Broken Leg

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BROKEN LEG

I dream funny things that could never happen. In the dream it seems so real, but when I wake up I realize how strange it all was. Some people put great faith in dreams, seeing them as prophecies of the future. I dreamed I was putting Christmas tree lights in the walnut tree in the front yard. My wife doesn't really like the white lights on it during Christmas, but I thought with just a few more strands, it would be just perfect. In the dream, I am stringing lights from limb to limb, and then I fall out of the tree. Maybe one of these days I will learn to listen to warnings.

So when a warm November night came, it was too much to resist. Armed with just the right lights, I climbed to the lowest limb and began the adventure. I had been much higher in the tree before, as much as thirty or forty feet off the ground, and had never encountered a problem. But just ten feet off the ground, I fell straight down into the flower bed, bending my ankle and putting enough pressure on the bottom of my leg to crack the fibula. I've fallen farther before, and landed harder, but I twisted my ankle a bit on landing, and slipped sideways.

I lay in the flowers for just a second and limped into the house quickly, hoping no one had seen me fall out of the tree. I told my wife I had just fallen and thought I may have broken my leg. But since I was hopping around on it, we both assumed I was all right, just like always.

I had been cast in the musical "Oliver" and we were having our first read-through and cast meeting later that morning. I went to the theatre and listened to the details, but told the director and a couple of the other actors I thought I had a broken leg and needed to go to the hospital. Everyone laughed even me, since I was just hopping around -- how could it be broken?

At the hospital I was in for a long wait, although the staff did give me some ibuprofen for the pain. A major wreck had happened on the freeway south of town, and the nurses and doctors were very busy taking care of people who were much more seriously injured than I was.

As a non-emergency, I sat in the emergency room for about six hours while they took care of the people whose lives were in danger. As they passed my cubicle, they must have thought to themselves, "Oh, yeah. It's that guy who fell out of his walnut tree while putting up Christmas lights. We'll have to do something about him eventually." With all the pandemonium going on and the people who were really hurting, I almost felt like sneaking out so they could focus on the people who needed it.

After a couple of x-rays, the doctors weren't convinced there were any broken bones. But after I told them there was a pain a little higher in the leg than they had been looking at, another x-ray showed a hairline crack in the fibula. I had broken my leg falling sideways after landing, and the twisting had sprained my ankle.

I was expecting a cast, but everyone told me the bone didn't carry any weight, so it would heal fine by itself. I moaned enough that they gave me an ankle brace I wore for a couple of days.

The real worry they had was the ankle. I had to visit an orthopedic specialist, and as I looked at the team photos of past football stars hanging on the wall, I was duly impressed. Unfortunately, the doctor wanted to put a screw or pin in my ankle to hold it in place!! He said he would like to wait for a couple of weeks and check it then, and to keep wearing the ankle brace the hospital had given me. I was starting to be worried. I was almost afraid to ask the doctor about the broken leg, fearing another pin or screw higher up in the leg.

My luck held. After two weeks I went back and the doctor said the healing in the broken bone was amazing, and that the ankle was going to be fine.

I have since taken down the lights on the tree using a ladder and being very careful. The tree is old and it may not be around many more years, but when I cut it down, I think I want to save that one special limb, which broke one of my limbs.

Maybe I will carve it into a walking stick.

Or maybe a pair of crutches.

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