Home Life

I ended up firmly ensconced in the guest bedroom. And, as much as my mind and heart wanted to be downstairs, my broken, sprained left ankle simply refused to cooperate. My weight while not as substantial as it used to be was still larger than two, OK, six or seven super models put together. Putting that weight on my “less damaged” ankle and the act of crutching around was showing itself to be less and less of an option. Luckily my mother-in-law who actually does have one of everything, presented me with a wheelchair. I could now wheel around banging into woodwork and practice for my role in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.

On my arrival, my pets were super happy to see me. And in the manner of loved ones everywhere they immediately jumped on my ankles, repeatedly. Thank goodness for ice and pain pills, oh and elevation. However elevation required pillows. I started, by proxy, collecting pillows from every room in the house. I eventually ended up looking like I was being eaten alive by a extra fluffy muppet. But I was relatively comfortable. Well, except when my dogs tried to play King of the Mountain on the pile of pillows that I was putting my feet on. Dogs have no respect for splints and ace bandages, well except for as implements in a game of tug of war. By the way, never leave a loose end when re-wrapping ace bandages around your foot.

Now came the challenge of describing exactly where my stuff was that I wanted. It was rather like reverse charades. Of course I had to also take into account that my husband has a negative spot check for anything that he isn’t actually holding.
“My book and pen are downstairs on the coffee table.”
“I looked, they aren’t.”
“Please look again, I’m sure I left them on the coffee table.”
“I looked again, they’re not there.”
“Try. Again.”
“Oh, I found your book and pen.”
“Really? Great, where were they?”
“On the coffee table under a piece of paper.”
Sometimes graciousness means smiling hard enough that your teeth are cracking while you're saying, "Thank you."

Now picture this conversation repeated for just about everything, underwear, sweatshirts, deodorant, and yarn, especially yarn. And before you even begin to ask, yes yarn is an essential in my life. There was just some stuff that neither my husband or mother-in-law could find no matter how well I described its location. So, after several attempts I knew what I had to do. I waited until both my mother-in-law and husband had left the main floor and then slid my crutches down the stairs and butt bumped my way on down to the basement. I grabbed a bag that I could hang around my neck and started crutching and crawling my way around the basement grabbing the missing essentials, which included the precious yarn right where I had described it.

Pulling myself back upstairs with my arms proved to be a bit more difficult, but ultimately doable and by the time I was back in bed I was exhausted, but satisfied. Unfortunately my little foray was not unnoticed.
“Where the HELL did that yarn come from?!”
“The basement pantry.”
“You know what I mean, you better not have gone downstairs to get it.”
“Well, no one else was successful in getting it.”
“If you ever even try to go downstairs again I’m hiding your crutches AND your wheelchair so that you’re stuck in this bed and have to let people help you.”
“ok”
“And mom, since you didn't notice her sneaking downstairs, you’re fired.”

If This Was An Actual Emergency You Would Know What To Do

So, I had made it to the couch and was trying to convince myself that with ice and never moving again that everything would be OK. The rest of the household was behaving normally and contributing to this delusion. My husband had thoughtfully picked up all of the breakfast I had scattered over the carpet, however one of our dogs was doing a very good impression of a Roomba and trying mightily to find any scrap he had left behind. Our other dog was still trying to find a place to lie down on me to “comfort me. Since I wasn’t struggling, he finally settled on my lower back.

Now a rapidly swelling ankle that I couldn't bear weight on that hurts like a balloon full of razor blades would usually send me right to the ER. However my life decisions, as well as my decisions regarding my day to day activities, have to be tempered by my lack of funds and insurance. So first we rang up Zoom Care a pay as you go facility. The pluses for Zoom Care are that you can make an appointment online or over the phone. The minuses are that for a possible bone break is that they have to send you out to a facility for x-rays, and then they send you home while they wait for someone to read them. Zoom Care then rings you up and lets you know if you have a broken bone and what you should do about it.
“I’m sorry, we can see the bone sticking out of your leg from your supposed compound fracture, but we’re going to have to send you home while we wait for that diagnosis to be confirmed.”
So Zoom Care seemed like less than an ideal solution to my issue as wandering around from place to place on possibly broken bones for an extended period of time was appearing less attractive with every passing swelling, bruising moment. We then tried calling Urgent Care units. There used to be Urgent Care units attached to hospitals so that more critical patients could be quickly shunted over to the ER and the Urgent Care could make use of the hospital could make use of the hospital facilities. Unfortunately for whatever reason, the Urgent Cares attached to hospitals have closed. Perhaps they weren’t making enough money as I’m sure they were a top choice for people like me without insurance. So that left my husband and me with about two hours wasted and after a dare to place my entire weight on my right ankle (I lost,) we were headed off to the nearest ER. As we were going out into public I did get it together enough to change out of my breakfast soaked pj’s into some slightly more socially acceptable sweatpants. I only needed a sports jersey or a bedazzled tank top to complete my camouflage for the ER waiting room.

