(Pictures (X-rays) will appear eventually)
We were in Connecticut for the weekend of the Family Reunion (Douglass, that is; clams & Volleyball) July 27-31.
Dani was scheduled to leave from Hartford Airport on Sunday 7/30 for a week in Raleigh-Durham North Carolina, for a visual fox-pro conference/class.
Sunday morning she and her room-mate Amy (along for the weekend) were going down the hill via a steep foot-path to get breakfast at the lodge. Dani fell, and was instantly in extreme pain. Amy came on down the hill and met most of the rest of the family as we were leaving the lodge. Will and Amy went back up the path to help Dani and the rest of us returned to the campsite. Will came trotting into the campsite a few minutes later and asked to borrow my car, as Dani didn't think she'd be able to walk back. After getting breakfast, the three (Will, Amy and Dani) returned to the campsite. Dani's ankle was a mess - all swelled up and nasty looking. We propped it up, put on an ice-bag, and wrapped it well with an ace-bandage.
Carol Ladd (wife of a third cousin) came early for dinner, and called home for her husband, Lance, to bring a set of crutches as Dani couldn't hardly hobble. Carol and her daughter offered to take Dani to the airport, as there were a couple of stops they wanted to make along the way (mainly, their favourite comic book shop) and Will and Amy went along. They left about 2:30. The plane was due to leave at 5:45. Scotland is about 1.5 hours from the Springfield/Hartford airport. At about 8:30 they all come trouping back to the campsite. ALL of them.
Dani's flight from Philly to Raleigh had been cancelled due to bad weather. There were no rooms in Philly because of the convention, and Dani didn't want to stay in an airport motel in Hartford all alone. Alternate flight was to leave at 6:00 am, check in 'AT LEAST' one hour early.
By this time it was POURING as if somebody had knocked out the bung. Dani gets into the shower, and manages to get herself clean. We get her ankle wrapped back up, and get her hefted into bed. The tent Will was sleeping in was soaked, as was the tent Aimée, Bob and their two toddlers were sleeping in. So we put Will into Amy's bed, Amy into our bed, Aimée & family into Alice's trailer, and we (Ron and I) slept in the larger tent...not exactly drenched, but certainly horribly damp.
Had to get up at 3:30 to get Dani back to the airport. Got there, only to find that the ALTERNATE flight was cancelled (DC to Raleigh) also because of weather. We managed to get her on a direct flight from Hartford to Raleigh, and she arrived there before we were back at the campsite!
She only had to miss half a day of classes and it was all stuff she knew anyway.
On Thursday, she sent me an e-mail saying that the ankle was beginning to look really nasty, turning all shades of black and blue and purple, and was not feeling any better. I made an appointment with her primary care physician for monday morning, and lo-and-behold...She thought it might be a chip fracture. So she sent Dani to get x-rays.
The x-rays showed a break, so they sent her to an orthopedist, who said "Oh MY!!!" put it into a plaster splint and scheduled her for surgery on 8/17 (get this... this is 1 1/2 weeks she'd been walking around on it, already!). On the day of surgery Ron went to stay with her, and he asked the surgeon what, exactly, the break looked like. He showed Ron the x-rays, and it was the fibula, about 3" above the ankle, and it wasn't just a green-stick fracture like Dani thought she'd seen, but a clean and complete break.
They put a plate-and-screws to hold the ends of the bone together, and then a pin thru the tibia and fibula to keep the two bones centered over the ankle. The pin will come out in about 10 weeks (the rest of it stays there). Meantime she is on crutches with another plaster splint. She goes back for a checkup next Friday (the 25th) and they will decide where to go from there. If everything is in place okay and showing signs of knitting properly, they will let her start putting SOME weight on it after another week has gone by, gradually increasing as time goes on. She will still need the crutches for support and balance - probably until the pin comes out, maybe even a little longer.
She is supposed to return to Raleigh for more classes in October sometime, but that will be up in the air for a while.
So, we are calling her every day, and going in a couple of times a week to catch up on her laundry, make her some meals, and just generally make sure she'd doing all right.
The day before her surgery Dani told me she'd heard a distinct 'snap' when she fell, but Amy thought she'd fallen on a twig and that's what snapped. I told her that if I'd known THAT on Sunday morning, she would have found herself in the emergency room, flight or no flight!
Thus endeth another chapter in the continuing (never-ending) drama of "Rotach Rabble Rousers..."
God grant us strength.
And how has YOUR summer been, Mrs. Lincoln?