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Broken Humerus Is Not Funny Ronnie Dee (c) Copyright 2026 by Ronnie Dee 
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 Photo by Chrisnorlin at the English Wikipedia courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
This time I got hurt. I totaled three cars during my adventures and received minor injuries in the other two, but this time I got it pretty good. It began like the others. I was driving home drunk one rainy night in February, 1971. I don't remember exactly what happened, but when the road took a sharp right, I kept going straight and ended up banging into a tree and broke my right arm in half. I do remember being awakened by two policemen helping me out of the car. I had been knocked unconscious and was in great pain. I didn't know how long I had been out.
It was obvious that my right arm was broken, so the police took me to the hospital. They left me there and a nurse told me the doctor would be in at 7:00 am and gave me a shot and I went out again. At seven, the doctor showed up as announced and took x-rays and then began to set my arm in a cast. It was agonizing; just a mind-numbing, constant throb that I couldn't shake. Well, that's not entirely true because I was shaking all over. It was Doctor Walter Badenhausen, a well known Louisville orthopedic surgeon. He and a nurse finished after what seemed like a long time and he gave me some pills and sent me off.
I thought, "What the Hell!"
I was alone at the hospital, in agony and, no way to get home. I called my friend Bob, who was a musician, and therefore the only person who I knew wasn't at work at 10:00 in the morning. Luckily he was at home and was able to give me a ride home. When I got there, I took stock of my situation. I was living alone, so it was up to me. I was encased in a cast from my shoulder to my fingers. A strap went around my neck and attached to the cast at my wrist. Part of the cast even went between my thumb and fingers. I later saw an x-ray that showed my humerus (the bone between my elbow and shoulder) had broken about three inches below my shoulder. Talk about a clean break, it looked like it had been neatly sawed in half. That was caused by the "Karate chop dashboard" of an early sixties Chevy. I also had a bump on my head from the rear view mirror that KO'ed me. I don't know if I had a concussion or not. I guess they didn't check for stuff like that back in '71.
At that moment I felt more alone than I ever had been in my life. I was in great pain even though I had been taking my pills and my right arm was all trussed up and I thought, "What am I going to do? I can't just stand here forever." So I called my sister. She had her own problems with three children and a husband, but I was desperate. Like always, she came through and said that I could stay with them for a while.
They lived on the other side of town, but she came with one of the kids to pick me up. So, as if the drive wasn't long enough, her car overheated on the way home and we had to pull into a service station and have the radiator tended to, as I sat uncomfortably on a coca cola cooler, my arm throbbing. They got it fixed and we finally made it to the house. I stayed with them for a week, until another friend named Bob took me back to my apartment. I missed a week of work, but by that time, the initial trauma had worn off a bit and although I had accepted the role I now had to play, I still didn't like it.
I learned to do a lot of things left handed, like signing my name on checks, tying my shoes and eating. A thing which one never gives a thought to was using toilet paper. It was strangely awkward with my left hand. One thing I simply could not do was cut meat. I had to sit there like a dope and ask someone else to do it for me. I also had a very tedious and extended chore in cleaning myself. I had only my left (off) hand with which to wash, rinse and dry, because I could not get my cast wet, so a shower was out.
"Get
yourself a plastic bag and put it over your arm."
Yeah, try that yourself with your off hand and see how well you do. It was really a hassle every minute of the day and night, as even sleeping on my back with a ten pound weight on my stomach was uncomfortable, but I was still alive. I had smashed into a tree head on, you know.
This inconvenience put quite a damper on my musical career, such as it was. I was unable to play any of my instruments of course. I could do a few bits singing along with some of my friends, but my solo gigs were off the table. It was discouraging to look at my instruments just sitting there, unplayable for nearly three months.
The first few weeks I had to be careful about sudden movements. One Night I tried to put something on the upper shelf of the closet and it slipped out of my hand. Instinctively, I grabbed for it and when I lurched, it felt like someone had hit my arm with a sledgehammer. Oh boy, did that hurt.
