Virginia Beach with a Twist: The Accident

This post was supposed to be a review of Virginia Beach, but I decided to break things up a bit and tell you what happened July 16, the day before we were scheduled to leave. My husband was officially off that day to help pack up our van, but he needed to attend a last minute meeting. The kids wanted to get some spending money for our trip so my husband decided they could go with him and I could finish packing the suitcases. And as they were filing out the door, my husband turned to me and said, "This way you can be all alone," and my reply seems somewhat prophetic now-I remember saying that I didn’t want to be alone, and I still wonder why I said that. Now I am convinced that it was a premonition of what would soon follow…

I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, so I was foolishly doing several things at once-packing, laundry, and looking for a receipt (not sure why I was doing this one)-and things were okay until I heard the washing machine shut off. I quickly headed down our basement steps only to charge back up to get a laundry basket. (I usually keep an empty one down there, hmm...) I wanted to hang a few things outside that I wanted to take on our trip, and since it was such a hot day I knew they would dry quickly. Back down the stairs I went carrying the empty laundry basket, but when I mistakenly reached what I thought was the floor, I took a step out in mid air-I went up over the last step of the staircase and down on my left ankle and I eventually ended up on my hands and knees straddling the laundry basket.

Hot pain shot through my foot but since I didn’t hear a crack I didn’t think it was broken. I dumbly sat there on the basement floor trying to rub the pain away, and then reality started to set in-how was I going to get back upstairs? I couldn’t put any weight on my foot and my right knee was missing a teensy bit of skin, so I went up backwards, butt first, then crawled, hopped, and dragged my way around the house in search of my cell phone. I couldn’t get through to my husband’s meeting, so when I finally reached one of the secretaries, I broke down. I’m surprised she could understand me through all my crying and I don’t exactly recall what I did say to her, but she promised to get a message to my husband, and I was still crying when he finally called.

I made myself calm down so I could think about where I last saw my old crutches (um, I had broken this same ankle about 14 years ago on the same staircase, but I was trying to shoo the cat down the stairs when I fell-I hate stairs!) I remembered seeing them in the garage, so I crawled, dragged, then hopped again(there was no way I was going to crawl on that garage floor if I could help it!) until I found the crutches. With these I was at least able to get ready to meet my husband when he got home.

I ended up going to the OSS (Orthopedic and Spine Specialists) because a co-worker of my husband said it would be much faster than the ER at the hospital. Heck, I was checked in, examined, x-rayed, and fitted with a new pair of crutches in exactly an hour-fast service! I saw the emergency care physician and unfortunately she was only looking at my ankle and not my foot. She said it wasn’t broken, just a really bad sprain, and that it would be about four or five days before I could put weight on it. Well, a week and a half later my foot was still swollen and I couldn’t put weight on it. More x-rays Monday revealed a small bone in my foot was broken off when my ligaments in my ankle put pressure there during my fall, so now I'm in a space aged boot for the next four weeks-isn’t it pretty?


My husband wanted to cancel our trip, but I was determined to get to the beach this summer (plus we would lose a pretty hefty deposit!) We decided to rent a wheel chair when we were down there, and since it’s past my bedtime and my foot is throbbing, you will have to wait for that story in a couple days…

Update 7/28:  I am trying to catch up on everyone's blogs a little at a time.  See, I can't sit for very long and my smart phone makes me feel stupid!  Can't wait to catch up!