We'd escaped to the mountains for a lovely weekend retreat after the boyfriend had returned from his family emergency back east. We stopped by my parents for a visit on the way home and had a leisurely afternoon. We had just finished a delicious dinner and were going to call it a night early. If only we had made it to bed, the weekend would've been perfect.
The one thing left to do was to walk the dogs and I had gone upstairs to retrieve some shoes and I was nearly to the bottom of the stairs when something just... snapped.
In my leg.
Actually, it felt like an explosion in my right calf and I collapsed on the floor in pain.
I was lying on the floor stunned, the boyfriend was on the couch frozen in shock.
It was just a cramp, I told myself. A really, really, really bad cramp. I hoisted myself back up and the moment I put weight on my right leg I collapsed back onto the floor in excruciated pain. Something was horribly wrong.
The boyfriend was panicked. I hadn't been able to communicate that it was my leg and he was thinking I was having a heart attack. As I eased myself up onto a side chair I told him that it was my leg. "Maybe it's a cramp?" he said. I assured him I had already ruled that out. "Can you walk?". That would be "No". "Can you even stand?" I'm going to say that's a "No" too.
We sat there staring at each other in silence for a few minutes, not sure exactly what to do. I'm sure he was running through various worst case scenarios; I know I was. But we are nothing if not practiced in the fine art of denial and we both quickly came to the same solution. We would sleep on it.
The dogs still needed to be walked and the boyfriend graciously offered to take care of it. Because, you know, I couldn't even STAND. I rolled myself onto the couch once they left and tried to rationally assess the situation. Something was definitely seriously wrong. There appeared to be no broken bones although when I first collapsed the pain was so great I had looked down expecting to see bones protruding from my leg. With the bones ruled out, that left only a few other options and I quickly determined I had probably snapped a tendon or torn a muscle. That art degree isn't completely worthless; I had had to take anatomy as part of my life drawing classes. While the boyfriend and the dogs were out, probably for only ten minutes, the pain was growing progressively worse and by the time they returned the question became when, not if, we were headed to the hospital.
The nearest hospital is fairly small and on a Sunday night it was mercifully quiet and I was able to be seen quickly. As I lay on the gurney I imagined the long night ahead.... the x-rays, the MRI's, the CAT scans, the surgery, the cast...
The doctor finally came in and was pleasant enough. He had me roll onto my stomach and started prodding my right calf.
"Does this hurt?"
No.
"Does this hurt?"
No.
"Does this hurt?"
No.
"Does this hu......................
I just about shot through the ceiling tiles in pain.
"Well, you've ripped one of your calf muscles."
How did that happen, I asked.
"Usually will guys our age" he began "it results when you go out to play sports or exercise without properly stretching." He looked me up and down and then added "that obviously isn't the case here." I could have done without that.
So what's the solution I asked. Surgery? A cast?
"We'll wrap it in an Ace bandage and send you home with crutches" he said. It will heal on it's own. Eventually. It will probably be quite painful and it may take months. You may need physical therapy. And you may never walk the same again."
Lovely.
He said his goodbyes and a nurse came in with some Percocet, the only bright spot in an otherwise horrible evening. After more waiting another nurse came in to wrap my leg and eventually yet another nurse came in with my discharge papers. And my prescriptions. I didn't get a Percocet prescription; no one is that lucky. I did however get one for extra strength Vicodin. Plus one for Valium, which seemed awfully generous. The crutches showed up and we were sent on our way, elapsed time: only an hour and a half, which has to be a ER record.
By the time we got home I was so loopy I could barely make it into the house. Getting a good night's sleep wouldn't be an issue.
When I awoke yesterday, I had almost forgotten what had transpired the night before. And then I tried to stand up. The doctor had told me I needed to stay off my feet for at least five days, but that wasn't an option. After the work fiasco of the previous Monday, if I didn't show up for the staff meeting this morning I would more than likely be fired. How I was going to drive was an open question. The boyfriend thoughtfully brought me a cup of coffee since I was afraid of attempting the stairs sober. I checked my email and saw their were minor revisions to a job that the boss had sent the previous night. I figured I had nothing to lose and tried to play the pity card...
"Sorry for the delay. I didn't get this email last night because I was in the hospital."
His reply was quick. "Sorry to hear that. See you at 11."
The boyfriend soon left for work and a question quickly popped into my mind... who would walk the dogs? It was a rhetorical question, of course. I pictured myself on crutches, a leash in each hand. I then pictured the leashes wrapped around the crutches and me back in the hospital having broken my other leg. The nurse had instructed me on how to wrap my leg making sure not to make it too tight but I found that by wrapping it tight as a tourniquet I was able to walk on my tip toes. If I didn't look gay before, I did now, prancing around like a reindeer. But at least I was mobile and the dogs got their walk, albeit a brief one.
Next came the drive into work. The one thing the doctor had told me was to avoid flexing my foot, something I quickly remembered in stop and go rush hour traffic. The pain was so great that after about ten miles I seriously thought about turning around but soon enough I began to lose all feeling in my leg and made it into the office in about two hours.
I had about three hours of meetings and then another two hour drive home. I actually didn't feel that bad at that point, primarily because by that time I hadn't had any feeling in my leg for hours. For all I knew, it was dead.
Once I got home, I had only one task left: filling the prescriptions. Once home, I popped two of each, Vicodin and Valium. By the time the boyfriend got home, I was in good spirits.
So here I sit, Day Two as a cripple. I'm realizing just how much I got through yesterday on adrenaline and the fear of losing my job. Day Two isn't looking so good.
