Wow, Really, Body? Really?

So I took a tumble stepping off a simple curb yesterday, sprained my ankle and am on crutches.

Yes. Less than a year after breaking my arm (which took almost a year to heal), my brain and body decided they were bored and it was time to hurt myself again.

All my life, up to 43 years of age, I suffered nothing. Not an illness, not an injury. At least nothing serious.  There were two minor injuries: a broken tailbone when I was twelve, and a lightly sprained ankle when I was 22.  The tailbone broke when I fell backwards on roller skates onto my bum on a tiled floor (because I was too scared to roller skate on the concrete outside). That hurt like a bastard and left me with a tiny little shooting pain every time I sat down for about ten years. But I didn't even know what I had done until I happened to read about broken tailbones about 12 years later.

The sprained ankle happened when I was on a camping trip, and I did nothing about it, because we were camping and I was 22 and I was an idiot. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't walk, so I carried on, and was left with a weak left ankle as a result.   It has a tendency to give way occasionally while walking and has caused me a couple of falls and near falls over the years.

So yesterday after visiting my dad with the kids, I stepped off the curb onto the street and my ankle rolled and down I fell. It didn't hurt much but I got such a shock I promptly burst into tears. My kids each reacted differently. A cried "Mummy!" and ran to my side, hugging me and trying to help me stand up. M turned tail and ran to the car and jumped into the back seat, not wanting a bar of it.

I drove home and was planning to hobble inside and put my foot up with an ice pack, but once home found I couldn't stand on my foot at all, so we ended up calling my mum who drove us to the hospital.

Outside the hospital we waited on the curb while mum went to get me a wheelchair, and A whispered to me, "Mummy, I'm scared."

"It's OK," I said. "I'm OK, and this is a nice hospital. It's NOTHING like the scary hospital in Greece." I grinned and made a scared face and she laughed so hard and so fast that I knew that was exactly what she had been thinking of.

And here I thought the kids had buried those memories.

The hospital was great. We were lucky, there weren't many people in emergency and we got in fairly quickly and I was x-rayed and iced and bandaged and out within a couple of hours. I was however shocked to learn that a sprained ankle takes 3-6 weeks to heal and I would be on crutches for a week! I'd been thinking 1-2 days.

A lovely physiotherapist showed me how to use the crutches - which is much harder than it looks, when you can't put weight on the bad foot at all (as I couldn't at that stage).

We got home and I was pretty embarrassed (even though it's just my mum, and she's not judgmental), because the house was a tip. Y. had been busy with music and had also been sick the past week so hadn't done his share of the housework, and my plan that afternoon was to come home and blitz the house.

So there are dust bunnies all over the floors, baskets full of clothes and stuff piled on every surface, and the bathroom is grimy.

Looks like Y gets to make up for his housework break this week!

Anyway, elevation and ice-on, ice-off have helped a lot and today I can put some weight on my bad foot (yes, even MY weight!) and hobble around a bit easier, so things are looking up.

A funny thing though, you never know how stuff like this will hit kids.  They went through so much with my broken arm saga, this little accident has freaked them out a bit.

Last night they couldn't sleep. M came out multiple times before Y installed her on the couch next to me, and she hugged me so tightly and sobbed, and told me she was scared of the dark.

M has been sleeping in a completely dark room through her choice for months. She hasn't been scared of the dark since she was five.

A came out too and also needed some hugs, and both girls took awhile to settle back to bed. M hugged my neck and whispered to me, ashamed: "Mum, when you fell I just ran to the car because I was a bit freaked out."

"It's OK," I said, hugging her back just as tight. "It's OK."  I smoothed her hair and kissed the top of her needs-a-wash hair (that was the other thing we had planned to do tonight).

It's lovely and heart-breaking at the same time when your kids want to look after you, and still need looking after themselves.