As if my life wasn't already feeling stressful and crazy, I had to add a broken toe to the mix. And the way that it happened was so ridiculous that I felt the most upset about that part of it. I was simply walking down the hall and caught my toe in the door frame of the laundry room. It hurt like none other to walk on it, but I had enough adrenaline to at least walk back to the couch to look at it. When I sat down, this is what I saw:
Can you tell which toe is broken?! (Left, middle in case it isn't clear.) As soon as I saw it I was certain it was broken. Nick was sitting in the room next to wear I was so I ever so calmly said out loud, "I think I just broke my toe". "WHAT?" he said as he hurried in to see. He thought it was so strange that I said it so matter of fact and wasn't more upset about it. The tears came a little while later when I realized the possibilities of how this was going to impact my convenient life. It was throbbing like crazy and I knew we needed to wrap it, but I didn't want anyone to touch it. There was no way I was going to the ER for a broken toe and Instacare had just closed about thirty minutes prior to this happening so I wanted to wait until the morning. I let Nick wrap it, but we didn't have any medical tape so this was the result:
Being that it happened on a Sunday night, we just made due with what we had. It looked ridiculous, but whatever. We read online to prop it and ice it for twenty minutes at a time around the clock. And thankfully my mom works for a podiatrist so I sent her some pictures and asked her opinion. She thought it was broken too and told me to see a doctor because sometimes broken toes lead to surgery. Oh good. One more thing to worry about.
After talking to her is when the tears came. I felt so frustrated that it happened at all and with only a few weeks of school left to go. If it was going to happen, at least let it happen after the semester was over. I was drowning in homework and projects and lived on campus four days a week. At one point I tried to get up to use the bathroom and couldn't put any weight on it. I almost fell to the floor trying. So then of course my imagination ran wild thinking about needing crutches or one of those nifty little scooters that I see people with broken legs using on campus. I dreaded the thought of either since two of the buildings I had classes in were split level so right as you enter the building you either go up or down stairs to get where you need to go. I'm sure both buildings have elevators, but I didn't know where or how to get to them without first climbing stairs. I had a third class in a building with stairs too, but not as many so I wasn't too worried about that, but my practicum was in a classroom with two year olds that were behind in their development and preparing for preschool. How in the world was I going to function there on crutches?
Thankfully, the next morning I was able to walk on it; barely, but I knew it meant I wouldn't have to deal with crutches. Instacare confirmed that it was broken, said the bone was displaced, gave me a walking shoe, and told me to follow up with a foot doctor. I called the podiatrist and they couldn't get me in for another week which was frustrating because I was worried it was causing more damage. And of course I played it up in my mind what they would have to do to undo the damage.
All that worry for nothing. Going to the foot doctor was basically a waste of time. I sat down and waited for the doctor. He finally came in and chatted about all things unrelated to my toe. He asked me to take my sock off. He looked at it from a distance. Didn't touch my foot. Didn't remove the tape holding my two toes together. Told me to keep wearing the walking shoe for five more weeks and come back for a follow up appointment. Really? He didn't have to take x-rays because they were in the system from when I had them done at Instacare, but I thought it was strange that he didn't do anything else. I was relieved that he didn't have to reset the bone or anything crazy, but at the same time I was annoyed that I spent all that time worrying about what he might do and then he didn't do anything. Literally. I didn't even have to get up and sit in the big, goofy exam chair. I guess I'll find out at my next appointment if it all healed how it should.
Sorry these pictures are all so bad. They were all taken on my phone and my phone camera is having issues. In these two pictures you can kind of see the bruising and swelling. It bruised clear up to the middle of my foot. Then the bruising went away and my toe wasn't hurting anymore. Then about a week later my toe was hurting again and the bruising came back. Of course I was worried that I did some more damage to it, but since then it stopped hurting and the bruising wasn't as bad so who knows.
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