Broken

Today has not been a regular Monday, so I am behind on writing my blog post. I spent the day dealing with an orthopedic doctor about my broken foot and with buying equipment to help me get around. For those who may not have seen my Facebook post yesterday, I had a run-in with the door of my dishwasher Saturday night. Tried to walk around the open door to throw something in the trash and caught my shoe on the corner. That somehow flipped me over and I landed on my fanny and my right foot. The dishwasher was uninjured.

 I knew immediately that something was broken, but stayed in denial until the pain got too bad. Then I dragged Michael out of bed to take me to the ER. They took x-rays and diagnosed a broken bone in my 5^th metatarsal. After putting me in a temporary cast and giving me pain medicine (yay!), they sent me home.

 As it turns out, I do not have a broken bone in my foot. No, I have two broken bones. One of them is fairly minor, the other more serious. Here’s how the doctor put it as he pointed to my x-rays, “If you were a professional athlete, they’d ignore this one and immediately do surgery on this one. But since you aren’t, you can just take the time needed to heal naturally.”

 And how much time is that? A long time, as it happens. Could be months. For now, I can’t put weight on the foot. And, since it’s my right foot, I can’t drive. If I’m lucky, for a month, but it could be two. This is terrible news for Michael, who is now my designated driver, because I have lots of activities and appointments and lunch dates. For his sake, I’ll have to trim them down. And there are things I want to do on days he can’t drive me, so that will be disappointing. It looks like my quilting bee is off the calendar for the duration because they meet on Michael’s day to lunch with the boys.

 Geting around from Saturday night until today was awful. They gave me crutches at the hospital, but I couldn’t manage them and fell again before I gave up trying. I tried to use my cane and then my old walker, which Michael kindly climbed into the attic to retrieve. You know, with only one working foot, you have to hop. To hop, you have to have quad and shoulder strength. I am sadly lacking in both.

 The next option was to unearth my old wheelchair from the garage and set it up, which took a lot of WD-40. It’s about 25 years old, so very heavy and unwieldy compared to modern wheelchairs. It worked though; I could thankfully sit and move myself around. But it doesn’t fit through any doorways, so my bedroom and both bathrooms required me to get around by hopping on one leg. I did not know my bedroom was so big until I faced hopping across it to the bathroom door!

 The doctor put me in a walking boot (but told me not to walk in it!) and suggested a knee scooter. My sister Janet used one for a long time while healing a serious foot injury, so I knew what they were. The local Walgreens had one in stock, and so this afternoon, I finally got wheels that work. Thank goodness!

 The knee scooter is not perfect. It turns like a tractor-trailer rig and requires maneuvering to back up, so getting around in tight spaces, like the bathroom or hallway, is tricky. (It made me think of my dad backing campers into the driveway: always an ordeal.) But it is doable. I’m back in control and absolutely chuffed about it. I have a big class on Wednesday that I thought I might have to miss, but now I can attend. That adventure should be next week’s blog and I’m expecting it to be a doozy.  

 For now, I’m fairly exhausted by all the commotion and my shoulders are aching—not to mention my foot—so I’m going to go to bed early. What a weekend!! Here’s to a better month ahead.

 Tschüß (Tschüss)