Part two of a long story about a broken leg

I just wanted to mention that the reason I am recording this thrilling tale of my broken ankle is because my second favorite not food-related activity just now is Googling for stories of pregnant women who have broken their ankles. Remarkably, there aren't a whole lot of these stories available. So I really feel like doing my part to provide someone who might someday be pregnant atop a broken ankle with a story to read, should she love Googling for camaraderie as much as I.

The next day was a Sunday. My husband called his head elder to run through Matins rather than leave my father at my mercy all morning. Turns out getting to the bathroom and the like is rather improbable with a broken ankle dangling unfixed at the bottom of the leg, and I really needed my own husband by me. When it comes to pushing the “for worse” envelope all out of shape, I really know what I’m doing. But we made it through. I even got my dishwasher fixed; two men playing nursemaid to a crippled pregnant chick get bored between bathroom calls.

Later that afternoon, my mother and children arrived, and my mother declared that she was moving in with us for as long as it took. This cheered everyone up immensely, as no one, not even I myself, runs my house as well as my mother.

And then it was surgery day. There was a lot of being pushed around in wheelchairs and being transferred between here and there and getting poked with needles. The anesthesiologist opted to perform a nerve block on my bad leg; putting me under was out of the question and I don’t respond well to procedures involving my spine. Once on the operating table, it became clear that I don’t respond well to nerve blocks, either, so I got a dose of some sort of dozy potion that wasn't general anesthesia, but that set me to dreaming about Downton Abbey.

And then I woke up to an ankle held together by a plate and 12 screws. A liaison from the OB floor had been in the operating room with me, monitoring the baby throughout. The baby came through it fine. So they gave me a couple of hours to let the drugs clear my system and then sent me home.

And! Then I was home, back to living bathroom break to bathroom break. I was given some pain meds that claimed to be safe for my baby, and I took them. Sort of. For a couple of days. I couldn't really shower or anything, as my leg was not in a proper cast. Rather, it was wrapped in scads of padding and bandages and whatnot. Lying down was painful. Being upright was horrible. I was marooned in my room and utterly helpless to do anything for myself or anyone else. It was a tough week.

And then that week was over. And my husband took me to the surgeon’s office. A PA took out the surgical staples and cleaned me up a bit and put me in a CAM walker. She told me not to bear any weight in my CAM walker, and to sleep with it on my leg. But I could take it off to shower and loosen it a bit while being still. And with the CAM walker, crutching around the house became possible, which meant I could take my own self to the bathroom and my husband could go to the office sometimes and my mother didn't have to discipline the toddler all by herself. It was like having a single, bare light bulb turn on in a basement somewhere. Which is to say, everything still stank, but it was better than being in the dark.

Another two weeks went by, wherein I still spent most of my time in my bed with my ankle elevated on pillows. I worked through the magazine pile and watched a really stupid movie. But even better, my Kindergartner got a lot of reading lessons. My other kids got a lot more freedom than usual, and they used it to help Grandma and to be generally agreeable. My mother continued to prove herself the Best of All Mothers. My dad came over on the weekends to take care of my mother. My Ladies' Aid group coordinated the most intense supper drop-off in history. And my husband listened to me cry, soothed my panic, smacked my pride, and brought me communion as often as I wanted it. What am I complaining about? I’m exceedingly rich.

At the end of this two weeks, we went back to the surgeon’s office and actually saw the surgeon. Our conversation went something like this:

Surgeon: Are those your crutches there?

Me: Yes.

Surgeon: What are you using them for?

Me: Um … to move?

Surgeon: You don’t need those to move. You can bear weight in that boot.

Me: I can?

Surgeon: (a bit exasperated) Yes. You should have been bearing weight all this time. Get rid of those crutches. Goodbye.

So, I got rid of the crutches. It took me a couple of days. I started out just standing in the boot. Then I gingerly tried taking steps every now and again. Then I dropped one crutch. Then the other. And then I was walking. Well, let me be more honest: I was hobbling. Like, clud-THUNK, clud-THUNK, clud-THUNK. But, what the heck? I was ambulatory. I could get a bowl of yogurt out of the fridge all by myself. I could clud-THUNK into the grocery store and drive around on one of those silly little scooter things that squeal every time it's put in reverse. My mother was able to return to her own house and life. And best of all, I was able to go to church on Easter morning. That bare light bulb was burning in, like, the laundry room all of a sudden.

