A Change of Plans

For those of you who had not heard, I fell and broke my ankle a little over a week ago. It was nothing exciting, like travelling down a zip line and crashing into a pole at the end, or going water skiing and coming down hard. No, I was merely stepping down one step outside our house, and stepped down wrong. I knew by the feel of it that it was bad. But oddly enough, it didn't hurt.

I yelled at my husband, who was fortunately at home and within hearing distance. I often have wondered if I would be able to yell if I needed to. Well, now I know I can. We live out in the country, and I wondered if any of the neighbors heard. (If they did, they didn't check on the situation.)

My husband backed the car up to where I was sprawled out, and helped me into the back seat. I could tell by the way it was flopping and grinding that I wouldn't be going to Arizona, as I had planned the following Wednesday. I would no longer be going out to see my mom and sister.

In the ER, the doctor looked at it and decided without too much consideration to call in the orthopedic surgeon who was on call. She looked to see who it was and told me she was glad it was this particular doctor. Apparently he is good and I needed someone good. All in all, from everyone who either saw my foot or the x-rays, I got 2 "Wow!"s, 2 "That's Impressive"s and 1 "You did it good!" All of which meant that it was not good for me.

I broke the ankle in 2 places and dislocated it. I would need surgery, but because of swelling and a wound that was caused by the bone trying to poke out, it would need to wait. They put a hard splint on it and wrapped it, and sent me home with the admonition to not put ANY pressure on that ankle, make an appointment with the doctor's office on Thursday, and plan for surgery on Friday.

When I got home, we had crutches waiting for us. We had called some friends from the hospital and they picked up a pair from another mutual friend. Try using crutches when you've been through that much trauma and you can only use one foot! Yeah, right!

My husband brought home a wheelchair from church the next day, which made the situation much better! I survived the 5 days until the doctor's appt. without putting any weight on the broken foot.

But, alas, at the doctor's appt. he was not happy with the wound, so he pushed surgery out another week. Heavens! Not another week of this! (The reason being he didn't want to put a permanent cast over the wound and risk infection.)

So here I am waiting, now, until this Friday, June 17 to have surgery. I have to go in Thursday again, to have him look at it, but am pretty sure they'll go ahead with it. If I do have it, you won't hear from me for a day or 2 afterwards, but I'll be sure to update you.

I miss not being able to visit my mom and sister now (despite it being over 100 there!), but I am so grateful for so many things: that my husband was home and heard me yell; that I didn't break anything else going down; that I have literally had no pain; that I was able to get a portion of my airline ticket fare applied to a future flight; and that since I had planned to be gone from work, I already had a gal ready to fill in for me (and I've actually been able to go in and work a little each day!).

This is certainly not how I planned to spend the past 2 weeks and probably at least the next 6 weeks, but maybe I'll get some good writing in. My hubby and I had been talking about me getting a new laptop, and he went ahead and ordered it, and it came last Friday. We have had some internet issues with it, but it's pretty much up and running now, and I'm using it now to write this.

In Darcy's Voyage, Elizabeth is recovering from a sprained ankle and encounters Mr. Darcy. While I already have my Mr. Darcy, maybe I can have another sort of encounter that will make this all worth it!