How I Started my Evening at a Wedding and Finished it in the ER

***WARNING!!!!  If you are squeamish, do not read this post!  Graphic pictures and detailed descriptions.***

Thank goodness I did my 15 miler on Saturday morning because I won't be doing any running for quite a while.

Saturday was like any typical Saturday for me.  I ran in the morning, napped in the afternoon, and then had to work the photo booth in the evening at a wedding.  Halfway through the wedding, though, things went bad.  For the first time in like 150 weddings, we had a customer spill her drink on a scrapbook page.  The page was completely ruined, but luckily that picture was the only one on the page and we could easily replace the page.  (And people wonder why we do not allow drinks in our photo booth.)  The problem was that the drink also got the entire table cloth wet.  So, I was in the process of taking off the table cloth and putting it into another room when I stubbed my toe on someone's shoes (and yes I was stupid and wearing sandals).  I immediately was in a lot of pain and thought right off the bat I had broken my toe.  I hopped on one foot to the other room while telling Dave I thought I broke my toe (all while carrying the tablecloth).  When I got in the other room I looked at my foot and my toe was pointing in a different direction.

***WARNING WARNING WARNING!!!  GRAPHIC PICTURE!!!***

I immediately went into hysterics.  OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!  I was crying and sorta yelling and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do with my toe sticking in the wrong direction.  Luckily the wedding coordinator and another person were sitting in this room and got me a chair and some ice and made plans to get me to the hospital.  Without evening saying goodbye to Dave and hoping he knew to continue with the photo booth, the coordinator put me in her car and we were off to the hospital.

I was dropped off at the hospital where they immediately began intake and registration and no lie, within 15-20 minutes I was in a bed.  Sweet!  This isn't going to take very long at all!  (Read: ironic)  Before I went back I texted my mom and told her what happened and where I was and then sent the coordinator back to the wedding letting her know that Dave was going to need help and that he could come pick me up when he was finished.  My first few minutes consisted of pregnancy test (negative), doctor saying the he would take an x-ray, numb my toe, put it back in place, re-x-ray, and that I would be out of here in no time.  Let me set up a timeline: The doctor came in and told me all this around 11:00pm.

At 11:30 the PCA came in and told me how to work the TV.  I decided to just read my Nook on my phone anyway.  At 11:45 the nurse came in with her phone saying my mom was on the phone.  Funny.  My mom had called the hospital directly and the nurse somehow got the call and was able to talk to me.  At 12:30 my parents showed up and I still had not gotten any X-rays or anything done.  The PCA said he was really surprised as he thought the doc would have just put it back together.  It was obviously just a dislocation.  Somewhere around 1:00pm I think I finally got the first X-rays.  Results...

Broken.

Shit.

The doctor came in and this is when I started to go a little crazy.  See, he took out a needle that was long and thick and promptly jammed it into one side of my toe.  (I did not watch any of this.)  I swear to god, he must have touched the other side of my foot with that thing.  It hurt so bad.  Then he did it on the other side of my toe.  My dad, the eloquent one, said "woah, your foot is really getting big from all that medicine".  Awesome.  We waited about 10 minutes and then my whole upper foot was numb.  Again, for the next part, I did not watch.  And luckily the doctor was blocking my view anyway.  The doctor took my toe, like a joystick, and maneuvered it back into place.  He would stop every once in a while, look at the other foot, and then ask me if it looked normal.  Cool.  Finally he said he thought he got it as best as it could be.  I was x-rayed again.  Finally the doctor said the x-ray looked perfect.  My toes were taped together and was given a very lovely half boot/half sandal to wear.


I was discharged and sent on my way with strict instructions of no running for 4-6 weeks.

Double shit.

This was around 2:15am.  My poor parents, but thank goodness they were there.  In case you were wondering about Dave...I sent him home after the wedding since my parents had already decided to come down to the hospital.

Once I got home, the numbing agent was starting to wear off and I was in pain, hungry, and not really all the tired.  Dave went to bed but I grabbed some food and took a bath.  Finally around 5:00am, I fell asleep.

Sunday I got up around 8:30 (yes you read that right, 3-1/2 hours of sleep), ate some breakfast, and promptly went back to bed.  Finally awake after noon, we had to prepare for our next photo booth event in a few hours.  The pain was pretty bad on Sunday.  I was swollen and the bruises were starting to appear.

 Nonetheless, I got through it all and worked for another 5+ hours Sunday night.  Once finally home for the night, I took off the boot to see my foot lovely shades of black, purple, and pink.


Today I went to see my regular doctor (actually another doctor in the practice as my doctor is on vacation).  The news was mixed.  The toe is still very much in place (good news).  The bad news was that there was no dislocation in my toe.  My toe was pointing sideways because of the break.  This all means that there will be a long recovery time, which means there's a big question mark with my marathon in September.  If it's only 4 weeks recovery I would still have 11 or 10 weeks to go until the marathon.  Frankly, that's doable.  Sure it may not be the 3:25 I was hoping for, but maybe I can squeak in with a Boston Qualifier anyway.  The doctor did tell me I could begin riding a stationary bike now (good news) but that my foot was probably going to throb (bad news).  He taught me how to better tape my toe.  I will be going back again on Friday to be re-x-rayed and see how everything's progressing.

So....um...yeah.  I don't know what else to say.  I'm so mad about it all.  I'm mad that I was stupid and wearing sandals.  If you know anything about me, you'd know that I absolutely can't stand sandals or flip flops.  I'm mad that my running has come to a screeching halt and that all the work I've put in this year may be thrown out the window.  I'm mad that I can't run the Relay Around Columbus this weekend with my friends.  And I'm starting to wonder if all this is going to affect my trip to London.  But, accidents happen and there's no other way to describe this than a complete accident.  I'm just going to follow doctor's orders and go from there.