Happy New Year--with a bang! Part 1

On January 1, 2006, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., I broke my ankle. My life partner, Michel, his mom, and I were walking to a restaurant in the town in Quebec where his family lives. I knew the sidewalks were icy, particularly at the corners where the streets and sidewalk met. I had slowed down while crossing the street and as I got to the corner, my left foot found a patch of ice that my eyes had not seen. My foot slid out from under me. As I hit the ground, I heard internally a kind of popping in my left leg. I knew I had hurt myself but thought perhaps I had snapped a tendon or ligament.

As I sat on the ground in some pain, I was very angry at myself for falling. This fall was the culmination of a series of falls that started last April or May. Since that time, I had fallen at least 8 or 9 times. Most of the falls had happened on my bicycle. But two weeks earlier, I had fallen while walking across a street near our home, falling on my right knee and shin. What was all this falling trying to tell me?

As I sat on the ground embarrassed and in pain, several people stopped to ask if I was okay. I knew I had hurt my ankle/leg--the pain told me that--but I didn`t think it was broken so I told everyone I was okay. I just wanted to hide or to be invisible.

One person who stopped was a nurse and asked if I could move my foot. Indeed, I could and she said that my ankle wasn`t broken. I was happy to hear that!

As Michel and I waited for his mother to arrive with the car, I decided to stand up. Somehow with Michel`s help and the help of a street sign pole, I stood up, planting my left foot and pushing up with my right leg to get me to an upright position. Michel`s mother drove us to the bus terminus where we got a taxi for home.

As I sat in the taxi, I could feel my ankle swelling and throbbing. The pain was intense but not unbearable. I just wanted to get home. When we arrived home, we somehow made it into the apartment. That part is kind of a blur to me. Michel ran a bath for me and as I lay in the hot water, I checked over my ankle and leg. My ankle was extremely swollen. So swollen, in fact, it felt like the skin couldn't stretch any further. I also noticed when I touched the outside of my leg, there was some sort of movement inside. Something was moving that never moved before and that didn`t move in my other leg. That was my first inkling that a bone could be broken.

After the bath, I elevated the leg and alternatively used ice and heat for the rest of the night. Michel wrapped the ankle for me, using a pair of pantyhose because someone had borrowed our elastic bandage! I took aspirin for the pain but sleeping that night was extremely difficult.

The next day, after checking the Internet and discovering bad sprains can mask a broken ankle, we decided I should get the ankle x-rayed to make sure it wasn't broken. Michel got me some crutches and an elastic bandage from the local drug store. Then, Michel's aunt and uncle took us to a local hospital's emergency room. The number of people waiting for treatment was unbelievable! I'm sure the fact that January 2 was a holiday affected how many people were waiting at the hospital.

I didn't see the triage nurse until an hour and a half after our arrival. At that point, we had decided to go home and go somewhere else the next day. The nurse checked me over and said if I could move the foot, the ankle was most likely not broken. She also told me the wait was going to be extremely long. (Michel had heard someone talking in the waiting room. The woman said that she had been waiting since 9 a.m. and it was now 4 p.m.!) The nurse thought our idea of going to a clinic the next day made more sense.

So now it was Janaury 3 and we went took a taxi to a clinic near our home that had an x-ray department. Once again we waited. I saw a doctor for about 5 to 10 minutes. He pressed on the ankle and asked me if it hurt and then sent me to radiology. Again we waited and finally I received my x-ray. The doctor checked the x-ray and told me I had broken the ankle on both sides of my leg. Actually, what that meant is that I had broken both the tibia and the fibula! He then gave me a prescription for a cast and told us we would have to go to a hospital emergency room to have the cast put on my ankle!

At that point, Michel rented a car while I waited for him to return to the clinic to get me. We went to the hospital (a different one) and then waited again. Finally, after waiting more than an hour, I got the cast put on, Michel made an orthopedic appointment for the next week, and we were able to go home. However, I was told that I had to return to the hospital the next day for a cast check--to make sure the cast was fitting properly. So we returned to the hospital the next day for the cast check. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long.

As we returned home, I looked forward to being able to just rest and let my ankle heal. I was encouraged because the emergency room doctor thought I would be in a walking cast (a cast with a heel) in two or so weeks. I did not know then that my healing process was going to play out much differently than the scene I was picturing at that moment.

The saga of my broken ankle continues tomorrow...