Windy Sydney

I am a klutz. Let me just put that on the table and own it. It's true, I admit it... not much I can do about it. I guess there is some part of my brain that doesn't register with my limbs when it's most important.

Saturday I was moving some heavy objects around at work, and the large steel cart that I was pulling didn't stop as quickly as I thought it would, and rammed into the back of my foot. Hard. Like, really hard. Hard as in I could have cried real tears and almost did.

One of my co-workers eventually found me sitting on the floor clutching my right ankle as if I had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He told me I was sort of rocking back and forth, and I honestly don't remember. The only thing I could think of during those first few moments was how bad it was, and how much I wished I could go back in time and push the damn cart instead of pull it.

My right ankle is now a beautiful shade of purple. I wrapped it up with an ace bandage, hoping the swelling would go down just a tad... but the only thing it did was make it hurt worse. I ended up going without it and popping 3 or 4 over-the-counter pain pills every 5 hours. It's more than recommended, but damnit... I need 'em. Thats the kind of pain I am in.

Leave it up to me to find a way to hurt myself like this. I have always been the one in my family that got hurt doing the most simple things... like opening windows. When I was in high school, I opened a window and the latch busted... sending the heavy window smack down on three of my five fingers. None of them were broken, but there was no way in the world I would have been able to play in the high school concert. It's a little hard to play the flute and piccolo when your fingers won't bend. It sucked.

On the last day of high school, the day I graduated, my high school had an awards assembly to highlight the scholarships some of the seniors had won. As I stood up from the bleachers to accept my certificate of achievement, I proceeded to trip over my own feet and tumble down the bleachers in front of the entire student body. Gawd. It still makes me cringe.

I am not the only one in the family who has had strange accidents, my brother is also pretty good at this sort of thing.

One Christmas, Santa left me a bike and my brother a scooter. A few months later, as spring arrived, I begged him to let me ride his scooter.

"Please... c'mon..."

I eventually won him over by telling him he could ride my bike. That was a bad idea.

He wasn't used to the handle bar brakes. He was used to the kind of bike where you simply had to pedal backwards to stop motion. I guess he saw something on the road and stopped paying attention to where he was going, and he headed toward a parked boat on the side of the road. By the time his adrenaline kicked in he started pedaling backwards, but of course that instinct wasn't going to help him. He ended up hitting that boat head-on, and the propeller blade went right into his head... deep.

Local doctors immediately put him on a life-flight helicopter to Salt Lake City's Primary Children's Medical Center. He had emergency surgery, and even though the doctors warned us all that he would have lasting mental problems, he turned out just fine. No lasting effects. Pretty amazing, isn't it?

Another time he pretty much turned his ankle into powder while sliding into second base at a little league game. He had to have surgery on that, too. He has more metal in his body than anyone else I have ever met.

Time for more Advil... until tomorrow!
Andee