The Story of my Most Serious Injury

Several months ago, I posted a list of blog ideas and I haven't written about one until now. I thought I would start at the top of the list and just go down it.

I've not had too many serious injuries in my life. I'm not what you would call an adventurous person, so I tend to stay away from dangerous situations. The "most serious" injury I can think of at this moment was when I had a grade 3 sprain in my ankle. It was January 12, 1997. I was living in Carnegie and we had just had a pretty sizable snowstorm, which didn't happen very often. Me and Daniel's siblings, (Randy-16, Christy-14, and Michelle-6) were very excited to play in it. Daniel's dad brought out the sled, dusted it off, and tied it to the back of the tractor. After sitting on our bottoms and sliding around for a while, we got much braver and decided we were going to surf on the sled. All was going well for my first experience as a surfer when mid-surf, Randy decided to jump on with me and basically jumped ON me. I immediately heard my ankle crack and I yelled out in pain. I just knew it was broken after I heard that crack. Daniel and his mom helped me into the house and as I writhed in pain, they were able to slowly get my shoe off. I was wearing my Justin high top tennis shoes. I personally believe they were the only thing that saved my ankle from breaking by providing support all around the ankle. As we got the shoe off, the foot and ankle were already noticably swollen. We decided the best thing to do was go the ER. The ER did x-rays and decided it was not broken, but that I did sprain and tear almost all the ligaments holding my ankle together. They gave me a brace to wear and told me to ice it and keep it elevated. That would be no problem, I thought, since there was no way I could walk on it. The next day as Daniel went to work, I was slithering around on the floor on my butt to get around. He came home at lunch, saw how pitiful I was, and went back to the hospital to get me some crutches. That helped tremendously! By the second day, you couldn't even tell that I had an ankle bone from all the swelling and the bruising extended to the tips of all my toes. It looked like my foot had been crushed. I was working at the bowling alley in Yukon on weekends at the time and I got very special treatment while I worked the desk. I got a chair to sit in and I drew sympathy from everyone. It took a little over six weeks for it to completely heal. I remember on my wedding day, April 12th, three months after the accident, it was hard for me to walk in heels on that ankle. To this day, when it gets rainy outside, I will get an ache in that ankle.

Like I said, I've never had any major injuries. Praise God! The only stiches I've had are from surgeries (C-sections, Varicose vein removal, ingrown toenail removal) and I've never broken a real bone. Except for a toe, which is such a sissy bone that it doesn't really deserve the title, "bone."