The foot bone’s connected to the whine bone

Random musings from broken foot land…

When I first hurt my foot I was pretty sure it was broken. First clue: the loud crack I heard as I fell. I’m lying on the ground looking up at the garage ceiling thinking “Huh. That didn’t sound so good.” So then I drag myself into the house and start crawling around trying to decide what to do. Gabriel, who can tell something is wrong (since his mom doesn’t crawl around on her hands and knees very often), offers to get me the preschoolers’ panacea – a bandaid. When I tell him “No thanks kiddo, I think it might be something a bandaid can’t fix.” He shrugs and says, “Well then can I ride on your back like a horsie?”

I have proven the adage that “even when all your kids are grown, you never get to retire from being a parent.” When I decided to go to the doctor and my husband was still stuck at work, who did I call? My Mommy and Daddy. They swooped in to rescue me. Dad drove and stayed with me for two hours at the InstaCare (a misnomer if ever there was one). My mom stayed at my house with the kids and disobeyed my strict instructions to not clean anything and did the dishes and swept the floor while I was gone. My parents are awesome.

The doctor looked no older than 16 and really did nothing to earn what I’m sure was a huge “day after Thanksgiving wish I were golfing but am stuck at an after-hours clinic” fee. All Doogie Howser did was squeeze my foot in various places and ask if it hurt. I take it back, he did have to apply that tricky Medical School Lesson #1674: yelp of pain = injured spot. The real diagnosis came from the x-ray lab technician, and the actual splinting of the foot was done by the medical assistant with the lowest degree. Heck, I could have saved them all that trouble and just gone with my mother’s verdict. When she first arrived, she took one look at the odd protrusion on the side of my foot and said “You broke your fifth metatarsal.” She knew this because she had broken the same bone many years before. But she was tripping up the steps from her garage not down them so don’t go suggesting “like mother like daughter.”

I had no idea my universe was so 5th-metatarsal-centric. Suddenly I feel completely helpless. I can hobble around on crutches but I can’t carry anything – not even my baby. So I have to boss my husband and kids around (even more than usual) and tell them to “fetch this” and “go get me that.” Ethan has requested an increase in his slave wages. I’m even calling in favors from neighbors since I can’t drive. I never realized my life was so precariously balanced on the pinpoint of my own agility. To mix metaphors, I was like an Imperial crewmember on the Death Star, oblivious to the fact that one well-placed torpedo could cause the whole shebang to self destruct.

I am getting tired of telling people that I broke my foot making bread. And they don’t believe me when I say “The Olympic speed skating trials didn’t go too well.” So I’m taking nominations for a new explanation. Any suggestions?