Super Bowl, Blogs, and Injuries

I’ve been “sitting on the bench” as one might say for the past three weeks. You see I had a very exciting night on the eve of the Super Bowl. If you read my blog, then you know I live in the KC area and I’m a Chiefs fan. Yes, my Chiefs won . . . again. That wasn’t the only thing that happened that night.

Hubby’s friend rents out a restaurant/bar to watch the Super Bowl. We buy tickets from him to help with the costs and we get the whole place to ourselves with just us and our friends and family. Nice, right? It was last year and it was this year too. The problem was with one of the patio doors. I was one of the first people to get food. No one was in front of me or behind me to help with the door when I went back into the main part of the building from the patio. I swung it open and then tried to juggle my food. As I walked through the door my left foot wasn’t through yet and it slammed on my ankle. Now, I remember it hurt like you know what. I tried to, no pun intended, shake it off. I sat down and ate my pizza. I figured I would have a nice bruise there. I saw someone with salad and hobbled back to get one for myself. Someone noticed my hobbling and asked if I was okay. I told them the story, and then they asked if I had checked my ankle yet. I told them no, but I was sure I had a bruise or something. They mentioned again that I should check it. I kicked my leg up on a bench, pulled down my sock, and gasped. What I saw wasn’t a bruise. It was a gaping wound. My jeans were fine, and my socks were fine. What the heck happened? It was barely bleeding, but it was definitely a deep-looking cut. My sister-in-law just happened to come back out to the patio to get some food while I was doing this. She asked what happened. I showed her and she went to get Hubby immediately.

Hubby came to see it. I think I had a bit of a crowd around me at that time. One of his friends is a nurse. She helped bandage me up. We discussed going to Urgent Care now or later. I was not in a great deal of pain. We agreed to watch the Super Bowl and then try to find an Urgent Care open or go to our usual ER. I say “usual” because Hubby is a cyclist and has been in a few accidents. Thankfully it has never been anything life-threatening, but he has given me a few scares. We were pretty much like, “Yay! We won the Super Bowl! Now we are going to the ER to get stitches!”

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten in and out of the ER that fast even the pet hospital. I’m usually sitting in an ER for four hours minimum. I think we were out in less than two hours. We did end up going to our “usual” ER. They were not as judgmental as I thought they might be seeing how I stayed to watch the whole Super Bowl before going. I was lucky and didn’t tear or damage any tendons. I ended up with six ugly stitches! I kept that thing covered because looking at it freaked me out a bit. It reminded me of Frankenstein. I guess this is why I never pursued a career in medicine. I’ll spare you the pictures. I know Facebook sometimes blurs them. I’m not sure about WordPress.

Two weeks later I went to my primary care physician (PCP) and saw him to take the stitches out per the ER’s orders. This was his first time looking at it and assessing the situation. He told me I actually fractured my ankle. When I looked confused because I knew I didn’t break any bones, he said I ripped the skin apart. The reason my jeans and socks were fine is because I wasn’t actually cut. I told my kids this later on and one of them said, “Oh, you mean when someone holds a piece of paper really tight and another person chops it in two with their hand?” Um . . . Yeah. I guess it was like that.

The doctor didn’t take out all the stitches. He only took out four of the six. He wanted to be sure it healed okay. I told him I wasn’t running, but I had worked my way back up to a mile walk with the dog every day. He seemed fine with that. I still have two stitches as of now. This weekend I have the Westport St. Patrick’s Day 4 Mile Run, the B.E.A.R.D 10K the next day. I also have the Liberty Hospital Half Marathon this month. I’m supposed to get all the stitches out before any of that.

Being on the sidelines and no races for a bit, I’ve been wondering about keeping this blog. I know a lot of people that were doing blogs that have not posted in years. I’m just now realizing that it has been about a decade since I started this blog! That is a long time, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with it. At first, it was a creative outlet for me. Kind of like a hobby along with the running itself. It seems like YouTube, Facebook Reels, or podcasts are the thing now. I’m probably not going to start videoing myself. I’m not sure about Reels. I don’t know maybe if I just made this a shorter summary type thing. We will see. I saw a lady the other day make a post on Facebook about her old blog. She cracked a joke about her blog when she said, “Remember those?” I gave a little chuckle and thought, “Yeah. Not many around that I know of anymore.” We will see. I’ll let you know how I do with the ankle and my races. I won’t keep you in too much suspense.