Well. It has been quite the weekend. Thursday night I met up with some friends here in Chattanooga to celebrate a friend's birthday. We went for drinks at buffalo wild wings and then Hair of the Dog pub....I had a little more than I intended to drink, and then I hung out with Torre for the night. Friday morning I got stuff ready to head down to Nashville and spend a funfilled weekend with my sister. I packed up the car and headed out and got to her condo, let myself in, and made some lunch while I waited for her to come home. She had her first med school exam (and I'm sure she did amazingly) and the weekend was her "college cup." At Vanderbilt, they split the med school students into 4 colleges (yes, like harry potter and the houses at hogwarts) and the four colleges - Gabbe, Robinson, Batson, and Chappman - compete against each other in a slew of competitions from a 5k and a swim meet to an iron chef competition. Rachna thought it would be fun if I came up and did some of the events for her college, Batson. The cup started with the 5k, so I ran that in the name of Batson. Then we went back to her condo to get some food and hang out and have a few beers with some of her friends. Everyone was so nice...and kept thinking I was her (if you know us apparently we look incredibly alike...). After the little break we went to the Vandy rec center to do spirit relays. This is where things headed downhill. Rachna, carrying a friend on her back during a piggy back relay (she is really small), did something to her knee and went down like a brick. She stopped moving and was immediately surrounded by about 100 doctors/would be doctors. Ravi, Jessie, and I took her to the emergency room where we endured about 6.5 hours of different doctors telling us she had everything from twist her knee to tear her meniscus to fracture both her tibia and fibula. We were told minor fracture, depressed fracture, and all other kinds of fracture. Finally, at 2:30 am, we were told they were going to operate on her at 7:30 or risk her developing sever arthritis in her left knee later on. So operate it was. In these 6.5 hours we saw about 800 doctors (all of which seemed to be attractive males...Jess and I felt like we were in an episode of Grey's anatomy) and had a pizza party in the ER room Rachna was in :) but once we got this news we finally called my parents and let them know what was up.
Ravi and I stayed with her and he finally left at like 6:30 because he had work at 10:30 and I hung out as she went into operation. And when she came out of operation. We were given a room in the orthopedics wing of the hospital and Rachna was finally officially settled into the hospital. She stayed knocked out for a while and around 11 started waking up. She had had a nail inserted into her knee to repair the depressed fracture and cement filled the part of the bone where the drilling had taken place. She was drugged beyond belief to keep the pain from setting in. But she was lucid and people started to come visit. It is amazing how this tiny med school class of about 105 will rally around one member. People were already offering to give her rides to class when she was back in action and take notes - one of the deans even assured her that they would not let this affect her academically and they would bring materials by her house if need be. Well I had been awake for a rather longish amount of time by now taking into account Thursday and Friday nights, and around 4 I started to not feel so hot. To add to the heap of medical issues the Patel family seems to be having (my dad had rotator cuff surgery the week before). I kinda fell apart and was told to go back to the condo under the care of one of my new lovely almost not quite doctor friends. I spent Saturday night there and was taken back home on Sunday after a farewell to my sis. At least I know she is well taken care of and looked after. Mom is going to spend the next week with her as well. I'm actually happy I was there when it happened even if it wasn't the weekend I was expecting, simply because I would rather her have a family member there when something like this goes down. She is still in the hospital and will likely be discharged tomorrow (they had to keep her while they had her on iv pain meds, not other reason). She is a trooper and though she is looking at 2 to 3 months on crutches and a ton of physical therapy, I know she will surprise most people and get it done better than anyone expects.
Now I need to focus on getting myself to Boston in one piece. Wednesdayyyyyy :)
Radhi
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