Gimpy girl fall down go boom

Well, this morning when I was leaving to go out to the garage to work, I fell. The upper left part of my left foot (not my ankle) twisted outward to the left, and man did it hurt.

Several expletives later, I had managed to scrape myself, my horn, my purse and black carryall bag up from the asphalt to get to the garage. Thankfully I only drive automatics so I could still drive to work with my good foot.

I managed to strap both my horn and both bags to me and limped into rehearsal. I could still put some pressure on the left foot, but not much.

I think that the fall was a combination of several things:

1. I was running late and in a hurry.
2. I had worked out on the Gazelle less than 1/2 hour before I left so my feet were still a little weak with fatigue.
3. I was wearing Dansko mary janes, which although hugely comfy (you could comfortably walk several miles in them) and stylish, don't have a lot of side support and have become looser as they've broken in. And I was wearing thinner socks with them than I normally do.
4. The step from the sun porch onto our driveway (which leads to our garage) is fairly deep. In fact, the housing inspector told us that we would definitely want to put another step in there. But did we? Oh no. It's felt awkward to me before, but we never did anything about it. But boy howdy yesirreebob, you can bet your britches that we will now. Like tomorrow. Okay, we both work tomorrow. But soon. Before spring.

This is a picture that I took of this ill-fated step during the housing inspection (presumably to remind ourselves to fix it...obviously that didn't work...). You also have to step over the drainpipe, which is also awkward. You might not be able to tell by looking at it, but I think it's a good 10-11 inches deep.

So I had sat down and warmed up for 15 minutes (which is not much of a warm-up by my standards), and then rehearsal started at 10:30am. Krystof and I didn't play the first several pieces on the rehearsal schedule, so I got up and tried to hobble out of the room to call David to tell him I had fallen and that we had to fix that step soon.

Only this time, I could barely walk due to the pain. Actually, the physical pain wasn't as bad as the worrying about further injuring my foot if I continued to walk on it. I had no idea what I had done to it in the fall - was it just a bad sprain, or had I broken my foot?

I decided not to mess around because while I have a very high tolerance for pain and discomfort, I knew I couldn't deal with the mental anguish of not knowing. So I told Rip, the Asst. Personnel Manager (who some of you you might remember as the Chicken Owning Bass Player guy who sells eggs to the orchestra) that I was leaving to go have this checked out, either at my drs. office or at the ER.

I called my Dr., and she said that because of the pain I was having, to definitely go to the ER to have it checked out. So I did. I went to the same place I had my appendectomy back in October of 2004, and the service there was just as phenomenal. I don't think I waited for more than 15 minutes for anything.

First I had regular x-rays, and the physician said that she wanted to ask a radiologist about what looked like it could be a tiny fracture. Well, the radiologist said he couldn't make a definitive answer about it, so they ran a CAT-SCAN. Then the good news came back that it was not broken, just badly sprained. Phew!!

So when the physician came back to talk to me about things, I asked her a lot of questions and learned a lot. Did you know that tendons connect muscle to bone, while ligaments connect bone to bone? I didn't. Isn't that good to know? She said that it's possible that I strained both ligaments and tendons with my fall, to keep my foot elevated and with as little pressure on it as possible. I am on crutches probably for the next several days, or until my pain is manageable enough to walk on it a little. She said that I could judge how much pressure to put on it based on the pain involved.

What I am discovering is that if I hold my toes and balls of that foot up high enough off the ground (about a 45 degree angle), I can walk on my heel with no pain at all. This makes sense because it was my foot, not my ankle, which got sprained. As long as I'm not putting any pressure on the foot itself, it's fine. It doesn't hurt much at all; I told the physician that I didn't need anything for pain even though she offered it. I have both ibuprofen gelcaps and a Walgreens tylenol knock-off in the medicine cabinet, and I am sure they will be more than enough. (Ibuprofen tends to work better for me.)

It's fortunate that my job involves long periods of sitting! With the exception of missing today's two rehearsals for several educational concerts coming up, I'm not missing any more work. I got permission from Linda (our Personnel Manager) to have a chair to the left of my stand so I can keep my left foot elevated and with ice on it during both rehearsals tomorrow. I'm planning to definitely pack a lunch, especially since the weather is supposed to involve snowstorms.

Crutches and snow. Oooooog...

So Gimpy Girl here doing just fine. I practiced a lot tonight, which was very good, and David is taking excellent care of me. Well, he will be when he gets home from band practice, anyway. I just wanted to let you all know that I'm okay, I'm thankful that my foot is only sprained and isn't broken, and that even though I'm moving much more slowly, my normally high "Energizer Bunny" spirits are still running at full throttle. :)

Have a great Wednesday...much love to all of you. And y'all be careful out there, y'hear? 'Cause it's s'posed to snow a LOT tomorrow. Least 'round here, it is.

(I have no idea where that southern/western accent just came from.)

Darcy