And that was how I spent the first four or so weeks of having a broken ankle. Tune in next time for the inspiring conclusion. I'll even try to make it like a Michael Landon program, just for you.

Part Three

A long story about a broken leg

This post has very little to do with perpetual parturition, being a girl, the LCMS, or any of our usual topics. It is merely a chronicle of my recent experience with a trimalleolar fracture of my left ankle. Read it and weep, if you like, though I warn you that it’s pretty long and cobbled together about as well as my fibula. Feel free to read something else. Ciao, darlings.

Ten weeks ago, when I was 25 weeks pregnant, I was carrying my two-year-old son down my parents’ carpeted stairs when my foot slipped and I broke my ankle. Kazaam. Just like that, everything about everything changed.

People like to ask me for details about my fall: what did I think while it was happening? was I able to manipulate according to the laws of physics for the best possible outcome? did I hear my bones pop? did it hurt right away? do I miss the rains down in Africa? Disappointingly, there aren't any more details. One moment I was walking down the stairs; the next I was sitting next to a screaming toddler and watching my ankle balloon into freak proportions. I rather wish I had a video of the moment, because I can’t imagine how it happened. I didn't even properly fall. My foot slipped and hit the next step toe-first. I felt the bones give. I sat down hard. I didn't drop my son. I didn't bonk my belly. I just sat down, saw the Jackson Pollack show unfolding at the end of my leg, and began to scream.

My husband wasn't with us at my parents’ house, so it was up to my dear parents to tend to everything. They ran as soon as they heard me screaming, which was really something given that I wasn't alone in the activity. My toddler son, scared but blessedly unhurt, was screaming. My four-year-old daughter, who had been descending several steps behind me, was screaming. My eight-year-old son, who had been standing at the bottom of the steps, was shouting. Four voices raised together in song. Must have sounded really fine. 

My father reached me first, and asked me what happened.

“I broke my ankle!” I screamed.

“You broke your WHAT?!?” he asked. I later found out he thought that my water had broken, but no, no. Not just yet.

“My ankle! My God, I broke my ankle!” I screamed again. And then my mother tells me I started begging Jesus for mercy while turning a dull shade of gray. I just remember being very, terribly cold.

What I remember henceforth is that my father hauled me into his car and drove to the closest rural hospital around. I was X-rayed. The X-ray technician clearly thought I was grossly incorrect about being broken. Hence the following conversation:

Tech: (manipulating my badly swollen foot here and there to get the most perfectest picture ever) My goodness! You’re sparkling! 

Me: (gritting teeth and trying hard not to beg desperately for death) What?

Tech: Your skin is sparkling in the light!

Me: . . .

Tech: Are you a vampire?

Me: . . . Yes.

After getting what passed for perfect, the tech dangled my foot over the edge of a giant foam thing and traipsed back to look over her snapshots. In between my own sobs, I heard a long, low groan. Then the tech immediately returned to me, placed my poor leg in a far less painful position, and left the room to fetch the doctor.

The first thing the doctor said to me upon entering the room was something like, “Your ankle is really busted. You need surgery. I can’t help you here. I’ll cast you up, I guess, but you need to get to a bigger hospital. You likely need surgery right now.”

I immediately whirled into a furious panic. But my father took hold of me and calmed me down. He stood behind me and stroked my hair. He calmly warned me whenever he saw the doctor was about to touch my leg. He answered all the nurses’ questions for me and made all the necessary arrangements for my transfer to yon bigger hospital. He saw to it that I got to hear the baby’s heartbeat on Doppler. He was absolutely heroic. My father is among the greatest men living, and not just because he is so very, very good to me.

But back to the star of this show: my stupid ankle. The doctor put me in a fiberglass cast up to my knee, which he then split all down the front to allow for the onslaught of swelling he assured me would come. Then the nurses deposited me in the back of my father’s car, wished me luck, and we were off to the next ER in a hospital three hours away.

Girls, if you ever break your ankle in an area that can’t accommodate your broken ankle, DO NOT LET THEM CAST YOU.* I was in agony—YES! Agony!—for the entirely of that three hour drive. The split in that cast was far from the Platonic ideal of split. It was worthless. The swelling had no place to go but hell, and it took me with it. Gah. I worked to be calm and to keep my blood pressure stable, but I think I might have failed a couple of times. I finally started “vocalizing” through the pain, for the sake of both my baby and my father, as neither would benefit from my sprouting horns and attacking that cast with my teeth. My father later told me he just kept thinking to himself, “What a nice song she’s singing. What a very nice song.”

