Break a leg (please don’t!)
Sunday, February 24th, 2008Too late! Friday afternoon, during an annoying bout of light snow which completely covered the treacherous ice on our driveway, Joe took a tumble and snapped both the tibia and the fibula of his right leg. He was just running out to help our “house cleaning supervisor” drive out of our driveway, so of course, he wasn’t wearing a coat or anything. Thankfully, this very kind woman stayed, trying to drag him closer to the house, and going in to check on the kids, because I was at work. One of our most excellent neighbors happened to walk by with his dog at that time, and he has some EMT training because of his volunteer fire department work, so he came down and helped get Joe covered with blankets and had our helper call 911, and then me.Â
I guess this is my first family emergency, but I cannot even begin to describe the size of the pit in my stomach when my receptionist stuck her head in the exam room and told me I needed to come to the phone because there was an emergency at home. I was actually a bit relieved when I heard it was Joe that was hurt and not one of the kids. My staff were wonderful – Dr. P volunteered to take my last 2 appointments of the day and handle emergency call, and Renee picked up her stuff and came right home with me to watch the kids so I could go to the hospital. The road were “greasy” but we got home alright, and I met the ambulance leaving the house, so I dropped off Renee, called the hospital to verify which one he was going to, and then took off. I got there shortly after he did.Â
The ER doc and nurse came in shortly after I did, and when they lifted Joe’s leg to put on a temporary splint to stabilize it for radiographs, it was pretty obvious from the way his foot dangled that the leg was broken. They already had him on pain meds at that time, so it wasn’t quite so terrible for him. There were a number of “ice falls” that afternoon, so it took awhile to get through x-ray, but the pictures weren’t pretty. The poor orthopedic surgeon on call had several cases to review when he came in, but he was very patient. He is the same doctor who took care of my arm when I fractured my radial head a couple of years ago, so we were very lucky to see him. He explained that Joe had a spiral fracture resulting from planting his foot on the ground and then falling while twisting his body. The tibia is fractured a bit above the ankle, and the fibula is fractured much further up, near his knee. Since the tibia is the major weight-bearing bone, that’s all they repair. There was enough displacement of the fracture that simply putting on a cast would have resulted in the leg healing shorter than the other leg, if at all, so he recommended a surgical repair to be done Saturday morning.Â
Joe stayed in the hospital Friday night awaiting his surgery. Priscilla offered to see my Saturday morning appointments so I could be with Joe in the morning, and Auntie Renee took the kids at her house. He went into surgery around 1PM, and was done around 3PM. An interlocking nail, consisting of an intermedullary pin stabilized by 4 transverse screws was threaded all the way down his tibia from the knee. It took some manipulation to get a small “butterfly” fragment of bone and the distal fragment threaded onto the pin, so there is considerable swelling at the fracture site, and the doctor wants to wait for it to go down before he sends Joe home.
He was pretty loopy last night, but felt more like himself today, except for that horribly painful leg. He’s got good meds, and good people looking after him at the hospital, so he’ll get through it just fine. I’m guessing he will be a worse patient at home, when he can’t get around to get things he needs. We are hoping he’ll be discharged tomorrow sometime. He was getting up with a walker to go to the bathroom today, and they should be training him to use crutches tomorrow.
Many of the nurses are former students of his, so he is fortunate that he is a much-beloved teacher rather than the “weed-out” professor. They all seemed to be very happy to take care of him.
How will he watch the kids while I work this week? When will he be able to drive and resume his classes? Will he be able to make his trip to Wichita next week? Dunno. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, enjoy some hospital shots! Just be thankful I didn’t think to bring my camera yesterday when he got out of surgery! Note that he is no longer wearing his Elmo t-shirt that proclaims, “Tickle This!” on the front. He had to trade that in for an classic open-back model.
“How are the kids handling all this?” you might query. “Baba who?” they reply, when I ask them if they miss him. Seriously though, they don’t really talk about it, nor do I think they really understood why he wasn’t around before I took them to see him today.  They were confused and upset. Their schedules were horribly disrupted, and Anna wasn’t sleeping well or eating for Auntie Renee. Will goes with the flow a little better, but he never really knows what to expect from minute to minute anyway. Anna had a really rough day yesterday, so when we got home late last night, she and I had a picnic on her bed, and she ate about a pound of Goldfish, so at least her tummy was full. We all had a good night’s sleep last night, and we didn’t rush around this morning. I took them over to the hospital to see Baba at lunch time, and they were very glad to see that he was still around. They didn’t seem to be too freaked out by him looking so puny. Anna wanted to kiss his booboo to make it better. I had to keep them from getting tangled up in all his lines, but they weren’t afraid to get close to him.Â
On a funny note, Will has picked up a goofy line from some video he’s been watching. I haven’t actually heard this in the movie, but I think it comes from a Wiggles DVD involving the late Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. Will is speaking a lot of English, but not much of it is very clear or understandable yet. So when this popped out of his mouth, as clear as day, we were all shocked and amazed. He says, “Would you like a snake?” Of course, it makes us laugh, so he says it over and over again. He doesn’t seem to have any idea what a snake is, but it just gets funnier and funnier. He has begun varying it, and now will ask if we would like assorted other things, like a “big snake” or a “mama snake.” This morning, he got going, and asked me, “Would you like a Will?” I said no, I already had one. This was absolutely hysterical to him, so he’s used this one all day. Here he is in the hospital, trying it out on Baba.
And because I am so far behind with my blog, here’s a lovely little item left over from a week ago that I haven’t gotten around to posting yet. Perhaps it will lighten your day a bit. I know it does mine!