The Pros & Cons of Invisibility

I don’t recall the precise moment I realized I was invisible but it must have been many years ago. Perhaps I was always aware at some level. I should probably clarify that I do not mean that I am literally invisible. I am physically opaque. Light waves reflect off my body and if you are looking directly at me, those waves that reflect off me which then enter your eye will result in an image that represents the colors and shape that is Thomas Grant. That’s my name, by the way, Thomas D. Grant.

So, no I am technically not invisible, kinda’ ruins the title, right? Anyway, by invisible I mean that I have always had difficulty “sticking” in people’s minds. People forget about me, not just get busy and forget to bring me my order at a café. I mean, people I went to school with for thirteen years pass me in the grocery store and all I get is the nod of human acknowledgement without a glimmer of recognition. But, it has always been that way, as a kid I was always seemed to get picked last for playground teams. Not because I was terrible at sports, though I was no David Fits, they would just kind of forget I was in the pool of prospective Red Rovers or dodge ball targets. All the other kids would get picked and then, because I was the only one standing there, would someone possibly notice me and my team assignment would be given.

It isn’t as if I was not a noticeable person. I’ve always been tall, not always the tallest guy in the room, but usually in the top five. Combined with brownish hair and at least as many freckles as there are Kim’s in the People’s National Phone Book of China, I wouldn’t call myself attractive but I certainly didn’t look like anybody else. Perhaps the combination of looks is not easily assigned a category so the brain’s accountant chucks me in the “Other” memory file and I get lost amongst products sold exclusively via infomercials and your voicemail pin code. Looks can’t be the only element of my anonymity though, computerized phone tree systems have no way to know what I look like, but seem to be perfectly able to lose me in a on-hold purgatory. Airlines, hotels and car rental agents are adept at losing my reservations and they don’t know what I look like either so it must be something other than, or in addition to, my physical form that rendersme unmemorable.

It’s a bit depressing but overall I can’t really complain. I have a decent if not spectacular job working at help desk for a large, indeterminate tech company based out of Atlanta. Troubleshooting software glitches and opening never closing trouble tickets is my game. The bad news is I'm only ever speaking with people who are angry, frustrated, and generally unhappy. I am tier three level support, meaning I have a degree in computer science and understand how they work instead of simply having basic phone skills and the ability to read from the canned response forms the tier one support techs use.

The good news is I can take these calls anywhere I have a cell signal and my laptop. I ostensibly work from my home, a smallish two-bedroom apartment north of the city. They used to call it "telecommuting" now its referred to as "working remotely." This is particularly apt in my case.

In which Twitter makes me happy:

So this happened:

And that is really awesome news. Growing up in the country the only music show I had access to was Austin City Limits. Being able to go back and see the shows from the 80's I watched as a kid would make me very happy.

One year ago today

One year ago today I was wearing the same shirt as I am now. I was in Hohenwald, TN installing a GPS station at the vocational school. It is a job I had performed half a dozen times across the state, by then it was a task I had down pat. We would start by mounting a heavy bracket on the outside of the building then and mount the GPS antenna on top of the bracket. Then we breach the outside wall and run a heavy gauge cable to the IT room where the receiver lives.

(Images, not of this particular install, but similar)

   

The install for Hohenwald appeared to be routine. The bracket was going to mounted in a corner And we had to take turns on the ladder as it took a lefty to run the drill for the holes on one side of the bracket. This prompted a discussion about hand dominance. Being a right-handed individual, I joked that my left arm was used only for balance and decoration. (were this a cheesy movie, that would be the que for the lightning, thunder and ominous music)

After getting the bracket and antenna in place, I went inside to start running the cable. The cable we use for these installs is LMR-600, about an inch thick single strand copper core cable slightly more flexible than PVC pipe, but not by much. Fortunately this was to be a simple run, with only one turn to get to the IT room. The cable ran for about twenty five feet above the accoustical tiling in a large classroom empty of students before the turn. I finished pulling the cable to the spot to enter the IT room and began decending the eight foot ladder I was perched atop. I had a cable fish in one hand and something, probably the end of the cable, in the other. Around three rungs from the bottom, I began to wobble. Never being blessed with an abundance of grace, I could not recover my balance and started to fall.

