My Achilles Tendon – A Year of Injuries

My Achilles Tendon – A Year of Injuries · 13 February 2009

Splints and casts and crutches. Oh my! Splints and casts and crutches. Oh my! Splints and casts and crutches. Oh my!

This school year has been a year of injuries for our family. Thing 3 started it out last fall with a broken arm. He was jumping on a trampoline. Then I ruptured my Achilles tendon playing basketball. (If you read about that in an earlier column, you know that I did not really get to play.) And then, a week ago, Thing 2 strained or sprained his ankle. All of us got splints. Thing 3 and I got casts. Thing 2 and I got crutches. Thankfully, only I had to have surgery.

I remember kids having casts and crutches when I was a kid. While they got lots of attention, I do not think that they had that much fun. They adapted well to having dead weight for a limb and everybody signed those casts. My cousin had a cast when he was young but for some reason, I wrote on his body as well as his cast. But that is a different story. Kids had crutches too and could almost run with them. I even remember somebody playing kickball with crutches.

This year, two of my sons and I have all had to adapt to the strange medical appliances on our bodies. Crutches do not make people totally independent. Just mobile. And they tend to get in the way of others when walking in crowded places like the kitchen around supper time. And the more time that passes, the less sympathy I get from my main caregiver, the Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi. Fortunately, the lack of sympathy from my wife helps motivate me to be pretty independent. She helps me to know that I can do stuff around the house. I can do more than just exist while I am healing. So a kick in the seat of the pants from her is probably a good thing.

There is nothing really fun about being injured, but I must admit that the best part about having two people in the same household with crutches is the comic value. It must be quite a sight seeing not just one but two people with crutches get out of the same car. Most people stare in disbelief. The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi just laughs. And I must agree that it is funny. Seeing father and son with crutches must be like seeing some freakish mechanical duckling family waddling around together. I am sure that while walking around with each other at church more than one person has had to stifle laughter while still expressing concern. My wife just laughs. Just to show us that she loves us, of course.

Thankfully, Humpty Dumpty and his family are either recovered or recovering. We have been blessed with healthy, albeit somewhat broken, bodies. We also have wonderful friends and family who have taken care of us. Even so, hopefully, we do not have another year where we say, “Splints and casts and crutches. Oh my!”

Share on facebook

Comment

Commenting is closed for this article.

My Achilles Tendon – The Caregivers

My Achilles Tendon – “You’re Healed!”