Putting the “Fall” Into Our Fall Vacation

Yesterday afternoon Pam and Lucy spent a couple of hours in the backyard on a delightful Fall day in Maine. Pam read a book while Lucy busied herself with finding sticks, mussel shells and rolling around in the grass. Everything felt like a scene from a Hallmark movie, right up until the moment when it didn’t.

These are the entrance steps to the cabin. The first time I saw them a few days ago when we arrived I remember thinking, “that’s odd, where is the third paving stone?”  To enter the house from the back yard you have to come around from the left of these steps. When doing so Pam caught her toe on the raised stone and went sprawling head first into the border stones of the flower bed to the right. The result wasn’t pretty. She somehow made it inside on her own power with an abrasion on her face, another on her chest and her left wrist at an unnatural angle. Even though she was in a lot of pain she somehow had the presence of mind to bark out a series of rational instructions…

1. “Call Tif and ask her for directions to the closest ER.”

2. “I’m going to need help getting out of this long sleeve shirt. They will want me in short sleeves if they have to put me in a cast.”

3. “Probably should go ahead and feed Lucy. We won’t be back in time for her dinner.”

4. “Can you fill up my water bottle?”

5. “How am I going to be able to paddle board and cross-stitch?” (Not in the resigned way of realizing that she would NOT be able to do these things, but rather in the rhetorical question style of How will I manage to do these things considering these new circumstances)

Meanwhile I’m getting queasier and queasier the more I look at the angle of her rapidly swelling wrist. Soon we were on our way to Pen Bay Medical Center where we would spend a little over three hours being expertly treated by a staff of the kindest, most attentive medical professionals you would ever want to encounter while on vacation. I watched my wife endure several extraordinarily painful procedures with a combination of patience and toughness that I could not have managed if my life depended on it. In this way she is exactly like her Dad. There’s something about the Maine in her—no drama, no foolishness. You just screw up some courage and get along with it. 

So, a summary of her condition. She did break her wrist. The doctors were able to stretch the wrist back into a more natural position (which was about as dreadful as it sounds). Then they fitted her with a temporary cast that she will wear for the next few days. We will call an ortho doctor at the hospital today to set an appointment for as soon as possible where he will take another look to determine if her wrist can be set and placed in a more permanent cast, or, whether she will need to have a surgical procedure to insert screws or pins. In the meantime, I am waiting on her every need and both of us are planning on making the most of the situation. We are also thankful that she did not suffer a concussion from the impact of her face on the stones. It could have been much worse. Of course it could have been much better too. It could have been me instead of her. In every way that would have been a better outcome.

When we finally made it home last night and got settled I took this picture…

How is it possible that she could be so beautiful after what she just endured?