Oh No, Momma’s Got A Broken Toe!

Those sexy toes belong to my wife. Granted, they are much better looking without all the bandages. And that “push pin” in her pinky toe is actually a 3″ long metal rod. It’s a story of Easter candy,  broken bones and blood. Yes, blood.

On the evening before Easter Sunday, my wife was scrambling through boxes in our attic. She was on a mission to find the kids old Easter baskets. This, because our 21 year old son was feeling nostalgic and wanted mommy to make him a big basket of candy. Is this a phenomenon familiar to anyone else? Anyway, after looking around for a while she located the bunny paraphernalia and started to descend the stairs. She turned, arms filled, placed her foot on the second stair and lost her balance. She did the boot-scoot-boogie down the stairs, landing on her back.

It was about 6:30 P.M. and I was working in the garage. As I walked out into the yard, I heard a series of screams. My son came running out onto the deck yelling, “Mom just fell down the stairs!” I ran into the house and found her sunny side up. She was visibly suffering from some excruciating pain. She told me to check her foot and then screamed at me when I touched it. [It's okay honey, I understand.] I removed her sock and found her pinky toe trying to exit stage right. It was mangled. She asked us what we thought. “Is it broken?”, she said hesitantly. My son quickly said “No Mom it’s fine.” He then turned to me and lip-synced “OMG! It’s broken!!!”

As we began to help her up, we noticed blood on the floor. “Where is that coming from?”, my son asked. “Where is what coming from?’, asked my wife. “Nothing!!!”, we both instantly answered. It was too late, she had seen the blood. “OMG John!!! What’s bleeding?!?”, she exclaimed. I frantically tried to determine the blood’s source. As it turned out, she had a deep cut on the under-side of her 4th toe, straight across the joint. Looks like we were headed to the emergency room.

Now, flash forward to the picture. This was taken minutes after surgery, three days later. That’s right, surgery. As her orthopedist put it, “her toe suffered the equivalent of being amputated. The bone was completely separated from her foot.” So, the doc decided to open her toe, fix the bones and insert a giant “push pin” into her poor little piggy. And, oh yeah, stitch up that cut under her 4th toe. Which, btw, the doc says was caused by the toe bending backwards and the skin just “snapped”. There, I said it, no more gory details.

How about those pretty toes? Everyone at the hospital thought she had them done for surgery. We must have heard that two dozen times. Actually, she had a pedicure just two hours before the fall. “Thank goodness I had my toes done!”, she laughed.

Last Thursday, she had an appointment to get the pin removed. However, on Tuesday night, she was changing her bandage and accidentally pulled it out! I was working in the garage [I am building a Tiki Bar] when she came crying hysterically out the back door. “The pin came out!!! The pin came out!!!”, she screamed. That’s not good, I thought…”It will be fine honey”, I forced myself to say. She called the 24 hour emergency number and was told this is actually common and to keep her appointment on Thursday. They wanted to take a final x-ray and make sure everything was going well.

She had a great check up. However, it’s going to take another 2-3 months to totally heal. She went back to work Monday after 5 weeks of “bed rest”. In other words, Daddy has been the chauffeur, cook, errand runner, water boy, you name it. BUT, I’m not complaining, cause Momma took damn good care of me last fall when I broke my arm. It’s kind of strange, neither of us has ever broken anything and then both of us have accident’s within 6 months of each other. Oh well, ’tis life. We are just thankful everything turned out the way it did. It could have been much worse.

So I guess the lesson learned is you need to break the bad news about the Easter Bunny to your children early. The alternative could be your adult children expecting Easter baskets filled with goodies…leading to broken bones, blood and plenty of pain.

Tagged as: accident • broken toe • Family