Wednesday, October 22, 2014

An Unexpected Detour

One false step. Just one false step. And this is me right now.



Eight days ago, I was at a friend's house for a lovely evening filled with fabulous food, dear friends, and a lot of fun just sitting around talking to each other. Then, as I was headed out to our car, I stepped out of their gate and missed a step.

Ending up on the ground in a heap with a right leg that was screaming with pain. As I seemed overall okay with no visible bruises, just in a bit of shock from the fall, my husband began to urge me to try to get up. So, I finally raised myself up on my hands and in doing so caught a good look at my lower right leg. "It's broken," I said. And everyone concurred when they looked at it.

So, a long night followed which involved a ride in an ambulance to the Houston Med Center, hours in the ER in a treatment room waiting to be treated, including having two level one trauma cases right next to me on the other side of a screen in the treatment room (one made it, one didn't to my sorrow), admittance to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, followed by surgery on my leg. In the days since, I've had evil physical therapists (who had my welfare at heart) trying to get me to hop up on a three inch tall platform using my walker and doing it without touching my broken leg to the ground. (I flatly refused to jump, finally telling them that we would get a ramp for the front door threshold.) 

And now, about a week and a half later, I'm figuring this out somewhat. It has not been easy. The timing of this little accident has not been optimal (when is it?) and I have quite a bit of guilt over some things that I have not been able to do as a result of being out of commission for several days. I have another 5 to 7 weeks approximately to go. And even once I'm okayed to walk again, will almost certainly have to have physical therapy. But I'll cope. We'll cope actually, as this is really a family effort and also, to a certain extent, an effort that involves my friends and co-workers as well. For which I am profoundly grateful. 

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