Thursday, June 23, 2011

Happy Ankleversary!

Today is the two year anniversary of a day that really sucked.  I'd like to say that it happened like I told you in this story.  But, yeah, that's not really the case.  (And if you believed that, may I interest you in some ocean front property here in Illinois?)

This is what really happened:  We had just had dinner and were going to take the eldest Sloth child out for ice cream for helping with the then-8-month-old Fia Sloth that day.   I was standing at the counter, gathering my things, purse, Blackberry, etc. and asked Mr. Sloth to carry the baby to the car.   I had my  phone set up to receive tweets from some of my favorites and was reading a tweet from Amalah (I clearly remember that she was talking about ghee).   The next thing I knew, I was missing a step (one of only two left) and sitting on the ground, holding my leg up.  Greg asked, "Is it broken?"  Then he saw that I was holding it in the air, but my foot was at a nearly 90-degree angle SIDEWAYS to my leg.  Um, yeah, I'd say it is.  And two years later, it made my heart race, just to type that paragraph.  It was pretty freaking traumatic.

Greg and Andrew managed to get me into the front seat of the Blazer.  I was, of course, worried that I'd broken my phone.  I think I called or sent a text to my sister, Kayla, so that she could come to the hospital to get Sophia.  Maybe Greg did that.  I don't know.  I remember crying the whole way there, but I was relatively calm.  Calm compared to what came later, anyway.

Getting into the wheelchair was painful.  The tech trying to soft set my ankle without giving me so much as a tylenol?  That was awful.  One of the things I do remember was one of the techs looking at me and saying something about "I"m going to need some help getting her into the bed." It pissed me off, so I hopped up there with Greg holding my arm.  Jerk. After they finally gave me some sort of medicines, they took me to x-ray, etc. etc. blah blah pain, screaming, yelling.  Probably scarred Andrew for life.  They did a twilight sedation to reset into a better splint.  I think I handled that one a little better.

This could be a really long post - but I'll sum up the rest.  I ended up with a break in three places - a trimalleolar fracture.  I had to have surgery.  I broke my ankle on a Tuesday night.  I finally had surgery on Friday June 26.  I went back for post-op x-rays.  That was another traumatic event.  I was still very weak and couldn't push myself up onto the block that I had to stand on to get the x-rays and I fell down and couldn't get up.  I nearly passed out.  It was all good, memorable fun.  Anyway, one of the plates was turning, so I had to have another surgery on July 7.

I spent 10 weeks basically couch bound.  I had nightmares about water and being stuck in places I couldn't get to/out of/around on my wheelchair/walker/crutches.  I went to several months of PT.  I wore ugly shoes. I played a LOT of games on Facebook.

Last year, on the one year ankleversary, I was in Minneapolis for Dancer Sloth's national competition staying with my awesome friend, Bobbi.  I got out of the hide-a-bed and broke my toe on the frame.  No celebration pedicure for me.

This year, I carefully got out of bed.  I put on my very well-researched and thought-out running shoes and went to the gym and ran a mile. In 15 minutes.   Go me.  Not bad for a 36 year-old fat chick with pounds of metal in her ankle.

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