Poor Grandma

Within hours of arriving at our house, my mother-in-law, Marie, slipped on our stairs and broke her ankle in three places. I was standing in the kitchen, achy and fever-ridden, having slept fitfully for only an hour after my ten-hour shift, telling Laura that I didn’t want to go to the doctor despite all the evidence pointing to strep throat, when I heard the thump and yelp and then Marie declaring she had broken her ankle.

We expressed due concern. I finished making my breakfast burrito and then stood over her, being careful not to drip ketchup, and told her if she was in that much pain, then it probably wasn’t broken. Sprains are more painful than breaks—that much I remember from my first-aid merit badge class.

We propped her up on the couch and I gave her a pair of white pants I needed hemmed, but after an hour she insisted that it was getting worse, so Larry and I carted her to Wentworth-Douglas Hospital where, in fact, the doctor agreed it was broken and she would need surgery.

So I left to take the kids swimming at the hotel where my folks were staying while Laura took second shift with Marie at the emergency room. The remainder of the afternoon can be summarized in two lessons we all learned the hard way that day. First, don’t pick at a hangnail while sitting in a Holiday Inn hot tub unless you want an extremely painful staff infection the next day. And second, a little morphine is all it takes to make Marie flirt unabashedly with male nurses.

Marie put off the surgery a few days so she could attend Griffin’s baptism. We wheeled her into the church, and despite everything she still gave a talk at the service. She was a bit teary eyed toward the end, but in the hallway I overheard her tell Larry her leg was sore.

We couldn’t decide if Marie should have the surgery here and recover on our couch or fly home and have the surgery in Boise. My main concern was that our house isn’t very disabled-friendly. There are stairs everywhere, and it was scary enough just the few days Marie was with us. She wasn’t the most graceful character on crutches. She would dope up on Percocet and then hobble and sway and rock and clomp and fall as she made her way through our house. Larry had to catch her on several occasions. But sometimes he missed, and we would flinch and close our eyes and hope she landed on a chair or ottoman or, at least, on nothing sharp.

We would be sitting in the kitchen and hear a slow and deep whump, click, whump, click, whump, click. “Oh no,” Miles would say, “Grandma’s coming!” And for five minutes we would listen to the whump-click grow, like a wounded but determined Terminator clawing its way forward. She would finally round the corner, en route to the bathroom, out of breath, drenched in sweat, being careful not to bump her leg.

Larry tried out the crutches and was racing all over the house, hot-dogging his way up the stairs, ya-hooing and yee-hawing while the kids squealed and followed behind.

Post-script: Marie made it home and had her surgery this morning. She proposed to three nurses before going completely under. My strep and staff infection have mostly cleared up thanks to antibiotics and a strict regimen of peanut-butter cookies. And my mom and sister, who both flew out to the baptism despite their many ailments, are resting comfortably at home now too. And thanks to everyone, sick or healthy, who took the time this weekend to support Griffin!