Going batty

This is a tale - a tale of a girl who dared to venture into her attic to investigate a strange noise and suffered the terrible consequences.

Tuesday, April 12

The spring season had officially fallen in Buena Vista, Virginia and Anne Entsminger was reading on her front porch enjoying the new warmth of the air. Her new book was Snow Falling on Cedars, the selection for her next book club meeting.  The front door was propped open so that the cats would be free to come and go as they pleased and at times one of them would climb up in her lap.  Since being in their new home, the Entsmingers had learned that the tree in the side yard is very easy for the cats to climb up and jump to the roof, but is a difficult thing for their cats to jump back to, resulting in many trips up a ladder. 

On the day our story takes place, Anne heard many noises coming from the roof above her and was distracted several times from her book {which I was having a hard time getting into anyway} by having to stop and peek up towards the roof to see who had been trapped this time. Being herself, she of-course was not wearing shoes as she walked around the house peering up at the roof.  The odd thing was that every time she looked up at the roof, she could not see a cat, and all of them seemed to be present and accounted for throughout the day.  After her husband, Brandon, had gone to work for the night and the sun had gone down a bit, Anne decided to go inside and watch a little television.  She had barely turned on the T.V. and was about to close the front door when she heard even louder noises coming from above the ceiling.  She was worried that one of the cats had gotten stuck on the roof and had somehow gotten into the attic {please don't judge me} where they would have access to rat poison that had been up there since before they moved in. Worrying for their safety, and also not knowing for sure what was up there, Anne decided to go up into the attic to investigate.  This did not seem like an overly foolish idea since she had been up into the attic many times since living in the house and had never had any problems with being afraid.

But this time was different. 

As she didn't really believe that it was a cat, but there was certainly something alive up in there, Anne pulled down the ladder to the attic slowly and peered up into the dark space above. One step at a time she carefully and slowly crept up, once freaking out because the metal hinge caught on her hair, causing her to whip around and go back down a step. Finally getting up the ladder enough to reach up and pull the light chord, she turned on the light and went back down a couple of steps. She waited for a second, then slowly went back up and peeked her head into the opening and looked around. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something came out of the darkness at her {oh my gosh, I'm having panic problems just writing this} and caused her to go back down the ladder. Quickly, one step then two steps down and then...where was the next step? Nowhere - so down she went onto the floor 2 - 3 feet below, turning her ankle in the process. Pain shot through her and the words "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, it didn't happen, it didn't happen, oh my god it didn't happen" was all she could say as she rolled over onto her other side and felt her foot flop from one side to the other. Having sprained the same ankle two years before, she immediately knew that it was not the same thing.  And as she was laying on the floor, screaming bloody murder, all she could think about was closing the front door so that no one would hear her {haha}. After pushing the door closed, she looked up into the attic above her and saw bats swarming around the attic, one of which had knocked down her witch hat she bought for her Harry Potter Party back in November, and was caught inside, causing it too to fly around the attic {actually pretty hilarious looking back on the event}.  She managed to pull herself over to the living room where her cell phone was thankfully on the coffee table, within reach of an invalid on the floor. Her immediate reaction was to call Brandon, who of-course didn't answer because he's not supposed to answer the phone at work {don't worry, hun, I don't blame you for not answering :)}. Freaking out still, she called her friend Justan who was thankfully still awake, and the conversation with something like this:

"Hello"

"Hey, Justan, what are you doing?"

"Oh, sitting here reading Harry Potter, what are you up to?"

"Do you think you could come over real quick?"

"Yeah, I'll be right there"

"Okay, thanks"

And then I hung up.

She continued to lay on the floor, screaming a little bit and the main thing on her mind was the fact that the cats could now get up into the attic because the ladder was still down, and now not only was there rat poison up there, but angry bats as well.  Justan came right over and immediately upon coming in the front door said "Oh my gosh, what happened?!" as she was still laying on the floor.  He proceeded to call his girlfriend, Shana, who is in nursing school, to find out how to tell if a bone is broken and she told him to take Anne to the hospital.  When he set her ankle on its side on a pillow, she could feel her bones grinding together and she too knew that it was probably broken.

So off they went. But not before Anne made Justan poke his head up into the attic to make sure there were no cats up there before he closed the ladder. She called Brandon at work on the way - this time looking up the number in the phone book that Justan thankfully had in his car.

Brandon met them at the hospital and after being asked a million questions, including "when was your last period?" three times, and a small wait for the doctor - who she apologized to several times for her dirty feet since she had been walking around outside all day, Anne was wheeled into the x-ray room where she was attended by her mother-in-law and  a nice nurse {Liz works in Radiology at the hospital}. After the nurse went into the other room to look at the x-rays with Liz, she heard her say "Oh gosh, it's both sides!" Anne put her hands over her ears, rocking back and forth, and said "She's not talking about me, and if she is, let her be wrong, but she's not talking about me, she's not talking about me..."

Unfortunately, she was talking about Anne, and she wasn't wrong. So she left the ER with a temporary cast, a few pills of Percocet and instructions to contact the Orthopedic surgeon in the morning for a visit.

Okay, enough of third person narrative.

Wednesday, April 13

• Doctor visit - check
• More Percocet - check
• A black boot that the nurse tried to get me to shove my STILL BROKEN ankle into but I refused to - check
• New crutches - check
• A visit to the hospital for blood work, more questions of when my last period was and instructions for the next day's surgery - check

Okay...no, my ankle is NOT usually this big. Later, I'll post comparison photos, but I wasn't thinking well enough to get that before the operation.

Thursday, April 14

I woke up on time for my appointment at 9:15, only to get a phone call to tell me that they didn't need me there until 9:30, only to get another phone call on the way there that they were just kidding, and they really did want me there at 9:15. Oh, Stonewall Jackson Memorial.

On the way to the hospital

 I got there and it was all pretty quick (ok, the mix up with my paperwork when I first got there wasn't) I got wheeled upstairs, changed into a gown, got put on the bed, and hooked up to an iv (after which I forced them to tell me what time it was constantly). They wheeled me into the OR and gave me a "cocktail" that put me out pretty quickly - the last time I remember it being was 10:20. THANK GOODNESS I wasn't allowed to wear my contacts and that I'm basically blind without them, because I would have been so scared if I could actually see what was going on.

So, 45 minutes later, I woke up, and then about 2 hours later (after convincing them that all the morphine they were pumping me with was NOT working, after crying from the pain a lot, after getting Percocet into my system which did work, and after nearly passing out because they made me use the restroom before I could leave and the anesthesia made it really difficult) I was able to go home. I suppose that's the meat of the story. The rest is all mixed in with life, so I'll talk about it with other stuff. 

This is not my ankle.

I have "before" x-rays, but not "after" ones, so I googled ankle x-rays, and found this picture that is pretty dang similar to my screws and plate.

Alright, it's pretty similar to mine (B, obviously) except I have three screws going in on the left side, not just the one and the screws going into the plate on the right side are a little different, but I couldn't really begin to describe how. But like I said, it's pretty close.

He initialed my leg, haha