Seriously?

On Wednesday night, I was outside and walking down a steep hill on our property, and I broke my ankle.

Seriously?

Since I have now had a lot of practice explaining exactly what happened, let's see if I can do it again. For those of you who don't know, we raise Australian Shepherds. Right now, we have 16 puppies that will be ready to go to their new homes this weekend. I am a firm believer in socializing pups as early as possible, and we spend a lot of time outdoors, playing and running. Being the herding dogs they are, they spend most of their time trying to herd anybody that is out with them. Because they are so small, this means they are constantly under foot. However, that's NOT how it happened.

I was outside, playing with them. One of the pups was going to be picked up in an hour, so I was rounding them all up so I could give the pup a bath before he sees his new family. We have a really steep hill that leads down to one of our kennels. Being steep, I was more fast walking down it than just walking. The tip of my sandal caught on the long dry grass that we have now (compliments of no rain for weeks), and my foot literally bent straight underneath my body (it didn't roll to the side, but went straight under). With the momentum of my walking, my body kept moving and I came down full force on the top part of my foot. I could hear 4 cracks and I could feel a lot of "breakage". I went down.

Thankfully, and I mean this with all my being, John was home. Our property is so big that if he hadn't been home, I literally don't know what I would have done. And this is where the funny part of the story begins (or I'm trying to see it as funny, because I might end up crying otherwise).

I have never broken a single bone in my body. I've taken great pride in this fact, attributing it to good calcium habits as a child and cautionary habits as an adult. I always wondered what it felt like, but I didn't want to know firsthand. Well, I don't think it's as bad as labor, nor as bad as the bulging disc I had in my back. However, the initial trauma is pretty intense.

I was screaming on the ground, feeling both the physical pain and the horror of what I knew had happened. John came running over, and with his best bedside manner, saw my ankle and yelled "OH MY GOSH, ARIS!" That calmed me down immediately :-) He knew that we needed to head to the ER right away, but we had 16 puppies all running around.

I am the "alpha" dog of our dogs. My dogs listen to me, and I understand them. When I need to round up the pups, I use the mama dogs as bait and can get the pups in the kennel within 2 minutes. With John, not so much--they sometimes listen to him, and he sometimes uses the dogs how he should, sometimes not.

I can't blame John for not thinking too clearly. For 20 minutes, I lay screaming and writhing on the ground while he ran around collecting pups, two at a time. He was pulling them out of bushes, under the deck, out in the yard. Through my tears, I could see puppies running every which way. It kind of reminded me of the experiment where you put pepper in a small bowl of water and add dish detergent. The pepper flies out in every direction.

The funny part was that while I was laying on the ground, the pups would run over to me and lick my face or pull my hair. Here I was, crying and wailing, and they thought it was playtime because I was on the ground. Our oldest dog, Roxy, has always been extremely sensitive to us when we are in pain, or sad. She gets really stressed out and will start licking our face or jump in our lap (something she never does). She came over, lay down on the ground next to me and put her head next to mine. She was so worried, and I had to say, feeling her there was rather comforting.

Amidst all the chaos, John couldn't handle seeing me laying on the ground. So about half-way through all of this, he decided to drive the car around. My thoughts (which I naturally yelled at him) were "Don't run over the puppies!" He got me in the car and at least I had some cool air on my very sweaty, furrowed brow.

Too, people were coming in an hour for a pup. He quickly wrote a note and taped it to the garage. It basically said, "Hi. We had to leave for the ER. Your pup is inside the door in the kennel with paperwork. Thanks." Quite a difference from the normal reception we give people :-)

John used his doctor powers and called ahead to find out who was on call and got them there before we were even there. Seriously, there are so many benefits to having a physician in the family! When I got there, I was loaded up in a wheel chair, but with every bump that I went over, I would cry and yell louder--I just couldn't help it. One of my pet peeves is people who stare--it doesn't matter if it's a crying baby, or a crying woman. When I hear a crying baby in church, for example, I specifically don't look because I figure the parent already has enough stress, trying to quiet the baby. Well, when I came into the ER, everybody was staring, first at me and my tears and then at my very grotesque ankle. Thanks a lot, people--that's just what I needed!

Anyway, two hours later I was wheeled out with a full leg cast. I broke three different bones in my ankle, including my fibula (the bone that runs up the back of the leg). They had to knock me out to reset my ankle, and John says I was given a LOT of morphine--16 mg in 2 hours. They told me that I would have to cut off my cute Eddie Bauer capris when I got home to take a bath--yeah right I would do that! Nope, good old Hannie helped me save my beloved, comfy capris. The following night was misery--nausea from the morphine, pain from the break, puppies yelping because they needed to go out (and nobody else was waking up).

Then, today Glo, Johannah and I were scheduled to leave for Interlochen. Johannah is signed up for the last 3-week session. Of course, I had put off all the last-minute shopping until the last minute. I bucked up, got myself in the car (with the girls and John) and we all got a good laugh while I "hover-rounded" around Target. My leg was killing me, and I was pretty drowsy from all the drugs, but what else could I do? John actually found somebody from State College that was driving up to Interlochen today (it's amazing to me how John works these things out--I was ready to fly her out for $700) so we stayed up until midnight packing her bags.

I'm having surgery on Monday. I hate surgery, but what can I do. I had never had surgery before we moved to Pennsylvania, but in the four years we have lived here, I will have now had four surgeries (I'm definitely feeling "betrayed", Sarah). Right now, anytime I move (and it's not often), I can feel the bones crushing against each other. Before I was casted, one side of my ankle was gone, completely depressed into my foot. The other side had a golf-ball size lump on it. I'm getting around the house on an office chair which slides beautifully over the wood floors. My main goal is to be mobile enough that I can still go to Interlochen for the final week and see Johannah and Mark in their concerts. Obviously, my favorite activity of bike riding will be impossible, but hopefully between the car and my leg trolley, I'll be able to get around.

My orthopod says the prognosis is good for a full recovery with the help of several pins and a plate in my ankle, but I will be unable to walk for 3 months. Having the life I do, I can't even imagine. When I'm scooting up our stairs backwards, I see all my marathon photos and start to cry because I can't imagine running agin, but who knows? When I called Mark to tell him about it, he couldn't believe that this happened to me after all that I've been through, and I appreciated his disbelief because that's exactly how I feel. When I start crying again because of the pain, it's hard for me not to ask Heavenly Father, "Seriously?" Did our family really need this now, or anytime? Seriously?