You have to be careful with your footing. I’ve recently found a great pt/rehab place that is helping me gain some strength so that when I do have those unavoidable falters I can catch myself. Unfortunately, two sessions was not enough to prevent my birthday buster.
I was actually having a good birthday. I slept in, took a shower, and got ready for my lunch meet up with a friend. As I was getting dressed, I was thinking about how proud of myself I was that I was actually leaving the house for my birthday. I didn’t want it to feel last year’s chemo birthday even though I love a good all day in bed sesh. A friend texted me to ask me how my bday was going. As a responsible driver, I delayed texting her back while I was on my way to lunch, but I was crafting the message in my head, “Actually, I’m on my way to meet a friend for lunch at a French cafe.” Well, I never sent that message.
I pulled into the parking deck to find myself behind the friend I was meeting, so I didn’t stay in the car to text. I fell for the “scan QR code” for contactless payment, but darn it if those things don’t take longer than the dang walk-up payment. Anyway, as I figured that out, we realized the elevator was shut down. We both have some stability issues, so we commented that we needed to hold the rail as we walked down the stairs toward the busy pier.
Well, you see, apparently holding the rail was not enough to keep me from tripping up. I flung forward rolling my ankle as I slipped down a few stairs catching myself on my knee with a little head bump on the rail for good measure. My friend rushed to my side to help me. I had a fleeting moment of “oh, I’m fine.” But that was very fleeting. I looked around and saw a few people looking trying to decide if they should intervene. They seemed to be confident that my friend could help me. In that same flash every bit of “I am strong. I will be fine. Stop worrying about your upcoming scans. You aren’t doomed to have a recurrence” left my body. I heaved forward in tears and agony while protecting my ankle. “Didn’t it just figure. Last year I was in the hospital. This year couldn’t possibly be normal, could it?”
A gentleman who was having lunch at a restaurant on the pier came over to see if he could help with anything. He asked if we needed him to call anyone, but my friend, feeling protective, told him thank you but no we have phones. He asked if he could get ice or anything. I don’t really remember what the decision on that was, but he returned to his lunch. A few minutes later a waiter came with a cup of ice for me, so I suppose he sent that along without a definitive answer. I was grateful.
With my French cafe lunch fully off the agenda now, we started to plan how to get me home. My right ankle was beginning to resemble a softball, and I could barely put any weight on it. Aside from the physical pain, I was just totally mentally overwhelmed with this new devellopment. We called @cleverdevil to work out a plan for making sure Colette had a ride home from school and that he could come retrieve my car with my friend later. I sat on the stairs icing my ankle while my friend brought her car around and down to the bottom of the stairs. I hobbled into the front seat and off we headed towards home—croque monsieur-less and eclair-less.
My friend was optimistic that this was going to be okay. It will just be a day or two of bad pain and then a week of nursing it back to my most recent baseline. I was a bit more skeptical, because this fall felt eerily familiar to the fall I took in 2017 which completely destroyed my ankle. I had some optimism that it wouldn’t sideline me quite as much bc it hadn’t gotten as big as the 2017 injury yet. Having had that injury in 2017 though, I decided not to go to urgent care or anything. I’d stay home, take pain meds, wrap it, ice it, and go see an orthopedist the next day. I was determined not to see a doctor on my birthday.
I adjusted my birthday expectations and plans and sat myself in my recliner for the rest of the day. Aside from the pain and frustration from not being mobile, the rest of the day was good. @cleverdevil had the best birthday presentation for me, which I will detail in the next post. We ordered Outback for dinner, so I could have my comfort meal of Alice Springs Chicken with a wedge salad and baked potato. Sheny made a yummy cake for which @cleverdevil made a Tahitian vanilla bean frosting and which Colette decorated. The day was fairly redeemed by that point.
The next day I had my orthopedist appt. They did x-rays of course on both my knee and ankle. Good news: My knee was intact just a sore contusion to manage. My ankle didn’t require surgery. Bad news: I managed to give myself an “avulsion fracture.” It sounds worse than it is. Basically when I fell and stretched my ligaments they pulled a piece of bone with them.
So, here I am, 2 days later with a walking boot, a bruised knee, and a swollen ankle sidelined for a potential 3 weeks. I do feel a little bit more optimistic that it will not be the full 3 weeks, because I can already straighten my toes and do a tiny circle with my ankle. I’ve just gotta get to the point where I don’t squeal then I move my ankle to the sides or up and down, then I can drive again and maybe get back to that more normal feeling quickly. I am fully aware that I will be needing PT for it, and I’m hoping it will actually be better than what my pre-cancer baseline was. My ankle was never the same after 2017..
Trying to have a positive perspective, I’m hoping that a broken ankle is the worst news in the next few weeks. Scans are on 8/28. 1yr oncology follow-up is 9/10. I’ll take the ankle beatdown over cancer any day.
Alas, here we are…onward.