As my mother-in-law actually does have one of everything stored away in her house a set of crutches was quickly found so I could hobble to the car. OK, I crawled, I crawled to the car. No dignity was involved whatsoever. Having already been covered in breakfast I thought that I couldn’t sink any lower. I was wrong. Random whiny baby noises kept coming out of my mouth despite my resolve not to say anything. These noises were interspersed with horrible nonsensical profanities. I'm actually surprised that a random nun from my childhood didn't show up and slap me in the face for some of the things that I said.

The first obstacle after finally getting in the car was simply finding the emergency room. Even though the ER was attached to a hospital its immune system was no defense against the plague of construction that had already infected the streets around it. We found ourselves following detour signs just to find an entrance. Well, my husband was following the signs; I was making pathetic little whining noises every time we went over a bump or a pothole. But the signs eventually led us to an entrance where they had a large covered ramp of a detour, but wondrously they also had wheelchairs and valet parking. I got settled in a wheelchair and my husband started wheeling me towards what was undoubtedly going to be a very large expense.

Downfall

Like a lot of people I've been unemployed for quite some time. I'm now counting my unemployment in years now somewhat like a bad relationship. And hand in hand with extended unemployment goes feelings of shame and self loathing, as well as the more common symptom of not being able to buy coffee and one of the most important but often overlooked - no health insurance. For many people this means they just skip the yearly checkup that they don't want to go to anyway. In my life this has much more dire consequences.

I do live in a state which has a health care plan for the poor and unemployed, but unless you're a child, (I'm not,) there are so many applicants that all new applicants are put into a lottery system and chosen like letters at BINGO. However, I do know someone that this actually happened to. So unlike the lottery the state health care plan seems to have better chances than being hit by lightening twice, but then if you do get hit by lightening you can get treated. So there are resources available to me, but only by odd strokes of luck. So I need to psychically make my name come up or pick the winning lotto numbers. So currently I'm not taking advantage of these wonderful resources.

I figured that right now my main job was just not getting hurt. Unfortunately, I am very, very, VERY bad at my job. I am one of those people that can injure myself just standing around. And walking, wow...the perils of walking for me cannot be underestimated. I once fell off a curb and broke my ankle, while walking, not extreme fast walking, or even jogging - just walking. And I never get a good story out of it either. I meet people with casts and bandages and it's always, "I was snowboarding down a mountain and an rabid albino elk was heading right towards a preschool. So I ran it down, but it broke my leg while I was wrestling it humanely to the ground. You?"
"Oh, I tripped over a curb while I was trying to walk and talk at the same time."

So by now you can tell that the story of how I actually injured myself is going to be fairly uninteresting, you can stop reading now, but the next post is going to be about the ER and will contain several references to the actual injury, (just warning ya.) Now you would think that after living in a relative's basement for over a year that your mind would internalize how many steps there are in a staircase. At least for my brain, this is not the case. Have you ever walked up or down a staircase and thought that there was one fewer or one more step than there actually was? Usually this causes you to take a giant step or knock up against that last step. Nothing bad usually comes of it. USUALLY. Well, my brain miscounted THREE steps. Yep three, triplets, one more than two, and way too many to recover from. I actually went over the side of the staircase. My right foot hyper extended underneath me and made a sound like a giant Rice Crispy. I have no idea what my left foot did simply because my right hurt so much. It was like my own foot filled with broken glass came up and kicked me directly in the brain. I was carrying my breakfast which ended up half on me and half on the floor.

So falling is bad. A fall that you can't get up from is worse, and a fall that you just end up writhing on the floor crying while covered in breakfast is even worse. To his credit my husband didn't even giggle at my Jackass type stunt gone horribly wrong and was right there trying to assess the damage. My dogs quickly showed their mettle. Our troublemaker of a girl was quickly trying to snarf up as much breakfast as she could off of the floor and me. She's not picky as long as food is involved. Our concerned boy circled for a bit and then tried to lie down on my legs. Good intentions, poor execution. I seem to vaguely remember repeating "It hurts," over and over again. Apparently I become a master of communication while in the midst of a painful injury, and almost throwing up. That I know was communicated with hand signals and grunting. Yes, I know that grunting is not permitted in charades, but neither is bodily fluids so we're going to allow it.

Once I crawled over to the couch I spent a little time in denial trying to convince myself that I hadn't really injured myself badly at all. Unfortunately rapid swelling, bruising and the feeling of things moving inside of my ankle that shouldn't be moving were rapidly convincing me otherwise.