Back in the summer of 2006 the family set off to have a fun weekend in Myrtle Beach. For the most part, we did.
All four daughters, two son-in-laws and the first grand Daughter, three year old Amanda, headed to the beach late in the afternoon that Friday.
The trip to the beach has gotten much better over the years. The road has been improved and a few extra bypasses around some of the smaller cities makes the trip shorter.
We got to the beach late on Friday evening and everyone just hit their respective hotel rooms and crashed.
Saturday was spent checking out the beach and lots of the tourist stuff in Myrtle. We all had a great time. Before going to bed we planned for our Sunday. We all agreed that we would gather for breakfast in the morning and then head off to the Nascar SpeedPark. We wanted to spend a few hours there before heading back home.
Early Sunday morning Becky and I left our hotel room and headed up to our oldest daughter’s suite where everyone else had already gathered. The noise in the suite was loud because everyone was excited about the adventures we were about to begin.
The suite had two doors into the bedroom from the living room area or the kitchen area. Amanda and I were making quite a ruckus as we ran around the suite playing tag or hide-n-seek as her parents packed up to leave.
Then it happened.
I thought I still had enough agility to leap over the end of the bed and past an opened suite case, but I didn’t. I tripped on the edge of the bed and fell on the side of my foot. I looked down just as my foot bent outward at what looked like 90o. For those who can’t picture this, let me show you what it looks like:
I could not find an exact image of what my foot looked like at that moment, but this image is pretty close. I believe it was turned far worse than this though.
Now we all know that every action creates an equally significant and loud reaction. When I saw how my foot bent, and felt the relevant pain it created, I SCREAMED!
I let out the loudest and longest series of cursing and screaming that I have ever heard before in my life. It sounded something like this:
My grand daughter ran back to me to see what had happened. She found me flopping around on the floor holding my ankle, tears streaming down my face and the barrage of curse words popping out of my mouth. As any grand child would do she asked, “Boppy are you OK?” As soon as I saw her there I reduced the number of curse words, but I was still rocking on the floor and crying out in pain.
The noise brought everyone else into the bed room to find out why I was making such a ruckus. My wife was the first to ask, “What did you do now?” She cajoled me to get up off the floor and stop fooling around before someone get’s hurt.
It only took a few minutes before the swelling started. The pain was still quite severe. I knew something was not right with my foot.
This is what it looked like. (This is an actual picture of my ankle on that day.) My son-in-laws started calling it a Rutabaga Foot. The swelling was so quick in part because we had no ice anywhere. One of my son-in-laws went looking for the ice machines and they were all empty.
The only thing we had were 3 Ice cold beers in his fridge. We wrapped them around my ankle with a t-shirt.
Our plans had been to head off to Nascar SpeedPark, but my wife decided it was time to take me to an urgent care to make sure my ankle was not in fact broken. No one wanted to go go-carting with out me, so off we headed to urgent care, all 10 of us in 3 cars. Me and my entourage.
When we arrived at urgent care it took less than 30 minutes for me to get called. The nurse x-rayed my ankle and gave me he good news – it was only sprained. She gave me a soft boot and a set of crutches.
“Keep this boot on and don’t put any pressure on your foot for 2 weeks,” she told me. I agreed that I would try my best to do what she told me.
We all got back in our cars and headed off for Nascar Speedpark. We spent the next 3 or 4 hours playing in the park and riding all of the various go-cart tracks. I did great because my left foot was sprained, which is the foot used for the brake. No breaks the way I drive go-carts, especially the fast ones.
The morals of this story:
- Careful with the language when little ones are around, even if you are in pain.
- It’s best to know you can jump the bed, before you try to jump that bed.
- Never let a sprained ankle get in the way of a great trip with the family.
Work thru the pain and enjoy your time with the family.
Teddy Burriss 