The Sangria Incident

I'm writing this post for Husband. He made a special request, and I'm honoring it because this story is worth it.

In June, Husband and I had a whole Sunday together. An entire, uninterrupted Sunday. This is very rare and obviously required celebration. It was a truly gorgeous summer day, and we spent it drinking sangria and playing in the yard with Lox and Brisby. We were having a day-long frisbee battle while downing glasses of sangria. It was terrific. It was Sangria Sunday.

By the time it started getting dark, I started sobering up. but not enough. not nearly enough. We were outside, cleaning up the yard when Lox started hopping around like the adorable little monster dude that he is. I literally do not have control over my body when he's being so damn cute.
 

I mean, really. I started hopping around the yard too. I was actually skipping. In my sangria-filled brain, I was being super graceful. Then in the blink of an eye, the beat of a hummingbird's wings, the edge of my foot landed in a small hole in our yard and the weight of my body fell on my foot, turning my ankle completely under me.  EXACTLY how I broke it back in the day. FML.

Trust me when I say that it was worse than the previous experience on Route 11. It was totally horrific. There was no walking this one off. I can't even think about it. It still makes my ankle bone ache. There were a lot of gross sounds that I could feel in my teeth. It was awful. Searing, stabbing pain...crunchy-feeling bones, unable to bear any weight whatsoever...I was certain something was totally fucked in there. I bawled. I sobbed. It was not my finest moment. Husband urged me to go to the ER as I was losing myself in hysterics, but I refused. I refused to believe that it could be broken. I had a fucking half-marathon to run in a month and a half.

The rest of the night was spent covered in ice and losing myself to pity and misery. [Like I said, not my finest moment].  I slept in the spare bedroom all propped up with pillows, feeling totally hellacious. My darling Loxley slept outside the door all night. Bless him. He's such a dude.

The next day, it hurt even worse so Husband made me go to the ER. Of course, everyone asks you what happened so I had to tell them that I was skipping around the yard like a god damn jackass with my dog. I'm too in love with my dog to be embarrassed, but I'm sure people thought I was nuts. They just don't understand the power of Lox's cuteness. See picture above.

We explained that my ankle is practically bionic, and our concern was that something was broken under or around the metal. There wasn't as much swelling as all the other times that I've sprained my shit and the pain was so sharp that I wanted the doctors to really examine it. Which they didn't. Awesome. The PA said something like "it's not broken. here's the ugliest ankle boot you've ever seen and some crutches." No pain meds, no further instructions. You can imagine my annoyance, I'm sure. Allow me to remind you that I'm what some people would call 'clumsy'...the hospital identifies me as a 'fall risk'.

Clearly, I fall a lot. I turn my ankles practially bi-weekly. It's the nature of the running beast. So I don't take going to the ER lightly and I was a little [okay a lot] miffed at their brusque dismissal. I'm sure there was some sort of 'real' emergency to deal with but fuck you. My ankle isn't normal. Attention should be paid.

So I made a follow up with my PCP. Who is also a douche. I've never liked him, but I hardly go to the doc so if I see him once a year, whatever. Anyway, he did a thorough and extremely painful examination. He determined that I needed "aggressive and thorough rehabilitation". Super. I started rehab that week.

Around this time, Husband was leaving for Ireland [jealousssss]. He made me PROMISE that there wouldn't be any yard shenanigans while he was gone. He said "Remember babe, Sangria Sunday leads to ER Monday." Truer words were never spoken. I promised there would be no yard shenanigans. I could hardly walk so I was all set there. I was too busy going to rehab, anyway. I went once a week with the singular goal of being able to run this god damn half marathon that my sister was flying in from Texas to run with me. I just had to do it. I didn't care what it took or how bad it hurt. I was doing it.

And so I did. And I beat my first half marathon's time by 8 minutes.

Suck on that ankle and sangria.