In Which I Break My Foot While Scoping out the Haunted House my Husband Wants to Buy

It’s just so ridiculous. I’m turning into my mother. NOT because she’s ridiculous. My mother is sweet, precious and wonderful…and also happens to be the most accident prone person on the planet. Freak incidents hound her. Injuries afflict her. And I think it might be genetic…

For those who may not know, we are renting out our current home and squatting, er living, in our friends’ beautiful and spacious ground floor efficiency (sounds prettier than “basement apartment”, huh? And it IS pretty! We are so thankful that they are letting us crash their house—indefinitely, no less!). Our hope is to buy a new place with a bit more room and a lower mortgage. It’s possible in this market. But not necessarily easy, as we’ve found out. In the past three months we’ve had three houses under contract, all of which have fallen through for one reason or another.

All that to say, we’re house hunting. It’s kind of become a hobby. Our realtor wasn’t able to take us out this weekend, but that didn’t stop us from going to scope out a few houses on our own yesterday. It probably should have, but it didn’t. My husband has fallen in love with a charming, cozy 1920’s bungalow fixer-upper that he found online and wanted to go check out. It’s charming, cozy…and old. And if I were superstitious I would also tell you that it is haunted. I mean, it’s over 90 years old, it’s got haint blue paint on the porch ceiling (!!!) and I broke my foot there. Of course I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m just sayin’—I broke my foot there.

After peaking in all the windows (it’s vacant, promise) we were walking around the grounds, discussing possible paint colors for the outside of the house. I was standing at the top of some steps which lead down to the driveway and took a step back to get a “broader view”, as it were (“I think yellow would be fun and really give the place some pop!”) fully expecting my right foot would meet solid ground as I did. It did not. I mean, not for like another 6 to 12 inches, anyway. And when it finally did…um, OUCH. I rolled my ankle and all my weight came crashing down on my foot. It hurt. It hurt bad. I gripped it feverishly and started to cry. And then I started to laugh because really, it was just so ridiculous.

Right away I thought that baby Elizabeth was probably fine. I fell on the soft earth, in tall grass, on my bottom. I wasn’t cramping or contracting and she was moving just fine. But my foot was swelling up big time. As soon as I unwrapped my hand from it, a golf ball sized lump ballooned out of the left side, right by my ankle. That coupled with the fact that I heard several pops on my way down made me think that I’d better go have it checked out. This was around 1:30.

We dropped the kids off at home, which, as we’ve established, is actually our friends’ home and said friends graciously offered to keep our children as we headed off to urgent care. We were there for three hours. After x-rays showed that I had, indeed, fractured my foot, I was ace-bandaged and received crutches and a stylish orthopedic boot. Told to elevate, ice, and wait for a call from the radiologist to determine whether or not I’d need to see a bone doctor. I thought we were almost home free and then the doctor handed me a prescription for pain killers. I wanted to confirm that they were safe to take while pregnant and it was at this point that we discovered that the doctor did not know that I was pregnant. I had told the receptionist first thing, and had discussed it at length with the nurse who did the x-rays, so I assumed that it had been communicated to the doctor as well. Nope. And apparently the two pound baby in my 26 week pregnant belly isn’t as obvious as I thought. Or maybe she was just really focused on my foot. At any rate, she apologized profusely, but said I would immediately need to go to the ER for a full evaluation. “You don’t have an ultrasound machine back here that we can just check her out on really fast?” Nope. We needed to get to the ER and now. She would call the hospital to let them know we were on the way.

We were at the hospital for another four hours. My OB orderd a non stress test (which Elizabeth passed with flying colors), wanted to monitor any possible contractions that I may be having (none) and wanted to run a blood test which would show if my placenta had detached/ruptured (it had not). I’m glad we were able to find these things out. Better safe than sorry and all that. Through it all Onan and I were comfortably set up in a labor and delivery room. (Well, I was as comfortable as one can be in a hospital gown.) We watched TV and ordered subs from Jimmy John’s across the street for dinner. It was practically a date. Hey, when you have a one, two and three year old, any place that they’re not present counts as a date. (Onan would like to note that I’m an “expensive date.”)

I was finally discharged and we got home around 10:00 to find that our amazing friends had taken our kids for a picnic dinner at the park, changed a bunch of diapers put everyone in PJ’s and then to bed. Amazing, I say. John and Rebecca, we don’t know what we’d do without you! Truly.

My foot still hurts. But I’m ok. And so is Elizabeth. And it was lovely to hear her precious heartbeat and the swoosh of all her movements for nearly two hours last night. If I follow in my mother’s footsteps, you can expect future visits to the ER for various broken bones and whatnot. Especially if we buy the (haunted) house. Fair warning. Thanks for letting share! And in all seriousness, we are feeling a little worn out and beat down right about now and really appreciate your continued prayers. Our hearts are comforted through your effectual, fervent prayers.