The day I broke my leg playing football started off like most days.  This day I knew I would be burning some calories so I got a Boston Cream donut with my Tim Hortons breakfast and headed to the field.  When I got there I was greeted by my co-ed flag teammates, “Hey FOG!”, “What’s up FOG?” Yeah, they called me FOG and secretly, I liked it.

The reason I was playing for the team was because of Greg. Greg was a guy I was seeing every now and then and he ask me to play right before he injured himself and couldn’t play.  I tell you this so you understand why my nickname was F.O.G. Nobody remembered my real name, they just knew me as “Friend Of Greg” or “FOG”.  The name made me laugh and it stuck.

I played with them for a season and then they ask me back for a second. I shouldn’t have agreed.  I shouldn’t have played. I had so much going for me. I was playing volleyball in several leagues. I was playing basketball once a week. Greg couldn’t even play any more. They were having a hard time finding women players though, and I really did enjoy it, so I went back.

I’ll never forget the event that unfolded that morning. As I was stretching, getting ready for the game, I was approached by a friend I played volleyball with who ask me if I had any ibuprofen (he fell off of a golf cart… or got ran over by it or something the previous day). I DID have ibuprofen in my car so I gave him my keys and told him where my purse was then told him to just throw my keys with my stuff when he got back because the game was starting.

<This is where it gets gross so be forewarned, if you don’t like gross, you may want to quit reading right about now>

We started playing and it was ALMOST the end of the game when I saw it.  The other team had possession.  They ran their play and it looked like the quarter back was throwing it to someone right next to me but there was nobody there (that I could see).  WOO HOO! I was going to get an interception! I went for it. I went for it hard. ALSO, a guy from the other team who was behind me went for it.  I was moving sideways towards it. He dove for it. I don’t know who ended up getting it because when he landed, he landed on my left leg. My leg went under him but my body went over him and SNAP! CRACKLE! POP! my lower left leg snapped in half.

Everything that happened next is quite the blur. Everybody started running around. Someone called 911. Someone else was screaming their bloody lungs off… oh… that was me. I didn’t realize I was screaming until someone came up to me with an ice pack but didn’t know where to put it. They ended up putting it on my back. I had landed on my stomach and my tibia and fibula had snapped in half towards my calf and the lower half was just hanging there, throbbing from the nerves shooting through my leg. Our quarterback (I think) was trying to hold the broken part of the leg at an angle that it would quit bouncing and I was yelling at him to quit moving it (though he wasn’t the one moving it and he couldn’t do anything about it). I remember yelling at him over my shoulder and him yelling back at me. In retrospect, if I had been thinking straight I would have been so thankful for the help at the time. I can’t even imagine what he was dealing with right at that moment.

Because it was the end of the game, our 2 teams were there, there was another field of games going on and those 2 teams had just finished their game, and the 4 teams getting ready to play after us were there.  I looked up, and I swear I was the center of a whole bunch of people looking down at me horrified.  The guys were kind of covering their mouths looking at me and the girls were covering their eyes completely or looking away. I’m sure it was a site – something I’m sure everyone there that day could do without seeing ever again. I was told later that the next 2 games were terrible to watch. Everybody saw or heard what had happened and they were all pretty traumatized.

As soon as I had landed and quit screaming, someone started saying they didn’t know my family or friends or who to call. Someone standing in front of me said, “Amy, can you tell me someone I can call?” At the time, all I could think of was mom and dad’s home number – a land line where mostly they just got solicitation calls. I choked out the number to whomever ask, they called, and for some reason… mom picked up. She said she just got a feeling she needed to answer so she did. They told her what happened. Mom called the golf course where dad was out playing. The golf course sent someone out to get my dad off of the course. Mom picked dad up at the golf course on her way and dad said he’s never seen my mom drive so fast in his life.

Now, I’m laying there, face down on my stomach, grass in my hair, dirt on my forehead and under my fingernails from digging my head and nails in to the ground from pain, and I hear one of my best friend’s roommate (Mikey).  I look up and he’s bent down about 5 feet away (almost like he’s afraid to get close to me) asking me if there is anyone he can call. I tell him to call Aaron (BFF) – I needed a friend really badly right about then. Mikey called Aaron just as he was leaving church and I swear to you, Aaron was at the park looking down at me with Mikey within 5 minutes. I still, to this day, have no idea how he got there so quickly.

While all of this was happening, the ambulance got to the park. I had pretty much calmed down by now. Aaron was there and it made me feel better just having a friend close by.  The guy who I gave the ibuprofen to earlier knew where my keys to my car and my stuff were and was able to give the keys to Aaron and put my stuff in my car. Aaron then rode with me in the ambulance to the hospital.  As we were loading in to the ambulance, Aaron (seriously the best friend you could have) was holding my disfigured leg because the ambulance wasn’t equipped with a splint for that type of injury. Aaron is sitting there, the other 2 EMTs are getting me oxygen, shuffling around, they have no morphine, no way to give me any relief and I hear Aaron say, “So. Who’s going to drive?”

Luckily we weren’t far from the hospital. That was the longest ride ever though and I’d have to say it was probably worse for Aaron. Can you even imagine having to hold someone’s disfigured body in an ambulance while they cried out every time the ambulance hit a bump? He won’t even talk about it. I think he’s pushed it to the back of his mind and just refuses to bring it back out and talk about it.

