two minutes. Two minutes later, I heard her opening the door, calling out my name and sprinting up the stairs. She found me sprawled naked on the floor by my bed and asked, "What can I do?"
Just then, we heard the wonderful sound of an approaching siren and I told her, "Go downstairs and lead them to me." She was back in one minute with two Girl Scouts selling Thin Mints two burly firemen. They were joined a few minutes later by two more burly firemen. Carrying me down the stairs, as they'd have to do, was not a two-man job. It might even require the entire brigade.
Between shrieks of pain and as the L.L.F. slipped some clothes on me very carefully, I explained to the four men what had happened and where I wanted to be taken. They ran a few tests on me, decided the ankle was all that was wrong and then helped me into what I think is called a Carry Chair. The four of them lugged me down the stairs and out onto my front porch where I was transferred to a gurney. Every bit of this hurt but I told myself, "At least it's leading to a moment when the hurting will stop."
The L.L.F. wanted to come along. I told her no; just to lock up my house and go on home, which she reluctantly did. There were two rescue-type fire trucks outside and the gurney full of me was loaded into one of them. Two of the firemen headed off in the other truck to another call which from what I overheard sounded a lot more desperate than mine. One of the others drove the truck I was in.
The fourth one got in the back with me. As we headed for the hospital, he said, "I can see by what's in your house that you're into comic books. Did you ever hear of an artist named Jack Kirby?"
It probably took about ten minutes to reach the hospital. You tend to lose track of time in a situation like this. Mostly, I was trying to figure out who I had to call, what plans I had to reschedule, how to not mess up the schedule on Groo…stuff like that.
I had been to the Emergency Room at this hospital before with others and for myself. I recalled long waits for treatment and once, after it was decided to admit me, I waited in a hallway on a tiny bed for several hours before they had a room for me.
Happily, none of that happened this Sunday night. The two firemen transferred me from their gurney to a narrow hospital bed and then rushed off to another call. I was wheeled into a tiny cubicle and doctors, nurses and x-ray technicians were on me within minutes.
With almost every one, I had the same conversation about pain killers. When I'd been in the hospital in 2015 for my knee replacement, my doctors and I discovered that none of the usual drugs had much effect on me. Fortunately, I took notes then and still had them on my iPhone.
"I seem to be impervious to Norco, Dilaudid, Tramadol, Percocet, Celebrex, Morphine, OxyContin and Robaxin," I told one member of the medical profession after another. We finally tried a cocktail of three drugs that had worked in 2015 and it worked, sort of, this time.
But I'll tell you what really worked: A nice lady doctor began gently massaging my ankle, aligning the pieces the way they were supposed to be. When she got everything the way she wanted it, she slapped a splint on it to hold everything in place. Remember how I told you I'd tell you when the agony stopped? We have reached the moment in this narrative when that happened. Thereafter, instead of hurting constantly, it only hurt when someone touched it. Or when I banged it against something, which I artfully managed to do several excruciating times.
By Midnight, I was in a hospital room. A doctor who'd examined the many x-rays that had been taken came in and told me I would require surgery. I asked how long it would be before that could be scheduled, expecting an answer of some time in February or March. Instead, he told me, "We're going to try to squeeze you in tomorrow and I'll be the lead surgeon." He explained what would be necessary, told me to get a good night's sleep and not to worry. Then he left and I decided to not worry…
…but I did type out an e-mail on my iPhone and sent it to my personal physician, a man I trust greatly. I explained to him what had happened and what I'd been told, then I set to work on that "good night's sleep" assignment. When I awoke the next morning, there was a reply from my physician: He was able to access the x-rays online and he wrote, "You absolutely need surgery and the doctor who told you that is one of the best in his field. I would trust him." I decided I would.
Monday morning, they had me scheduled for surgery at 10 AM. Then they had me scheduled for surgery at Noon. Then at 1:30 PM. At 3 PM, someone came and rolled me in my tiny hospital bed — I think they made it out of an old tongue depressor — down to the room where they prep you for surgery.
They prepped me for surgery then the surgeon — the one from the night before, the one my physician said was one of the best in his field — came by and explained to me in greater detail what they were going to do. Basically, they were going to insert a metal rod through the bottom of my foot, insert screws into my ankle and lock everything into place forever. My physician had blessed this plan and I remember thinking I was in very good hands.
A few minutes later, another surgeon came in and apologized. "Someone was just brought in," he said. "Someone in much, much worse shape than you. If we're going to save his leg, we have to bump you until tomorrow and work on him." That sounded oddly reasonable to me and I was wheeled back to my room.
I resumed what I'd been doing most of that day, rearranging my life and phoning people who had to know what had happened. I apologize if you weren't one of them and feel you should have been. It was in no way personal.
