Crutches for the Gimp

Well now I've really done it. I was carrying a big box out the back door and I came down on one of the steps just a little bit funny and the next thing I know, the box is up in the air and I'm flat on my face in the dirt. (Now where is that delicious bit of Swiss cheese that was in my mouth?). Clearly my ankle is totally f*#ked up. I'm writhing in pain, the pit bulls are barking, VHS tapes are scattered around me and I keep wondering where the cheese ended up. When the cursing subsided in about 5 minutes, I resumed inventory. My brand new chinos now have a hole in the knee and blood stains too. My elbows are scraped up but the real story is hidden beneath my sock. Not only is my ankle already swollen up double, the top of my foot has a large bump with the skin peeling off. I must have scraped it as I fell. It all looks and feels so nasty that I'm sure there is a possibility it is fractured.

Luckily, I have my cell phone and I call Mary. She is stuck at work in a deadline crisis. OK, I'll just lie here in the dirt a while longer. Slowly I attempt to get to my feet. There's that cheese! Completely covered with dirt. I throw it to the pit bulls.

Finally I drag myself in the house and attempt to put some weight on it. Ouch, yes, but I don't think it is broken. I call Dr. Hazle's office and describe what I see. They say "get thee to an emergency care facility". I call Bill. He's on a photo shoot. I call Margi and she is about to start a lesson. It is Grandpa Harold who comes through for me.

Shifting to the past tense, When we reached the hospital, Andy Willey, Mary's brother was the one opening the door and finding wheel chairs for people. (He works there.) They got me into x-ray fairly quickly and then it was back into the waiting room. Margi and Abby showed up to wait with me. Eventually, they called me into the inner sanctum so I could wait on a gurney for an available doctor. A drunken Indian dude on another gurney asked me the time. He was itching to get to work but the nurses kept telling him he needed to wait around and see the results of his expensive tests. He came over and gave me a packet of cheese crackers with peanut butter for some reason.

Finally a doctor and a physician's assistant pulled up my x-rays. They could see no broken bones but were quite surprised at the amount of calcification in my foot. That's arthritis. That explains why my feet hurt so bad every morning.

I was fitted with a splint and crutches and sent on my way with some ibuprofen and instructions to stay off my feet for a week. Sucky timing indeed. Although is there ever a good time to lay around and have people wait on you for everything? Don't answer that.

Tonight Michigan was inundated with thunderstorms and tornado watches. We finally got our downpour in Kent County around 9:00. I hobbled to the porch to watch the rushing torrents wash the garbage down Grove Street hill. There was a kind of beauty in it.