I’ve recounted this story to some of you but since last October, my sweet husband, Joe, has fractured three small bones in his arms. The first time it happened he was going on a run and in an attempt to avoid a collision with an incoming biker, he fell hard onto his palms and fractured his right and left radial head, a.k.a. both of this elbows.
When I say “biker”, which is the moniker we used to first break this bad news to family and friends, everyone assumed it was some big tough guy in a Big Dog t-shirt, someone like Michael Chiklis. In reality the “biker” was a ten-year-old girl with pink streamers coming out of her handlebars. Joe was running around the Prospect Park loop, listening to Vampire Weekend when she came out of nowhere, and in an effort to dodge her he fell — hard.
Joe called and recounted the accident and when he finally got home he seemed a little shaken up but ultimately fine. When he realized he couldn’t lift his elbows above his head we knew there was a real problem. But in his mind a bigger problem was afoot… we were supposed to see Vampire Weekend at MSG in six hours, GA tickets, a sold out show! He was not missing this for the world but his tiny bones had other plans.
So Joe headed to Urgent Care around the corner and I waited to get a call from him about a sprain, some pain meds, and then we would be on our way to the city. That call never came. Instead, we headed to a second urgent care to get an x-ray and I called our bud Brian and let him know there was a small chance he would need to find warm unbroken bodies to take our sweet Vampire Weekend tickets. And so we waited some more.
At the Urgent Care in Cobble Hill, Joe painfully found out he had somehow fractured both his elbows. It was surreal but it made sense and as the room around us suddenly filled with laughter about his predicament, they told us we should go to the E.R. (which we should have done in the first place) to see what our options were.
They put Joe in two slings and we walked out of there in a haze and immediately got pho because Joe was crashing. As soon as it came out, Joe realized he couldn’t use chopsticks. I carefully fed him that pho and felt terrible for the pain and frustration he was feeling because in addition to missing the concert, he was supposed to start playing ice hockey in a Beer League after a fourteen year hiatus…
As we waited in the E.R., Joe told me I should go to the concert without him but I couldn’t do that. For better or worse, right? The tickets found good homes and we camped out in triage until finally a doctor came over to us and explained the unusualness of our situation. Both Joe’s elbows were fractured, not broken, so that was a plus, but because they were both injured they were hesitant to put him in two casts.
It would speed up healing but render him completely unable to use his hands… and do most things!
Many doctors came up to Joe, the fractured freak, and they all decided it was best to keep him in slings so he could move around and wipe his ass. Which he could do! But as we trudged home, teenagers and adults alike gawking at him, I realized how our life was about to temporarily change. But Joe could move around, work, shower, and I could pick up the slack.
I walked our tenacious dog Buffy, did the other chores, but our biggest roadblock was and always has been… cooking. Joe Silver is synonymous with good food. He is my in-home chef, my pizza king! Joe has made us thousands of meals over the last fifteen years and I have maybe made him five dinners? Now was my chance to repay the favor.
So I “cooked”, I really tried, and we lost weight those few weeks… because it wasn’t very good. I lifted the heavy stuff, made one too many bad jokes, and soon Joe was back to his old un-fractured self, cooking up a storm, and finally playing ice hockey again like it was 2010.
And then it was 2025! A new year albeit with its own challenges (politically, morally, existentially, you read the news) and then to top it all off, another bike came into Joe’s life… And a cursed green smoothie… there was no other moniker for this story.
I’ll set the scene… We were in Asbury Park for an annual Silver family trip. It was the day after Buffy’s birthday, July 5th, and Joe went on a harmless bike ride with some of the family to get an açai bowl and a t-shirt. I didn’t go but asked if Joe could bring me back something, I needed the fiber. And of course he did, or at least he tried to.
Joe was riding back, a green smoothie in one hand, his other on the handle when the bike seat went out from under him!
If he had both hands on the bars he probably would have been able to save himself but the smoothie went flying into the pavement…
And so did he.
I had been tracking Joe and my smoothie as a lay in bed that morning and when he walked back into the Airbnb he was covered in blended kale and blood and in a crazy amount of pain because who wouldn’t be after going over the handlebars of a bike and landing in the road. It was a sight to see.
We continued on that weekend, went to dinner, a show at the Stone Pony Summer Stage and saw fireworks (for Buffy’s birthday). He proceeded to move through July in a CVS brace, not complaining at all, ready to play hockey again like Adam Banks in Mighty Ducks 2 after he gets slashed by the Icelandic team!
But unlike fictional character Adam Banks, Joe’s wrist did not magically get better. The lovely team at NY Presbyterian announced it too was fractured, got him into surgery where they grafted bone from his wrist, and put a titanium screw into his hand! This time Joe didn’t miss Vampire Weekend but a hockey tournament he was supposed to play in with his brother, Ricky.
We were left wondering how did this happen twice? How many freak accidents did one nice guy need to be in in the span of a year? Had he broken a mirror? And while all the scenarios ran through my head I couldn’t help hating myself because I had requested he bring me back a smoothie on a bike. What did I think was going to happen?!
But we kept telling ourselves it could have been so much worse. At least in these instances Joe wasn’t hit by a car or two cars like Brad Pitt in that very long movie. He could still wipe his own ass (which everyone was overwhelmingly more concerned about than they should be). Jokes were made about “for better or worse” and three bones later I would still do anything for Joe and he had proven in smoothie and blood he would do anything for me.
These accidents made me think about bad things happening to good people who were trying to do something nice.
They made me think about all the little things Joe does every day that I really took for granted and probably still do sometimes.
They made me think about all the teeny bones in our body and how they work together and occasionally they break but with time and titanium, they heal.
And oddly enough, while these accidents brought Joe frustration and limited mobility, they left me with some practical skills. Turns out you can teach a millennial dog new tricks!
I’m not Remy the rat but Joe’s broken bones forced me to cook and I got better. I finally ventured into our creepy basement to turn on the hose to water our grass. And it is creepy but I can go down there by myself. It forced me to take Buffy into new settings, like sneaking her into a hockey rink, which before I would have batted my eyelashes and asked Joe to “handle it”.
Sometimes things are out of our control, we jump out of the way to avoid running into a kid, our wives ask us for smoothies because they’re backed-up and we cycle home one-handed and fly off a bike. Joe gets his cast off tomorrow and will be back on the ice soon and God as my witness we will see Vampire Weekend next time they tour. Maybe Joe will even set off the alarms at MSG with his new screw.
If I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s don’t languish too much on the things you miss out on because there will be other memories to make. When you can, do something nice for the people you love, maybe something they would usually do for you… And if you are still reading this, to spare us all from further damages, please get your own freaking smoothie.
xoxo, Jenah
Saludos al fractured freak. Hope he recovers soon!
Two true heroes 🖤🖤🖤