Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Three strikes…

Some of you know that my poor Ma did herself some mischief a few weeks ago, falling back off a yacht, fracturing her right tibia twice from the ankle 2 inches up towards the knee. She has been ‘off her feet’ since, discouraged from doing much as her fracture types prevent a solid cast and her splint doesn’t provide much support if she should happen to accidentally put pressure on it.

She has been a big brave girl, reluctantly relinquishing her control over the house, over herself, over her day. She’s been getting a little better on crutches but really struggling with being so dependant on everyone and very much confined to the house. Some days she gets really down and others she buoys from some long neglected ‘sorting out’ task she sets herself.

Last night I woke to what could only be described as yelling. (I may not need to describe the sound as you quite possibly heard it from wherever you were, if awake after midnight.) My blood ran cold as I rushed out to the stairwell to make sense of the alarming screams. My poor Ma was huddled at the bottom of the stairs where Pa was desperately trying to make sense of the situation. It seems she had decided to try climbing the stairs with crutches, instead of heaving herself up on her backside as she has been. Three stairs up, she must have lost footing and crashed back down, landing on her lower back and quite obviously doing more than bruising it. I have never seen anyone in so much pain.

The long and short of it is that by 2am, the house was once again quiet, the ambulance having finally left in the pouring rain, drugged up Heather in the back, stressed out Miles following in the car. Buzz, who had quickly been removed from the scene, gradually reduced his frantic yelps of confused concern and joined in the strange new quiet calm. Heath and I staggered around the house a few minutes, trying to think of anything else we should do, then crashed back to bed.

This morning, Dad was fast asleep in bed. No Ma. Still waiting to find out how she is.

…And you’re OUT

5 comments:

Richard said...

Hey, that's only two strikes!!

In all seriousness, I hope she is OK with no further serious injuries. Give her my best (arguably not that great, but it's all i've got damn you!)

Margs said...

OMG!

I hope Mum feels better....let's hope there is no permanent damage, backs are a bugger to fix!

I'll put in a few words with the Guy upstairs for a speedy recovery.

Jenny said...

Shit! Sounds awful!

I hope she is okay too.

Matt said...

That's terrible.

Pass my best wishes on to your Mam, and here's hoping for a speedy recovery!

Noodle said...

Seeing as Sarah has just headed off to NZ for work for the week, I might as well give the update... it seems that lucky Heather hasn't broken or fractured anything, or even popped any discs. Just a lot of bruising and a very sore back, which, whilst not very pleasant, could have been a hell of a lot worse. And she didn't cause any more injuries to her recovering leg fractures, either, so all in all the outcome was a lot better than expected! Still, she's certainly not dancing around with joy, that's for sure.