Kristal's Injury

Saturday night (8-30-08) I had just got done working out at the school gym and was walking back through campus to the apartments when I fell on some stairs. I heard a huge “POP” when I rolled on my left ankle and immediately was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get up. I yelled help several times thinking the gate guards would hear me or that I was close enough to the apartments that someone would hear me. Luckily, after only 2 minutes or so another teacher was working late in his classroom and came and helped me to the apartments lobby. For one reason or another it ended up that everyone on campus was called and came down to help me. We couldn’t get a hold of the school nurse, Sahar, or any of the local staff to come with me to the hospital. Plus with my physical therapy background I was over analyzing it and determined exactly which ligament I sprained and how bad of a sprain was it and decided not to go to the hospital. Long story short, after a long night of pain and swelling I went and taught my class in the morning (dumb idea) and then went to the school nurse who rushed me to the hospital. And when I say “rush” I mean it, our transportation director, Habe, drove me and the nurse and he was so worried about me (he’s the nicest guy and always so concerned about us) he was driving crazier than a normal Egyptian drives. I was positive we were going to hit someone and get another passenger to take with us to the hospital. I kept telling him it wasn’t an emergency and he said he was worried and felt like he needed to drive like an ambulance. Anyways, we went to the German Hospital which is suppose to be the good hospital in town. I wont elaborate what it’s like to go to an international hospital since our parents are reading this, but lets just say I’m glad I didn’t need any procedure that needed to be sterile and I was glad to have two Arabic speakers with me. Anyways, they took an x-ray and did some test and determined that I completely tore my anterior talo-fibular ligament (sorry, had to put that in for my PTA friends reading this) and I’m now in a full ankle cast up to my knee.
I can’t even elaborate enough to explain to you how much it sucks to be on crutches here. Let me remind you that we live on the fourth floor and both my classrooms are on the second floor in two different buildings across campus and there are no ramps or elevators here. The entire campus is uneven and there are little steps everywhere with out handrails. I’m just absolutely exhausted by the end of the day and my arm muscles are so soar they might actually hurt just as bad as my ankle. I’m going to have strong arms by the time I get the cast off. I totally believe it’s true that medical people make the worst patients. For example, I thought I didn’t need to go to the hospital, when I did go I was annoying the poor doctor by asking him questions, and recommending special stress tests for him to try on my ankle ligaments. And Seth is constantly yelling at me to stop doing things that I know I shouldn’t be doing. It has given me an appreciation for some of my patients though and I can sympathize with them about some things…but not too much since I know none of my patients ever had to do four flights of stairs to get home.
The plus side is that my wonderful husband has been so good at taking care of me. He really has done a lot and put up with my bad mood when I get frustrated with all the dumb stairs. Everyone at school has been so good to me too and doing so much to help me. All the grades that I teach have made get well cards for me, the 1st and kindergartners are so cute. The cooks will make me special meals and bring them to me if Seth can’t. Our maid did extra cleaning for me and so many other people have gone out of their way to do something for me to save me the trouble of trying to be mobile around campus.