On the DL, again

This time, I've really done myself in. I broke the 5th metatarsal in my left foot after a 2-part injury last week. The first thing that happened was that, at a work party on Wednesday night, I walked up to a coworker who had her back to me, and just as I got withing talking distance, she stepped back with her 3-inch heel on my strappy-sandal-clad foot, then lost her balance, wobbled and spun around, all before I could even react to shove her off of me. By the time she realised what was happening, I was half-crouched in the "silent scream". Oddly, due to the amount of Cosmos I had that night, I was able to forget both the pain and the incident until the next morning when I woke up wondering WTF my sandal had done to my foot. As soon as I looked down and saw the horribly bruised and puffy skin, I remembered having nearly been skewered at the party. I kept it iced, elevated, and rested all day Thursday and by Friday morning it was looking pretty good.

Because the conference and expo we were hosting was in Chicago and we had so many people and materials going up there, we carpooled in several vanloads with people coming and going on different days, and my ride back was on Friday afternoon. I kept my foot iced and elevated for the whole ride home and thought things were going just fine, but when I walked down the stairs to do my final lock-up of the night, I mis-counted the steps somehow and instead of stepping on the last step with my left foot, I stepped with my left foot, missed the last step, and landed on the landing. When my foot hit, it just gave out and rolled, and that's when I knew something horrible had happened because I just crumpled and stayed there for several minutes in excruciating pain, whimpering and wondering what I had done. When I was finally able to collect myself, I stood up, hobbled over and realised the door had been locked all along (figures), and then crawled back upstairs to get another ice pack.

I kept it elevated and iced overnight and all day on Saturday and by Saturday afternoon, I decided (with CNKelly's encouragement) that I should go to Urgent Care. However, by the time I figured all that out, collected myself, and got outside, Kelly showed up with a set of crutches and a bag full of Skyline goodies (she ROCKS!!) and just a few minutes later, Heidi showed up as well. We decided that Heidi could take me to the doctor since Kelly had already fed me and supplied the crutches and Heidi and I headed off to the Urgent Care center in Oakley. Note to readers: I do NOT recommend the Urgent Care in Oakley. It smells weird and looks weird and is generally just kind of scary. While I was there, I sat on something sticky that stayed on my butt the rest of the night. They wouldn't treat me because I didn't have an ID, so when we left to go back and get my ID, we decided to just try a different Urgent Care. Turns out that they were all closed by this point, so I went to the ER instead (I know, I know, the ER is only for "EMERGENCIES" but I think I would have ended up in the ER anyway once they looked at it).

We had a little fun in the ER waiting room where I showed Heidi my mad wheelchair skillz and we entertained all the people working there with our funny jokes, and after a long wait, the doc came in and confirmed that it was, in fact, a broken bone. No wonder it hurt so badly. They gave me some stuff for the pain and put a temporary splint on, told me not to drive or get the splint wet, and sent me on my way. Heidi was nice enough to stay the night with me because I got really scared when we got back that there would either be a fire or someone would break in and I wouldn't be able to handle either situation. Fortunately, neither one happened and in the morning, Bri and Rob came by and took me to the store. I had cleaned out the fridge before I left for the conference so there was absolutely nothing to eat in the house except for items requiring preparation and I'm not doing so hot on the standing just yet. While I wouldn't break anything else just to get the chance, I did enjoy using the Kroger cruiser up until the very end of the trip when the battery was really running out of juice. Rob actually was good enough to drive it back inside to the charging station but he said later that it was a pretty disappointing ride. I think he would have felt differently if he had been using it at the beginning but still, it's not all that I had made it out to be in my mind lo these many years. Heidi came back over Sunday night and brought Indian for dinner and her fine company and that was great. I was actually exhausted and ready for bed by the time she left, which I think was only like 8 o'clock.

I spent almost the entire day today in bed though I did go downstairs once to plug my cell phone into the car charger, because of course, I also left my outlet charger in my hotel room at the conference. It only took about an hour to get from my bed to the car and back again. Ridiculous. My dad arrived at 7-ish tonight because he is taking me to the ortho doctor on Tuesday (let's all say some prayers that I get a walking cast because I'm not sure how much more crutching I can handle) and Heidi showed up a little later with a pack of water bottles because I don't have a good way to transport a glass of water back to bed with me.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but when I decided to set up one of the televisions downstairs for my dad to watch, I realised that I have a wheelie-chair on each of the first and second floors, so I gave it a shot and they actually make it much easier to get around, and I can hold things in my lap while I coast around. So I'll be doing that a lot, especially if I do still have to use the crutches. Also, in the middle of the night last night, the lever thing on the flusher part of my toilet actually broke apart from the handle, which nearly sent me on a crying fit until I decided to just go back to bed and forget about it for the time being. So add one more thing to the fix-it list. Oh, and I still have to figure out how I'm going to wash my hair in the morning because I can NOT go to the doctor stinking like I do right now. MMMmmmm....