In Sickness and In Health

This weekend threw the Summers family a major curveball.

Danny had water rescue training at the city pool Saturday morning at 10am.  He met the majority of his co-workers for breakfast (all but the 4 who were on shift), which he organized a couple hours before training was scheduled to start. After he left, I ate breakfast, fed Tucker and got my workout in.

At 10 am on the dot, I got a phone call from Danny. Except it wasn't Danny, it was one of the other firefighters and also one of his best friends. "Erin, everything is fine, but we're taking Danny to the hospital. He broke his foot." Initially, I thought he was messing with me. Training started at 10, so how is it possible that Danny has already hurt himself, let alone broken a bone (by the way, a broken bone doesn't even begin to describe what he did to his foot" Once I realized he wasn't joking, I gathered my thoughts (I had literally just hit stop on T25 and was completely and physically dead, or so I thought), called Danny's mom, waited on my mom to get to my house to watch Tucker (which she was already planning on doing because I had a surprise planned for Danny that day) and beat feet to the ER. The whole way over I thanked God that it was just a broken foot and not something worse. Given his profession, it could have been so much worse.

I got to the hospital and Danny's foot was completely and utterly deformed, and was causing him an awful lot of pain. X-rays showed dislocated and broken bones in about 5 different places. His foot was so bad the ER doctor didn't even know what to call the break. It was also bad enough that word had traveled to the other hospital across town that Community had a patient with a really bad broken foot. (A really good friend of mine was working and I happened to text her to tell her what had happened. She informed me that Danny was the topic of discussion in the OR at her hospital).  The ER doc said there was a 1-2% chance that they setting the bones back in place in the ER would work. That meant there was a 98% chance that he would need surgery.

By the time they got the bones set into place and in the splint, they had already started sliding out again, meaning pins would be needed. They put a splint on and we eventually were sent home with instructions to follow up with the orthopedic center on Monday. Now were are waiting on the surgeon's office to call us back and tell us when to come in to schedule surgery. Hopefully that happens today because Danny is ready to get the ball rolling with his recovery, which will be at least 6 weeks, if not 8 or 12.

Although this is the WORST time of year for Danny to break his foot (4H fair is in 3 weeks... Danny's favorite week of the entire year), I am so, so thankful that it was just a broken foot. There are a number of things that could go wrong every day he is working or goes into work off duty.

So, until this is all over, I'm going to need endless amounts of energy and wine, to take care of my injured stubborn husband (paramedics make the WORST patients), a 7 month old, the dog, work and the house. God help me.