I've gotten a lot of questions about how I did this. So let's start there. You might be surprised how easy it was to suffer this stupid injury.
I was at the Sep.29 Tampa Bay Bucs game. It was a 1pm game; it was hot and I didn't hydrate, which just happens to be the story of my life. Anyway, I had several signs that my body wasn't reacting well to the heat but I waited until halftime to do much about it. At that time, I trudged up the 10 or so steps from my seat to the party deck area where I quickly found some shade and thought the worst was over. Somehow, I lost my son and husband enroute to the shade and that probably made all of the difference. The shade didn't work quickly enough, I fainted, and collapsed directly on my ankle. All of my body weight on an ankle.
When I landed, things began to happen immediately. EMT's were putting me in a wheelchair, masses of people were asked to move out of the way and I was rolled the short trek to the First Aid room. Almost immediately, Wayne and Nick rushed in and the look on Nick's face told me all I needed to know about my ankle. After a very uncomfortable transfer from wheelchair to stretcher, I was wheeled into some underground portion of the stadium for transport via ambulance to the hospital. It was made acutely clear to me that I was unable to receive pain meds at that time because my BP was 72/42, dangerously low to receive narcotics.
Once we arrived at the hospital, I was treated by a mass of doctors, nurses, xray techs, resp techs, etc. I remember when they finally got my BP to near 100 over something, I was able to receive morphine and I thought things would look up. Unfortunately, it didn't quite go that way. A doctor told me that in addition to the obvious surgery I was going to need for this tri malleolar fracture, my ankle was dislocated and he needed to put it back in place. Right then. They asked Wayne to wait outside (why on earth would anyone want to witness that??) and he proceeded to twist, push and manipulate my ankle for minutes on end. When I say the tears were flowing, that's an understatement. Eventually, that ended and he said they'd take a quick xray to make sure he had gotten my ankle realigned. Suffice it to say that the ankle had not been relocated completely and we had to go through that process again. Childbirth was nothing compared to this. Nothing.
Eventually, probably well into the evening, we made our way up from the ER to my private room.
Surgery Day: 9/30/13
I woke up in some pain but I knew that once surgery happened later that day, the pain I was feeling at that moment would be insignificant...and I was right. Someone wheeled me down to pre-op and Wayne was, of course, right by my side. I had a little meltdown somewhere between the surgeon talking to me and the anesthesiologist coming in but I vividly remember Sister Pat (I think her name was Pat) praying with Wayne and I right before I went into surgery. Everything went dark before I even got to the OR and the next thing I knew, I was being wheeled back to my room~ ceiling tiles above me and a head full of cobwebs.
I should add here that if I didn't have an amazing husband who stayed every night of my 4 nights in the hospital, who helped me get to a bedside toilet (sexy, I know) when needed, who brought make-up and blowdryers from home, who talked to me and encouraged me, etc., I literally don't know how I would have gotten through that hospital stay. It was so difficult.
Day 6: 10/6/13
Our 29th wedding anniversary. Not our best. I sunk into a huge depression as Wayne cleaned all day and I sat on the couch, in and out of sleep. I only mention it was our anniversary so that I can remember never, ever to revisit that particular day again. Dark day. I've had a few this week, a few times of complete meltdown~ crying jags spawned from this place of uselessness. I enjoy doing things for my family like making lunches, dinner, having a clean house, etc. and now I do nothing. I can manage to get from the sofa to the bathroom or the bedroom to the kitchen with the use of a walker and that's it. I'm a burden and it's the toughest pill I've ever had to swallow in my life.
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