Opinion: When life mirrors research: What a fall on the ice taught me about being Black and in pain
As I hurried to an important meeting about my Ph.D. dissertation one day in 2015, I slipped and fell on Iowa’s formidable winter ice. I quickly jumped up to prevent anyone from seeing me on the ground and got into my car. The immediate, excruciating pain told me that something really bad had happened.
As I drove to my meeting in tears, I called my sister. “I just busted my butt,” I told her, not knowing then I had actually fractured my sacrum. I thought that maybe over the next few days the pain would get better.
