Michael's Turn

Yesterday started off really fun. We woke up early and went to get one more day of garage sales in before they end for the year. It was a good day and we both found some good finds. We came home and started working on the house. We cleaned out the basement and organized it really well and threw a bunch of things out that were just taking up space. Once the basement was done we moved into the garage to get it cleaned out so we could start parking the cars in it. We found some large pieces of wood (remnants of our old fish tank stand) and I asked Michael if we could throw them away. He took them out front and leaned them up on the porch stairs and then stood on it to get it to break so the pieces would fit into the garbage. Unfortunately, when the wood broke it rolled his ankle. He thought it could be broken so I went to get our neighbor (Thanks Brian!) to help me get Michael into the truck and off we went. We went to insta-care and they did x rays. We were told it wasn't broken but that something was wrong because it was so compressed and that Michael needed to see a specialist for a second opinion. They sent us home after wrapping his ankle in an ace bandage and put an air brace on. They also told us if he wasn't getting a little relief in a few hours to go into the ER. We came home and I tried to get Michael as comfortable as could be. I ran to get his prescription filled, and rent him some crutches and a few movies. When I came home we watched TV for a few hours and he said he wasn't doing any better so he thought we should go to the ER. So we went in about 7:00. It was pretty packed. When we got into a room we found out our nurse was our sweet neighbor April, who we really like. She was wonderful and took really good care of both of us! The doctor came in and took a look at the earlier x rays and gave us some much better answers then the previous doctor. Michael had torn his ligaments in his ankle. He said it was like Michael had a huge cut inside of him and was bleeding internally in his ankle. He said his ankle will turn every color of the rainbow and that recovery will be 6 months to 2 years. The doctor himself had this happen to himself years ago so he really understood our concerns and our questions. He said surgery is an option but wouldn't recommend it. He also said that his ankle will probably never be back to normal. They put Michael into a walking boot and is told to stay off of it for about a week and to use his crutches when he needs to get around, but not to actually put weight on it for awhile. Then once he's able to put some weight on it he needs to start some serious physical therapy. It's been a rough day! Michael is in a LOT of pain. It's tolerable when he has some pain medication but he's really hurting. His ankle is the size of a baseball and is already starting to change colors. We've seen yellow, blue, and black so far.