Andy's broken foot

5-16-2009
Andy was playing church basketball with the men on Friday, May 1st, when I got a call from Jason Roethig from Andy's cell phone. After learning that Andy has badly hurt his foot, and the ambulance was on the way to the church, I hurried to go help him. When coming down from a rebound, Andy had landed on someone's foot, turning his foot to the inside. It was after 9 pm and I had to get Abby out of bed. Of course she was hungry when I woke her up, so I had to nurse her before I left. I wanted to just rush to Andy's aid, but I couldn't have Abby crying with hunger, so I had to feed her first. On the way to the chapel, I repeadtedly explained to Abby that we were going to help Daddy who had an big owie on his foot. I was very concerned about my dear hubby, and over and over I prayed for Heavenly Father to help him, especially with the pain. Abby looked a little worried and was very quite on the car ride. Before we reached the church, Jason called again and told us that Andy was in the ambulance with the paramedics on the way to the hospital, so we flipped a U-turn, and easily beat them to the Emergency room. We were standing outside the ER when the ambulance pulled up, and I could tell by Andy's expression that he was in a lot of pain. The medics had him drugged up on painkillers: 20ccs of Morphine and some Valium, too. I checked him in (they wouldn't let me do it unti after he got there) while they wheeled him back to his own room. We went back there and I showed Abby his badly deformed ankle. "See Daddy's big owie, sweetie?" The sole of his left foot was facing his right ankle, instead of facing the floor like it was supposed to. Later, Andy told me that when he first got injured, all the pain and the shock of seeing his foot facing the wrong way sent him into a panic. Aghast, he started trying to move around using his hands and the other players rushed to immobilize him. Quickly, they gave him a priesthood blessing of healing and comfort, and Andy immediately felt calmed and somewhat relieved from the pain. When the paramedics got there, at first the were going to attempt to reset his dislocated foot right there on the gym floor. When they took off Andy's running shoe and saw the severity of the injury, to Andy's relief they decided leave the resetting of his foot to the doctors. In the ER, after doing an X-ray, Dr. Holiday put Andy under general anesthesia to reset his dislocated foot. A couple minutes after Andy was out, the Dr. tried manipulating Andy's foot to see if Andy was under enough to be pain free. Andy gasped in pain, so the Dr. could tell he had to wait a few more minutes. Then, while I sat in the corner of the room, trying to comfort our fussing 6 month old daughter (who was very worried about her daddy), the Dr. yanked Andy's foot back into place, with Andy completely oblivious to the process. Andy woke up a few minutes later, and felt much better. Before, his pain was a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10, and after they put his foot back in place it was only a 2 or 3. He said he didn't feel or remember the foot being put back in place and that he was dreaming while he was out. I was very curious since he usually doesn't remember his dreams. "What were you dreaming about?" I asked. I had to laugh when he responded with his favorite food, "Pepperoni pizza," he replied with a weary smile. After they reset it, they did another X-ray, and then a cat scan. You couldn't see it with the x-ray, but the cat scan showed that the outside of his talus bone was fractured. A little chip was seperated from the rest of the bone. Dr. Holiday put Andy in a soft splint since the foot was going to swell so much.
Andy is now in his removable cast, and laying here on the couch in the great room, which he has been doing all day every day since the accident. He has to keep his foot elevated above his heart. If he is up on his crutches for more than a couple minutes his foot startes to hurting very badly from the blood flowing down to his foot and increasing the swelling.
So now I am taking care of Andy, the baby, Elysia, and our three dogs, and it is rather stressful. I got a touch of the flu a couple of days ago, but I'm better now.
Andy has a hard time being cooped up and stuck on the couch all day. At least he has a big screen TV to watch (his Christmas present), video games to play, and a laptop computer to surf the internet with. It's still very hard on him though, mentally and emotionally, especially because he is such a hard worker and he wants so badly to be back at his job at the jail, and to be installing a sprinkler system in our front yard.