Tuesday morning, they had me scheduled for surgery at 10 AM. Then they had me scheduled for surgery at Noon. Then at 1:30 PM. At 3 PM, someone came and rolled me in my tiny hospital bed down to the room where they prep you for surgery. I was prepped, I signed papers, I was anesthetized and I woke up 2.5 hours later with my lower left leg encased in a big boot with what seemed like 97 Velcro® straps on it.
They told me all went well and that I could begin learning to walk again once the swelling went down and the various entry points into my ankle healed over somewhat. For a few days, that meant just lying in bed. Fortunately, my assistant Jane brought me my iPad and a few other necessities of life…like edible food, which they rarely served at this hospital. Good medicine, bad meals.
On Friday, I was shipped off to a rehabilitation facility. It was like a hospital with fewer doctors, slightly better meals and a staff of physical trainers who'd try to get me up on my feet and walking again…once the swelling went down more, that is. Six days a week, I received Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy. I wasn't entirely clear on the difference and at times, the Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists didn't seem all that clear on it. I think it's something like Physical Therapists taught me how to walk again whereas Occupational Therapists taught me how to do everything else and worked on upper body strength.
I was assigned to a double room, the other bed being occupied by an older gent — older than me, that is — who was recovering from several physical problems, the major one being a broken hip. By day, he was a charming roommate and we had some nice conversations. By night…well, "by night," it was a different story. He would suddenly have no idea where he was and would begin screaming for his wife who, of course, was nowhere on the premises and unlikely to just casually drop by at 4 AM.
He was not alone when it came to screaming into the night. At any hour but especially in the early hours of the morning, one could hear some patient somewhere screaming "HELLLLP!!!" as if they were being murdered. It would invariably turn out that either they were in mid-delusion like my roomie or that they had some simple non-emergency need…like a diaper change or a spoon. I found myself wondering what yell would come out of them if they were really being murdered. Maybe that lady across the hall would be yelling out, "I NEED A SPOON!!!"?
The place was, of course, filled with sick people…although not with COVID. I was tested for it every few days and 100% of the staff wore masks. One of the managers told me they'd discovered only one case of that dread condition on the premises in the last six months and that the infected person had been swiftly moved to a different facility without passing it on to anyone.
But of course there's a sadness to a place like this full of elderly folks, most of them older and worse off than me…and it was not all depressing, especially when compared to some of the nursing homes and facilities I'd toured when seeking places to house my mother and my friend Carolyn when they were failing. I'd stayed twice at the one I've been in for the last 33 days before — in 2015 when I had my knee replacement and again soon after when the surgery had to be redone. I'd forgotten how a large percentage of the nurses there were very skilled and very dedicated to their profession.
One of them this time turned out to be a devout comic book fan who included Groo the Wanderer among his passions. At one point, he came by to take my blood pressure while I was talking with Sergio Aragonés and he was thrilled when I let him chat with my collaborator. Another time, I let him say hello to Marv Wolfman.
I'd say of this Certified Nursing Assistant, "He took real good care of me" but that would be misleading. From what I could see, he took really good care of everyone. He just checked in on me a tad more often because he liked to talk about comics.
The meals were…sort of okay. Sometimes. As you might know, I have a great many food allergies and it took a while for the kitchen staff — which is insanely busy three times a day — to grasp that I simply could not eat certain things. Some of the meals I could eat but just plain didn't want to.
But I learned workarounds. A nurse tipped me off: The scrambled eggs at breakfast were from some mix and seemed to contain no ingredient that had ever been inside a chicken. But if you asked for your eggs to be fried, they cracked real ones for you.
It helped that my assistant Jane Plunkett brought me peanut butter and food items upon which to slather it. And it helped a lot that someone had invented DoorDash and that one of my favorite restaurants was literally five blocks away. When lunch or dinner simply weren't edible, I'd order two meals delivered — one to eat then, one to have a nurse stash in the refrigerator and then warm in the microwave the next time I was served Braised Odor-Eaters or whatever the hell they were passing off as meat loaf.
Eventually, the swelling in my lower left extremity abated to the point where the Physical Therapy folks could get me sorta/kinda on my feet and we could do a little more each session. It was a slow process and sometimes, I could do less one day than I could the day before. But overall, my walking improved which is why I'm home now instead of still back there. I like here a lot better. I was able to use all ten fingers to type this.
One last thing I should mention: I have withdrawn as a special guest for WonderCon this year. I dunno if they ever even announced me but I was going to be there hosting panels all three days…and now I'm not. I might drop in for a day or two to see friends but I think it's better to not lock myself into attending just in case my ankle ain't up to it that weekend. I should however be fine for Comic-Con in July unless, klutz that I can be, I break the other one. I'm going to try not to do this.