In the year after Lexi was born, I throughly enjoyed life, but I did not lose the weight that I had gained. I have learned since then that losing weight requires you to be selfish to a point. You have to specifically devote time to yourself and as a new mom I did not do that. I maintained around 190 lbs that year, and then disaster struck.
On October 18th, 1999, we had spent the evening with the people I babysat for and left an already sleeping Lexi overnight with them, as I was supposed to be there to babysit at 6:30 the next morning. The next morning we walked out the door at about 5:45 while it was still dark outside, and for some reason the outside lights in our apartment complex were not turned on. Jim was doing something and went ahead and walked out the door, I was carrying a travel mug of hot chocolate and a small box containing a baby blanket that I needed to mail to my sister-in-law. There were 6 or 7 stairs then a landing and another 6 or 7 stairs outside that you had to go down to leave the apartment.
On the first set of stairs, I looked down and thought that there was only one stair left, I stepped on it with my left foot, then took a bigger step and turned some with my right foot expecting to be on the landing. There had been another step that I had not seen and it was a long drop before my right foot landed. My first reaction when I fell was to reach for my left ankle because it hurt, my right wrist was also hurting, I later found out that they were both only severely sprained. Then I saw my right leg and screamed for Jim.
I was wearing Reebok tennis shoes and the outside of the sole was touching my calf. My ankle socket had disconnected from my leg bones and my foot was pretty much turned upside down. When my foot had landed, my ankle had turned outward, breaking my ankle socket in 3 places and breaking my fibula (the smaller bone on the outside of the calf) in 2 places. I really was not in that much pain, I was barely crying and was completely calm and under control. My neighbor Max Jenkins sat there with me praying, which really helped me to stay calm, while Jim was trying to figure out what to do.
Remember that I was weighing in at 190 lbs and Jim who is 6' tall weighed about 140 lbs. He could have picked me up, but they could not figure out how to get me down the remaining stairs without hurting me, so they decided to call the ambulance. We lived right across the street from the hospital, and the ambulance arrived very quickly, but they did not have any idea's for getting me down the stairs either. They had me go down on my butt, and one of them put a hand under my leg to stabilize my ankle, not realizing my leg was also broken, that was when the pain began! The duct taped a pillow around my leg, then put me on the stretcher and took me to the hospital.
Thankfully the drugs came quickly, and I felt fine while they explained to me that they were going to transfer me to another hospital to have surgery. They kept me pretty much sedated during the transfer and until the surgery and I do not really remember anything until sometime the next morning, when the anesthesia was wearing off. I had been in surgery for almost 6 hours and now had 3 screws in my ankle that were each 2" long, and a 6" plate in my leg with six small screws holding it in place.
My Grandma Barb came to CA to take care of me and Lexi while Jim was at work, then a few weeks later Lexi and I flew back to Missouri with her. I could not get Lexi in or out of her crib or carry her, and she had only been walking for a little over a month. It was quite a while before they started weaning me off of the hard core narcotic pain killers, so I had to rely on someone else to take care of Lexi all the time. One of the screws in my ankle went in one side of my ankle socket, through my leg bone, then into the other side of my ankle, so until this screw was removed I was not allowed to put any weight on it.
They removed the screw after 12 weeks and just told me to walk on it like normal. Wish I had known that if I had had physical therapy, I might have a better range on motion in it now, but it was never mentioned. Jim came back on leave for Christmas, and then left for six months on a deployment to Okinawa, Japan.
During all this time of inactivity, I gained weight, and cared very little about what I looked like. I missed Jim, and my independence, and ended up moving back to California in April even though Jim would not be back until June. I made this trip with one of my favorite people EVER, my friend Amanda Pitchford. She stayed with me until just a couple of weeks before Jim got home, so that I didn't have to stay by myself. Then Jim came home....
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