Well, I broke my leg. We bought the “Ranch” about 6 hours north of where my contract work is walking the beach looking at birds. I was leaving for work at 3:00 in the morning on a very dark night so I could work later that morning. A nice time for walking the beach. As I said it was a very dark night and I couldn’t see a thing outside the house. I started back to the house to turn the porch light on but thought that would waste electricity so I moved on into the darkness. I stopped and turned again to turn on the light. Which I did. Then thinking it would waste electricity I turned it back off and headed into the darkness even more blind since I had turned the light on then back off. Moments later I was on the ground with a broken leg after missing the steps off the deck. I am dumb. I admit it. A fool for sure.
Sandy got me back into the house where I laid on Rozie’s dog bed for a few hours. I thought I was going to be fine and tried to get to bed which was impossible. I finally admitted defeat and Sandy called 911. Two days and two different hospitals and 48 hours without food and water followed before I had surgery on the leg. I had snapped the femur in two. How they could let a patient go 48 hours without food or water is a mystery to me, but they didn’t seem to mind.
To cut myself a little slack, my leg wouldn’t have broken if I hadn’t gone on a climbing trip to Canada about 30 years ago. And being talked into letting James come along on that trip. Rod and I were going to climb a steep north face but another friend talked us into taking James along who we had never met. We quickly found out that James had absolutely no ability as a climber and figured he would get us killed on the north face, so we decided just to go up the easier descent route to try to salvage the trip. That is where the avalanche happened that broke my knee into 15 pieces.
I think I will leave it at that because the avalanche story is a future blog post in itself. But although I went on to do all my hardest climbing after that, my right leg was always a wreck and my knee never bent more than half way back after the avalanche. Until the other night when it got to the no bend point and went a little further. Ouch!
I don’t know why I am writing this. Maybe because I am sitting here with a broken leg. The surgeon says I can’t put weight on it for 3 months. But I am putting weight on it now and am going back to work in a couple days. Three weeks healing before going back to work seems good to me. I will let you know how it goes.