Somehow we both came through that trip sane.

My husband met us as we were checking into the big hospital ER. He brought with him a backpack filled with everything I needed for a hospital stay (he even thought to include the lip balm, because he’s a man among husbands). And while I had to wait for every nosebleed and toothache to be cycled through before me, I was eventually given a bed, patted nicely on the head, and told the surgeon was on his way. At this point, it was close to midnight.

My husband and father sat up with me and tried to keep my mind off the pain—a Sisyphean task. I was run through an MRI. I was told why, for the sake of the baby, I couldn’t be given any real pain relief. I, in turn, explained why, for the sake of the baby, I would not accept any fake pain relief.. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The surgeon finally arrived and decreed that while I did need surgery, the swelling would have to go down significantly before they could cut me open. He (finally!) removed the hated cast, but then started probing my ankle to determine whatever it is surgeons need to determine in ERs at 1 a.m. His probing revealed one interesting thing: one of my fractures was perilously close to the skin. The surgeon chose to reduce it then and there. His method: grab my foot by the big toe, lift my leg thereby, and shake the whole mess until things got back into place.

I’m going to skip the gory details and just admit to this: I would rather suffer a Pitocin-induced labor exacerbated by a failed epidural than go through that bone reduction ever again. Moving on.

Once satisfied with the shaking and reducing, the surgeon wrapped my lower leg in miles of padding and bid me goodnight. I was scheduled for surgery first thing Monday morning and sent home. My menfolk carried me into the house, secured me in my bed, and I managed to crash into a rock-hard sleep.

Well! This has gone on long enough for one day. I’ll get on with it later. Ciao to you darlings who are still reading, and I’ll see you next time.

*Except that this won't be a problem, as I am patenting this splendid thing and no one will ever be able to break her ankle ever again. Too bad for you.

Part Two

Call of the wild

Where's the baby?

Some months back we ran into someone we hadn't seen in a while. He asked, "Where's the baby?" "There," I said, pointing to the one-year-old running around. And then, "I guess she's not much of a baby any more."

Even less on this day, when she is exactly as old as our firstborn was the day our secondborn was, um, born. To our knowledge, there is no one else on the way.

So much for this. There's not much to say about it and even less to do about it.

Name it and claim it

I spent the first seventeen years of my life meeting only three people with my name. Then in my first week at Seward I met about 35 other Rebekahs and Rebeccas, in addition to a huge surplus of Rachels and Sarahs. Apparently the matriarchs were the baby girl names to be had among families with a heavy investment in LCMS culture from 1975-1985.

I bring this up because if families with a heavy investment in LCMS culture are still sending their kids to Concordias 10 years from now, I think the places will be overrun by Anastasias, Marys, Evangelines, and Lilys.

Book, Recommended: Pew Sisters

Look, I know it's all the rage to be disgusted with women's Bible studies and roll our eyes at whoever the stupid women are who read them and mope over why SOMEBODY thinks women are so dumb and doesn't pay US lots and lots of money to write GOOD women's Bible studies instead. Yes, yes, dears. We're all very smart.

But get real: I know very few (no?) women of any intelligence, education, or field of interest who don't enjoy  hearing about other women's lives and judging them. Quit faking, read some stories about other women, and judge away. You know you'll like it. You can do it with this book by Katie Schuermann.

Careful, though. Pew Sisters will make you mad. You will want to know how, freaking exactly and I'm talking mechanics here, Marianne forgave. You will trip on how things worked out for Diedre. You, you Concordian Sister of Perpetual Parturition*, will wonder if Anna could really be that tired if she wasn't even nursing and how Claire's situation could possibly turn out that way under those circumstances. You will wonder if Emily's story ever really happens or if that's just a weird Lutheran fantasy. Your ongoing Mary/Martha problem still won't be solved by this book, darnit! Why is Julia OK and Faye not (or are they)? What ended up happening to Christine, for crying out loud, and what about poor Laura? Why the easy answer here and the hard one there? What kind of sick freak wrote this? (A Lutheran, of course. Nobody else ever likes us. :D )

Here's the other problem with Pew Sisters: it is not really going to feel sorry for you. It is going to stick your nose in suffering and say, "What are you going to do about it, sinner?"  So what are you going to do about it? We sin. That's why rotten things happen, and that's why the message of the cross is neither baby food nor boring. Hear it again, sinner. You suffer because you sin. Jesus suffered without sin to end your suffering. If that message is beneath you, you're above God.