We got to the hospital, they gave me some morphine and once I wasn’t feeling anything, they laid my leg flat and rolled me over. Around this time mom and dad showed up.  All I remember was having this overwhelming urge to have someone touch my toes. I don’t know if it was the medicine or having all of those people just staring at me and talking to me like I was a baby, but I needed someone to tell me I was going to be ok and I needed someone to touch my toes because I couldn’t feel them. Had to be the medication.

They gave me a sedative so they could get x-rays and I woke up in a hospital room. I woke up and they gave me dilaudid for the pain. Woooooo weeeeee! That is what you want if you’re in pain.  Not only does the pain go away, but you also see things.  I saw Harry Potter fly through my room. I saw a red spray-painted mouse, and guys, I’m not kidding, for some reason, I called my college volleyball coach to tell him I broke my leg.  Here’s the kicker, I told him I broke my leg… then I fell asleep. I woke back up to him shouting in to the phone, “She! She!” (that was my nickname in college). I hadn’t told him that I was in the hospital and it was taken care of. He didn’t know if I was laying on the side of the road somewhere or not.  Ah dilaudid.

So it was a rough night. The incident occurred on Sunday and the doctors were due to be in on Monday morning to do surgery first thing. I had a couple of roommates throughout the night. One of them kept yelling for her husband. The nurses later told me she had dementia and that her husband had passed away years ago.  Eventually they came in and got her and moved her to her own room because she wouldn’t quit screaming. I sort of fell asleep. They woke me up throughout the night to see how I was doing and administer more medication amongst other things. At around 8am or so I woke up for some reason and the doctor and his gorgeous resident were standing there looking at me, leaning against the wall. I was still on the dilaudid, I wasn’t in my right mind and… I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.

Eventually they took me down to prep for surgery. They did surgery and put a rod in my tibia.  Did you know that technically you don’t need the middle part of your fibula?  You just need the ends of the bone for the insertions. Anyway, after surgery I woke up with a bunch of ice around my leg and a bunch of shooting pain. Also, they gave me this thing to breath into every so often to keep my lungs healthy (I think). Well, I was mad. I was mad that I was in the hospital. I was mad that I was going to be down for at least 6-9 months. I was SO MAD. I quit eating. I didn’t breath into the thing. I just laid there and was miserable. I got pneumonia.

Let me stop here and tell you all, if you’re ever in the hospital and they tell you to breath into the plastic thing 3 times at the beginning of every hour… just do it. I was in the hospital for 5 days because of stupidity.

The last day I was there, a nurse came in and told me I have to take a series of shots after I leave. It’s 20 shots in the stomach so I don’t get blood clots in my leg. 1 a day for 20 days. So she administers my first shot. AFTER she administers it she’s like, “WOOPS, when your mom comes in, I’m going to have to show her how to do it again with a saline shot.” NO. NO. NO. I am not getting a 2nd shot in MY STOMACH. There is no way under this sun, in this universe, you will be administering a SECOND shot in my stomach in one day. NO. Remember, I’m already mad about the situation – so the nurse had to show mom how to give me a shot by giving the shot to a flower.

My mom was awesome through all of this. She gave me the majority of those shots. She came in to the room on day 2 or 3 with tears in her eyes because she knew she was hurting me when she gave me the shot. She didn’t want to do it but she knew if she didn’t I could potentially form a blood clot and the result of that would be much worse than if she didn’t. So she did. She also, with the help of my future sister in law (FSIL), even put me up on the counter the first night I was home from the hospital to wash my hair (since it hadn’t been washed in 5 days). My FSIL comforted me while I was laying, basically convulsing on the counter because I was so weak from not eating. Mom bought me Pringles because “they’re the one food your Great Grandma Mona swore you could eat when you didn’t feel good.” You know what? I ate those Pringles. They were good. Grandma Mona was a smart lady.

I had a couple of visitors but the first day I remember that I started feeling better after that, my Aunt Susi came by. They brought me outside on the porch on the most beautiful day and we sat, laughed and drank ice tea. After that day my spirits picked up. I was unstable standing still but eventually I started eating again and I got stronger and could walk on my walker.  Oh yeah, I was on a walker. Talk about humbling. The doctor was afraid I was going to fall over and try to catch myself so he gave me a walker. That thing saved me from falling so many times I can only be grateful for it and his persistence now.

After 2 weeks I had to go back to work. The doctor recommended I take a month of  recovery but I had only started my job a week before I broke my leg. The company was already gracious enough to let me take my 2 weeks vacation I would have accumulated by the end of the year so I went back. It was a quarter of a mile to my desk from the parking lot.  In the mornings, one of my brothers or mom would come pick me up and push me to my desk in a wheel chair. They were so good to me.  I can never be grateful enough for them through that time.

I think I’m going to stop with this story here.  The rest is just therapy, feeling sorry for myself and then finally taking my first step months later. Spoiler alert: I cried. Happy cried. Learning how to walk again is no joke! 12 years later I only feel the injury when the weather is bad or when I put on weight and try to do something silly like run. Throughout all of that I learned a few things – ask for help if you need it, don’t just quit doing physical activity because something hurts and I can always count on family and friends when in a time of need.