Vickie Goes to the Doctor

It has now been two full weeks since Mom received her first blue cast. Since we started this blog a little late we don't have many pictures of the original illustrations, but I did snap one on the way into the doctor's office today.

(Thanks to Alex, Dad, Terri, Jeff, Kathy, and Cary for their beautiful decorations.)

Now, on to the doctor's visit. Despite Mom's hopes, she is not completely healed after only two weeks of being in the cast. They did however remove the old cast (revealing her gross hairy leg, ew) and take some x-rays before applying the new cast.

First, let's start with the removal of the old cast. I made the mistake of informing Mom that Grace had been cut when her cast was taken off of her wrist years ago and that may have freaked Mom out just a wee bit. She was also incredibly concerned about the HUGE saw that they would be using to cut the cast off.

Here is a shot of the blade...

And here, is a shot of the actual contraption.

The blade is actually like two inches wide and at the very tippy top of the vacuum looking thing. I must say that it was not as vicious as I had expected. When they were actually sawing the whole thing off, Mom said she was in a flop sweat and I was concerned that she was going to break into an ugly cry. But alas, she survived. Here is the nurse lady cutting off the weird sock/gauze things.

(Thanks to me for the stealth photography!)

Then, after some poking and prodding, they started putting on the new cast! Here it is documented through my iPhone!

The sock.

The gauze.

The wrapping.

The..pat down?

The finished product! Ready to be decorated by one and all.

Starting tomorrow, Life Lessons from the Ankle-ly Challenged!

The Beginning

Welcome to the Tales of the Ankle-ly Challenged. Before we begin detailing the everyday life of my mother I thought I would recount to you the night of the incident that spawned this blog.

My loving Mom had decided that we needed to have a family sleepover, my aunts (Julie and Terri) and cousin (Grace) came over for a night that was supposed to be filled with movies, food, dancing games, and lots of fun. Oh boy, did it turn out differently.

After Mom consumed quite a bit of alcohol and I consumed an absurd amount of food, Aunt Julie suggested we all take a walk to get some air (Vickie's only reason for venturing out of the house was in the hopes of finding the infamous 'hot dog stand man'). This was around midnight. After making it halfway around the block (and having had no sightings of the 'hot dog man,') Grace and Aunt Terri pulled ahead as Aunt Julie and my mom decided to link their arms through mine on either side.

As we were strolling (or in Mom's case, stumbling) down the sidewalk, we approached a parked car and Mom found it necessary to step up into the yard of the house nearest us. Unfortunately, the yard had a large flower bed made of railroad timbers, and at the end, Mom somehow tripped and twisted her ankle, collapsing to the ground in a combination of tears and laughter.

I immediately wet my pants and fell to the ground as well. Aunt Julie tried to calm Mom down and we attempted to bring her to her feet in order to support her weight on the way back to the house. After it became apparent she could not walk back to the house, Aunt Julie decided to go get the car. Still standing upright, Mom and I watched her jog (HAHAH) off into the distance, and soon realized we were stuck and could not move. We somehow managed to fall to the ground with Mom's leg resting on my lap.

After what felt like years, Aunt Julie returned and jumped out of her car. She told us that Aunt Terri was also hurt. In her drunken state, she had tripped over a pipe and fallen face first onto the driveway, busting her beer bottle in her hands on the way down.

This meant we needed to return as quickly as possible as both Mom and Aunt Terri needed medical assistance. When we pulled into the driveway, Aunt Terri, Aunt Julie, Grace and I each had to grab one of Mom's limbs in order to carry her into the house. We threw her on the couch, and at this point chaos ensued. Shots of vodka, copious amounts of Neosporin, loads of Diet-Coke, and slippers were present between the time of our arrival and our 2am departure to the hospital.

In the end, Mom broke her ankle in three places and will be in a cast for 4-6 weeks. After the first week of coming home at the end of the day and listening to Mom recount her lonely days in the house, I decided these stories were too priceless to not be preserved (and shared) forever. Enjoy!

Lesson #1: What not to do when the doorbell rings

[For those of you who are new to this blog, Vickie (the ankle-ly challenged) tells tales of her daily triumphs and failures to her daughter, Emily, who then recounts them all to you. Vickie's thoughts are in plain font while Emily's interjections appear in bold.]

I'm laying in bed, home alone, and the doorbell rings.

(insert intense movie music here)

My first thought was holy hell, who is that? So, I got my jacket (which was laying at the end of the bed so I didn't have to go get it, thank goodness) and after two rings, I finally wrestled my (ancient, oversized sweatshirt) on. I'm getting up to get my crutches as the visitor begins to knock.

I'm hobbling as fast as I can, at this point, I can see someone bending down and starting to walk away. I open the door and he informs me that the flowers he has sat down are for Vickie.

Oh goody! I'm Vickie! He hands me the flowers and says, can you get that? And for some reason, I said yes and shut the door.

I then realized very quickly, stranded in the doorway, that no, I could not get this. I had no way of moving. I have the vase in one hand, the crutches under both arms, and no way to transport myself in any direction. Somehow (I'm not sure how this happened, I must have blacked out) I did a lil hop-hop (that is the technical term) to the table, five feet away. By this time, I'm in a flop sweat (what the hell is a flop sweat?) and shaking uncontrollably because of all the energy hopping like a bunny for five feet has cost me.

I hobbled back to bed and got the crutches off, the pillows fluffed, and the blankets arranged. Only to discover I had left the door unlocked. And because I (am overly paranoid) was concerned that someone would break in, I then had to repeat the entire process again.

I later asked Mom why the hell she didn't just ask the flower delivery boy to sit the flowers on the table inside the door and she responded 'Well because, I can't let a stranger in the house! He could have murdered me!' Goodness.

Lesson learned: purchase a bag to carry around one's neck to place get well flowers in when answering the door while home alone.