I have heard tales of time "slowing down" during traumatic events and until I had experienced one, I really didn't understand what that meant but it is an accurate description. Once I realized I was falling, time slowed to a crawl and the following went through my head:

"Oh crap, I'm falling. If I continue falling as I am now I'm going to land on my back. I could break my back. Well, let's not do that. Hey, there are some chairs, they have padding, I wonder if I could land on them. That could break a rib if I land bad. Let's aim for the floor. Still falling backwards, try to turn, maybe I can catch myself."

After what seemed like 5 minutes I hit the tile covered, concrete floor. The first thing I noticed was everything was blurry. Brain damage? No, my glasses were gone. Next, I noticed my ankle hurt. Had I twisted it? Was it broken? No, further mental evaluation indicated that I had scraped it on the way down. So lying face down, I determined I was neither dead nor dying so I decided that I should roll myself over and take stock of the situation. As I was maneuvering to roll I noticed my left arm wasn't being very helpful or responsive. I managed to flip over on my back, as my left arm came into view I noticed a lump the size of a goose egg on the inside of my arm just north of the elbow. "That doesn't look right..." went through my head as the appendage dropped painfully onto my chest. By that time the other people I was working with had gotten to me. They suggested that I not move and I supported that concept. Someone ran to the office to call an ambulance and being a vo-tech school where nursing classes are taught, both a nurse and paramedic were attending to my person within a couple of minutes of impact.

Seizing the teaching oportunity, my vitals were taken around a dozen times, my blood pressure and pulse wer A-OK. I was hurting but felt more or less stable as long as I only breathed enough that my arm didn't move and gave one word answers to questions, preferably monosylabic words. The paramedics arrived in what felt like just a few minutes and took my vitals a few more times. They secured my neck with a cervical collar and proceeded to secure my arm for transport. They wrapped my arm in gause and what looked for all the world like that corrugated plastic they make realtor signs out of. It took a while to find a position that would not cause me to pee myself, finally finding my arm at a 90 bend with my hand pointing at the sky. Surprisingly, my arm was relatively pain free in that position, a micron in any direction caused immense pain, but 90 skyward was just right. Then I was affixed to the back board and moved to the gourney. The trip from room to ambulance proved uneventful and soon I was secured in the back of the bus. The only issue was my arm. The 90 skyward pose while comfortable meant that my arm was not supported by the bed. After what felt like a very long time and quite a bit of jostling and taping, the EMT explained they had to rig a support for my arm to keep it still. There were only two EMT's, the driver and the lady in the back with me. She couldn't stay on my left side to support my arm as she would need to be on my right to monitor those vitals. The 28.1 mile ambulance ride was uneventful and I arrived at the ER. I noticed the EMT taking a picture of my arm with her iPhone. When she showed me the picture, I understood the delay back at the school they had lashed my braced arm to the bed with a broom handle to keep it immobile.

 

After checking in, I received my third dose of morphine. I couldn't tell that it was making any difference though my nurse mother says that the pain and the morphine were basically cancelling each other out. The TDOT employees I was working with all followed me to the hospital and stayed with me till my wife arrived. Shawn arrived having been told that I had fallen but was ok and just went to the hospital as a precaution, only to walk in to the room to find my arm with a big nasty bruise and a lump that normally isn't there.

After some extremely uncomfortable x-rays, it was determined that I had dislocated and broken my elbow. They knocked me out and put my elbow back in place and I was to follow up with my doctor to evaluate the break. I was eventually released but by that time adrenaline had worn off and the drugs were making me fairly vomity while at the same time I was starving. We went to the McDonalds across the street from the hospital where I managed to eat one whole mcnugget before deciding hunger was superior to projectile vomiting and we headed home.

The break turned out to be several broken bones. Both bones in my forearm were cracked and the head of the radius was crushed to powder. Surgery, a prothetic bone and therapy followed in the weeks after the fall. Pain and discomfort were never enough that I needed more than over the counter remedies aside from immediately after the fall and then after the surgery. I eventually regained the ability to play guitar though at rimes it is still uncomfortable. I can tell the weather with my elbow and I don't think I will ever be able to fully extend my arm again. Overall, life is pretty much returned to normal.

Thanks...
I thank God that despite the devastating nature of the break, there was relatively little pain and that I recovered so much of the abilities. I thank my wife for putting up with a mildy stubborn patient. I thank my doctor for fixing my elbow as mutch as possible. I thank my employer for being understanding and my co-workers for taking up the slack for the month I was out.  

Squeee!

This conversation makes me glad, doo dah doo dah:

Crown of flame