Nailing the Landing

It had been a quiet morning in my office on Tuesday. The usual post-operative follow up visits which included a yawn-inducing routine of pulling off dirty bandages and pulling out twelve, no wait, thirteen staples from incisions. I had just tossed my staple puller into the sharps container when I saw him.

He had to be pushing 50 as his hair that was sticking out from his sideways turned baseball cap was salt and pepper. He was dressed in baggy jeans, a pair of beat up Vans skate shoes and a short sleeved plaid shirt. His left arm was wrapped up in what looked to be an American flag of some sort. It wasn't until later that I learned the baseball cap wasn't turned sideways ironically.

As I approached him, our receptionist Liz ran up to tell me we had an urgent add-on patient and pointed at my over-the hill skate punk. I thanked her for the heads up and went over to introduce myself.

"Hey there sir, I'm Jenny the medical assistant, let's get you into exam room six and take a look."

He blinked at me and said a hollow "okay" as he followed me in to the room. It was your standard exam room: generic paintings on the wall, a poster reminding you to cover your mouth if you cough, crispy white paper covering the table and a small cabinet filled with things like gauze, Xeroform, bandaids and other various first aid ingredients.

"Can you tell me what happened to your arm?" I said as I looked at the make-shift American flag sling.

"Yeah man, I totally nailed the landing." That was all he said.

"Anything more specific you can tell me...dude?" He was not amused.

"So like, my friend dared me to jump my skateboard onto his roof from my garage and like, I totally did it." He explained factually.

"Pardon my ignorance, but did you really land it? It seems you've really messed up your arm here." I said.

"Dude, you wouldn't get it. I fell through his roof man, I TOTALLY nailed it." He smirked at me and then began messing with his sling.

"Well, I'm no skateboarder but I know those things can be dangerous. We're going to get some xrays and I'll input all your information into our system."

This was met with a "whatever man" from him as our xray tech whisked him off to the great dark room in the corner of the office.

The name on his forms was Sterling Jameson. He was 52 years old and divorced. He worked in a skateboard manufacturing shop and listed his email as "[email protected]" That was enough for me; the man was young at heart, possibly crazy and certainly a stoner. After xrays had come back, he was also the owner of a fractured ulna; right in the mid-shaft. I felt the pain from that one just looking at the xrays.

I sent the doctor in and a few minutes later as the door opened, I heard "Ah bummer man, so like, can I skate in my cast?" I smiled to myself; Sterling was a giant 52 year old kid.

He'd broken his arm doing what he loved and living without fear. He'd jumped across a driveway from his garage to his friend's roof and fell through the roof in an attempt to stay cool. After the landing, as it were, his friend had torn down the American flag on his garage to use as a sling for his buddy. It was kind of heart warming when you think about it.

Sterling chose red and black for his cast and put up a fight when I explained that skateboarding for the next six weeks was strictly prohibited. He called me a buzz-kill and I smiled back; finally, a term I was familiar with.

On that boring Tuesday, Sterling reminded me to always try to stay a little bit cool, always have fun in life and of course to always, but always say you nailed the landing...even if you didn't quite make it.