Life After Law School

Just when I felt life couldn’t get any worse.

 I broke my nose.

Yup. You read correctly. I broke my nose.

The stress of the upcoming results has weighed on me so heavily this week. I felt a good workout would mellow me out a bit. Thus, Wednesday afternoon, Josh and I packed up our surfboards and headed to the beach. It was nice to be in the water. You know, there’s something to be said for being able to physically leave the continent. I tried so hard to leave my worries and stress on the sand. And with the sun out and water calm, it was pretty easy to do just that.

Until of course, it happened. I had just caught a wave and was riding it in when I lost my balance. I fell off the side of the board and into the water. The board went forward. Right when I started to swim up to the surface, the wave jerked the board back toward me. I saw the board come toward me. The sun was shining through the water onto its blue coat. I raised my arms across my face, but the my response was too slow. SMACK.

I heard the bone break.

Immediately I felt faint, but the words “Get out of the water. Get out of the water.” repeated themselves over and over again in my head. As I swam, blood poured down my face. I could taste it in my throat. As I dragged my board out of the water and onto the sand, a foreign man helped me unattach the board’s leash from my ankle and he followed me, carrying my board, as I stumbled toward the lifeguard tower.

The lifeguard was great. He radioed for assistance and they got me all packed up with gauze and an ice pack for my face. They wanted to call an ambulance, but I resisted, telling them that my husband was still in the water and I couldn’t just take off without him. At this point, several minutes had passed since the initial accident and Josh had realized that I was missing. I could see him, 100 meters away, looking for me.

Soon Josh found me and we headed home so I could change and retrieve my health insurance card and driver’s license. We immediately drove to urgent care and right before the doctor saw me, Josh snapped these two photos:

Trying to make light of the situation

After a couple of x-rays, the doctor declared it broken. He told me I deviated my septum and once the swelling subsides, I will have to visit an ENT. I don’t know if positive bar results are in my future, but I do know a new nose is.

It’s funny too because to be honest, looking at these photos, I don’t look that bad. I look much worse today. Even though I continue to ice my face like a madwoman, the swelling has increased and I am a giant puffer fish. This morning I awoke to my left eye being nearly swollen shut. I’m kind of doing this awful pirate stink eye thing. And my eyes look like they are really wideset. Which I know is the result of no longer have much of a bridge left.

So how am I doing? Well, I am still trying to remain positive. This accident could have been worse. The board could have hit my eye or my mouth. I could have been eaten my shark. I could have passed out in the water and drown to death. 

But the strangest thing about all of this…I am not experiencing pain. There is definite discomfort. But no pain. Not an ounce. There has been so much pain in my life the last couple of months that I think that at this point, I may just be immune. 

Whatever it is, I’d like my nose back.

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 7:24 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.