Friday, December 02, 2005
My Left Foot
Sunday evening I fell down the stairs. Thunk, thunk, thunk, *splat*. At least I think I was only three or four steps from the bottom of the stairs.
Ed says he found me with my left leg bent unnaturally beneath me. (See his blog.) I know it hurt. I thought I had heard something pop. Momentarily, I was afraid that I had broken something.
It took forever to get me to the car so that we could go to the emergency room. We employed a desk chair as a wheelchair type of conveyance, and I moved from the bottom of the stairs to the car by a combination of hopping on my unhurt leg, leaning a lot on Ed, and sitting in the desk chair as Ed rolled it. It took us maybe 40 minutes to move me maybe 20 feet. (I'm a wuss. Plus, moving made things hurt a lot more.)
The ER had a battalion of wheelchairs waiting for someone to put them to use. Ed put me in one and we stormed the waiting room, claiming it as ours - which actually wasn't difficult because there was no one else around.
[Then came the most surreal part of the evening for me. After taking my vitals and asking what had happened, the nurse explained that by law this question must be asked of any woman over the age of sixteen who comes to the ER with an injury: Are you the victim of domestic abuse? What a time to be reminded of how lucky you are.]
In what seemed like less than ten minutes, I was whisked back to a room in the ER. Then the waiting began. Eventually I was taken to X-Ray, where I had to perform some seriously painful acrobatics in order to assist the x-ray tech in getting good film of my left foot and ankle. Difficult and painful acrobatics -- like resting my foot on top of the negative and turning my foot to the right. I was shaking so badly that I was surprised the x-rays were viewed as acceptable.
After some more waiting back in the room, the doctor came by and did some poking and prodding. Something made him go look at the x-rays again. Toe wiggling was beyond me. Yet he was certain nothing was broken and assured me that they would call if the radiologist felt that something in the x-rays had been overlooked. (Nobody has called me back to the hospital.) A nurse wrapped the foot and ankle in an ACE bandage, put a soft splint on the ankle just for some added stability, demonstrated proper crutch usage (and swinging like a pendulum between the two crutches is actually NOT recommended), and sent me on my way with a couple handouts about sprains and a prescription for Loratab.
How have things progressed since then? The foot has stayed pretty swollen, and it's been turning all sorts of colors. We closely examined it last night; there's definitely a line where things start to go wrong with it: on a diagonal from the left side of the third toe to about the midpoint of the arch. The bruising wraps around my foot and is darkest at the pressure point (the ball of your foot), kind of where your foot naturally bends when you walk (which explains the impossibility of toe wiggling, I think). Deep purple bruises now.
As of this morning, the swelling seems to have abated to the point where it's not so uncomfortable, and that's a big relief. I'm moving with the aid of a cane rather than the crutches, and that's also a big relief. The initial pain dampened considerably, but over the last day or so I've been experiencing flashes of pain in the arch, along the big toe, in my ankle, and so on. Sometimes my toes feel like they're curling up or kind of vibrating. I think it must be muscles dealing with being stretched out of shape. At least that's my theory.
I'm an impatient kind of patient. Ed has been wonderful.
Ed says he found me with my left leg bent unnaturally beneath me. (See his blog.) I know it hurt. I thought I had heard something pop. Momentarily, I was afraid that I had broken something.
It took forever to get me to the car so that we could go to the emergency room. We employed a desk chair as a wheelchair type of conveyance, and I moved from the bottom of the stairs to the car by a combination of hopping on my unhurt leg, leaning a lot on Ed, and sitting in the desk chair as Ed rolled it. It took us maybe 40 minutes to move me maybe 20 feet. (I'm a wuss. Plus, moving made things hurt a lot more.)
The ER had a battalion of wheelchairs waiting for someone to put them to use. Ed put me in one and we stormed the waiting room, claiming it as ours - which actually wasn't difficult because there was no one else around.
[Then came the most surreal part of the evening for me. After taking my vitals and asking what had happened, the nurse explained that by law this question must be asked of any woman over the age of sixteen who comes to the ER with an injury: Are you the victim of domestic abuse? What a time to be reminded of how lucky you are.]
In what seemed like less than ten minutes, I was whisked back to a room in the ER. Then the waiting began. Eventually I was taken to X-Ray, where I had to perform some seriously painful acrobatics in order to assist the x-ray tech in getting good film of my left foot and ankle. Difficult and painful acrobatics -- like resting my foot on top of the negative and turning my foot to the right. I was shaking so badly that I was surprised the x-rays were viewed as acceptable.
After some more waiting back in the room, the doctor came by and did some poking and prodding. Something made him go look at the x-rays again. Toe wiggling was beyond me. Yet he was certain nothing was broken and assured me that they would call if the radiologist felt that something in the x-rays had been overlooked. (Nobody has called me back to the hospital.) A nurse wrapped the foot and ankle in an ACE bandage, put a soft splint on the ankle just for some added stability, demonstrated proper crutch usage (and swinging like a pendulum between the two crutches is actually NOT recommended), and sent me on my way with a couple handouts about sprains and a prescription for Loratab.
How have things progressed since then? The foot has stayed pretty swollen, and it's been turning all sorts of colors. We closely examined it last night; there's definitely a line where things start to go wrong with it: on a diagonal from the left side of the third toe to about the midpoint of the arch. The bruising wraps around my foot and is darkest at the pressure point (the ball of your foot), kind of where your foot naturally bends when you walk (which explains the impossibility of toe wiggling, I think). Deep purple bruises now.
As of this morning, the swelling seems to have abated to the point where it's not so uncomfortable, and that's a big relief. I'm moving with the aid of a cane rather than the crutches, and that's also a big relief. The initial pain dampened considerably, but over the last day or so I've been experiencing flashes of pain in the arch, along the big toe, in my ankle, and so on. Sometimes my toes feel like they're curling up or kind of vibrating. I think it must be muscles dealing with being stretched out of shape. At least that's my theory.
I'm an impatient kind of patient. Ed has been wonderful.