I was very lucky on several counts, though. For one thing, it was still winter and Randall, a friend of mine and an eccentric guy, had decided to get rid of all his clothes a couple of months earlier. He gave me a jacket that I couldn't wear because it was several sizes too big. I think it was left over from the time before he lost a lot of weight. I didn't know what to do with it, so I hung it in the closet.
It was February and I didn't have anything to wear in the cold, because the cast was very bulky. I remembered Randall's jacket and tried it on. I put my left arm in and draped it over my right shoulder and the cast, and zipped it up. Perfect. I had my new winter coat. As for my shirt, I couldn't wear it correctly because, again, all I could do was put my left arm in and drape it over my right shoulder, leaving my abdomen wide open. I solved this by buying some colored, sleeveless undershirts and severed the right shoulder strap. I would then step into the garment and pull it up and hook the left strap over my shoulder and that worked fine to cover up my midriff. So now I was set.
The Broadway bus ended the line right outside my apartment building. The bus would stop and take a break before leaving on the return trip, so I could watch from inside until he stopped and then stroll out and get on the bus. It would take me downtown to the Courier Journal and stop right in front of the building, and I could get off the bus and walk right into the CJ. Pretty cool, huh?
I had a near mishap one evening when I attended a Grand Funk Railroad concert with my friend Bob and his girlfriend. I was nearly shoved to the floor by a drunk man staggering down the stairs. I was in the aisle seat and we stood a lot during the show and some guy came stumbling down the stairs and ran straight into me. I pitched forward and would have plunged down several rows of seats but for the quick reflexes of Bob, on my right, who grabbed me just as I was headed down. This was a month or so after the accident, so I was no longer in pain, but Bob saved me from what could have been a bad situation. A few minutes later we saw this same guy run out onto the stage and try to get to Mark Farner, the lead singer, before the security guys tackled him and led him away.
I also fell down the steps one day not long after the accident. I got drunk at the Storefront Congregation and a girl friend let me sleep on her sofa. I got up early the next morning, and not being fully awake, I slipped on some ice and bounced down the concrete steps on my rear end. I was shaken but not stirred by further injury. (I know, but I just couldn't help it.)
I was pretty lucky in that I had a laundromat, a liquor store, a grocery/deli, and a pizza parlor, all within a block of my apartment. I wore this apparatus for ten weeks. The first two were constantly painful, the middle six, it became a protective device, and the final two, sheer anxiety and discomfort. But I didn't feel too bad every time I went to see the doc, because there were people in there a lot worse off than me, with pins sticking out of their legs and both arms in casts and all sorts of uncomfortable devices. Before my accident, a friend of mine had casts on both his arms for a long time. His casts were "free swinging" and he used to pound them on the tables to the beat of the music and that had contributed to the extended time it took to heal.
But nonetheless, those last two weeks were just awful for me, as I felt healed, but still trapped in this device 24 hours a day. What a joy when they cut it off and gave my arm a nice, soft, alcohol rub down. It was simply orgasmic. I had to wear a sling for two more weeks, but that was a piece of cake.
The middle six weeks were strange because the pain was pretty well gone and the cast was like my suit of armor. People would try to jostle me and whack their elbows on the cast and recoil in obvious pain and give me a dirty look and I would just smile. The best was when this little kid, whose folks owned my favorite watering hole, loved to punch people. He would just haul off and slug you and it would hurt. So one night I caught him fooling around and said, "Hey, come on pal, give me a whack."
So he wound up and gave me his best shot. I deftly stuck out my arm, which was hidden under my shirt, and you could hear the loud "Whack!" of his little knuckles making hard contact with my cast. The look of surprise and the sight of the blood draining from his face was priceless. Needless to say, he didn't hit me anymore.
And don't ever try to tell me that "a sprain hurts worse than a break." That is not humorous.