My recommendation: read this with some sisters. I don't mean your friends from class, because they're not your sisters (sisters are rarely the same age). Read it with your pew sisters, the ones who call the same guy pastor and the same church home. Do what the author says: call that pastor and have him speak from Scripture to the questions this book is going to bring up**. Judge and be judged, and be reminded again of real justice, the supreme beauty of grace, and to whom such things belong.

*Full disclosure is that if you give someone this book, they might suspect you of ulterior motives when they get to Gabriella. On the other hand, you're a real person too.

**It will still be a women's Bible study with a pastor there. Do your girl talking first and schedule him to come in 45 minutes after your start time.

Alimentary, my dear Watson

Maybe it is the time I spend with fourth grade science books that makes me think this depiction of the life of an overture to the LCMS convention is a little TOO clear.

...loves even me.

I’d like to say that I carefully read all the mail we get from missions and institutions and organizations that we support (or that would like us to support them), and that no such missives are ever tossed unopened, but in truth they’re subject to triage like any other aspect of my life at this point.

Recently, I was hovering over the trash can during a desperate counter-clearing effort, doing a pre-pitch skimming of the newsletter from one such mission, when this story changed my trajectory:   

[These two toddlers/preschoolers] are children of a single mother and unknown father. She is a drug addict who works cleaning windshields on the highway. They had lived, or survived, under a bridge fed only on street food, soda, and cookies. Their clothing was ill-fitted, dirty rags. They were victims of indifference.

[When the country’s social services brought the children to the mission], they hadn’t eaten all day. [The boy] was wearing only a t-shirt and a diaper that hadn’t been changed all day. But the smiles on both of their faces, their affection, and their innocence was unforgettable. After eating, bathing, and being dressed in our best, the looks on their faces were indescribable. Yet, they both cried a lot in the days that followed because they missed their mother. Since then, they have adapted well and stolen our hearts.

It wasn’t merely the brokenness of a world in which such stories are all too common, nor the accompanying photos of the children that brought the tragedy to a personal point, that stopped me cold. It was that last bit--did it catch you too? The part that stopped me in my tracks, that accused and humbled and consoled me all at once? Those babies were rescued from filth, neglect, and abuse—Yet, they both cried a lot in the days that followed because they missed their mother.

I feed my kids veggies and whole wheat (at least some of the time). I bathe and clothe them. I’m married to their father and I might even look to some (distant and casual) observers as though I’ve got my life somewhat together. But the really true truth here is that I’m no less in need of forgiveness than the mother who left those kids under the bridge. Nor is this desperately-needed forgiveness available to me in any other special place than it is for her, homemade yogurt and hygiene notwithstanding.

And—astoundingly, humblingly—when my desperate sinfulness spills over, as it too often does, onto them, my kids are just as grudgelessly ready with their love and their seemingly effortless forgiveness, as were those precious little ones whose mother failed more publicly than I.   

Rebekah wrote this one a long time ago, and I still think about it. I think about it because at the end of every day I can count so many times that I’ve screwed up this motherhood thing, again, and yet I can’t count a single time that a child of mine has gone to bed with anger in his heart against me. All this love and trust in their hearts, their eyes, their arms, always at the ready, all undeserved—an overflowing of grace, pure grace, the grace their Heavenly Father so richly and recklessly bestows—thanks be to our prodigal God!

Cost/benefit analysis

The preschooler and the toddler have been upstairs together for 15 minutes now, and it’s been very quiet. Do I go and check on them, possibly ruining the longest stretch of peaceful independent-together play that they’ve had in quite awhile? (The other possibility, of course, is that checking on them will save me a lot of, er, aftermath, if they’re up to no good.)

Ah, the perennial questions of motherhood.

Husband talk

I find women differ much, both in the degree and manner in which their feelings will permit them to talk about their husbands. I have known women set a whole community against their husbands by the way in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself.

The Vicar's Daughter, George MacDonald