As I skirted the bar they were setting up on the sidewalk, I put a foot wrong on the edge of the sidewalk and felt it roll toward the dirt. I fought to keep my balance, but I'd come straight from the airport and had my suitcase slung over one shoulder and my laptop/camera bag over the other and I was seriously top-heavy.
I fell flat on my face.
Well, flat on my camera, and then my face.
The Hasselblad, despite some scuffs on the body and the eyepiece being packed full of dirt, continues to function.
Initially, I felt fine and was walking it off. I stashed my bags at the Grayguns table, found a gin & tonic, and stood around.
Then I sat around.
When I stood up to walk to the shuttle bus back to town with the Grayguns crew and various Sig Sauer peeps, my leg was hurting pretty badly. I limped to the bus and my knee nearly gave out going up the boarding steps. I was in enough discomfort that I spent a forty minute bus ride sitting right behind Max Michel and didn't ask for a single tip or pointer.
By the time I got off the bus, it was pretty obvious that something was bad wrong. My right leg would hardly support any weight and the outside of my leg just below the knee was super tender to the touch. Bruce Gray found a wheelchair and helped me get settled in at the hotel while dinner plans were bandied about.
I (foolishly) tried to cowgirl up for dinner, but walking a hundred yards through the parking garage at dinner that night left that right leg hurting as bad as it's ever hurt. And that's the leg with steel in it; "as bad as it's ever hurt" was the exposed ends of the shattered tibia dragging on asphalt, so my "10" on the pain scale is a little bit above "oh, I bruised my shin."
Thank you Michael for rescuing me with a wheelchair. Sorry to everyone at dinner for my constant grimacing and yelps of pain at the dinner table.
By the time I got back to the hotel room, I practically needed to be helped onto the bed, where I passed out fully clothed in the only position that was pain-free: Lying flat on my back with a bag of ice on my knee.
I woke up the next morning in the same position with a bag of tepid water on my knee. I spent Monday in the motel room, keeping weight off my foot and using crutches to get around any time I needed to stand.
My Facebook status this morning:
"My right leg is feeling deceptively good.
By "good", I mean it is in no pain after a day of staying off it and my left leg actually hurts worse from doing all the work yesterday.
I'll be doing SHOT Show in a scooter. (Thank you, Trevor.)By "deceptively", I mean that there is literally no medical condition of the knee that could have felt the way it did night before last and been fine today."
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