Journey to the Center of... My Head

Goodness. I feel like it's been a long time since my last post. I know that has been my pattern over the last year or so... blog once or twice a month. I always miss my blog when I am away from it for too long. Sometimes I feel like I neglect it so often that I should give it up, but I just can't. I have always been a journaler and I love to type. It helps me think. The click clack of my fingernails against the keyboard. And it will always come - a night like tonight when I am ready to do a recap and cleanse myself of the ups and downs of a period of time. Tonight, I'm going to fill you in on my June.

Ugh. June is the hardest month of the year at my job. I work at a preschool and private school so we are open year round. During the school year, each class PreK and up, has one field trip. And then each month seems to have a holiday or event that requires a lot of hullabaloo. But our focus is academics. Our students work hard during the school year. So in the summer, we want them to play hard. Our 1st-5th graders go on a field trip every day. They are always afternoon field trips. In the month of June, we also do swim lessons each morning. Those two things, combined with the work of having 30 or so new families to meet and get to know, make the month of June exhausting. And to add an extra fun element, this summer, we are hosting 4 camps, two of which were in June. I feel like we are doing a pretty good job so far, but I am glad that June is over. I can't believe it is July 7th! We start school on August 20th, so I actually only have 6 more weeks of summer.

Early last week, the final week of June, I found myself hanging on by a thread. I was feeling overly emotional and work was too much, so I pulled out our time off calendar and found a week where I could request some time off. Yesterday, the owners came back in town, so it has officially been approved. Not next weekend, but the following weekend, I will have a 4 day weekend. Woohoo! A couple of days off to slow down and have a little fun. Or just sleep. I'll take either one =-) I'm looking forward to it.

Two weeks ago, I was worried that I had fractured my foot. It was Friday and I was walking to my car to go to lunch. I was looking in my purse to pull out my keys and didn't realize that I had stepped into a water hose that someone had left unwound on the grass. My left foot got caught in it, so I overbalanced when I picked up that foot to take a step, and my right foot suddenly felt an overwhelming pain. I took a step and it hurt SOOO bad. So I stood looking at my car for about 5 minutes. My phone was with me, so I could have pulled out my cell and called the office for help, but I didn't want help back inside, I wanted to get to my car, which was about 10 feet away. So after 5 minutes of taking deep breaths and standing on one foot, I hobbled to my car. I immediately turned it on and backed out of the parking space and that is when I knew I was in trouble. I almost hit the fence because it hurt to put my foot on the brake. But still, I didn't want to go back inside. It had taken a tremendous effort to get to my car, and walking into the school didn't seem possible. I felt like I had one journey in me, and I wanted it to be a journey home, not to the bench in the office.

Halfway home I started to cry. It hurt so bad. Only when I put pressure on it, so I put my car in park at every light so I didn't have to push my foot on the brake, but I was crying pretty hard when I got home. I got out of the car fairly easily with my left foot, but then I just stood there again for a while. We have three steps up to the porch to get into our house. I considered trying to crawl up them, but they are tall, and I didn't want to attract attention. So after several more deep breaths and tears, I took the three steps to the stairs, the three steps up the stairs, the three steps through the door to my couch and collapsed.

I was expecting a swollen blue foot, but when I took off my shoe, it looked totally normal. But I couldn't stop crying. After the stairs, it ached deeply, whereas initially, it only hurt when I used it. This was too much. So I called the office and told Michelle I wasn't going to make it back in. Then I laid on the couch until the tears stopped.

I didn't know what to do. I felt like I might need to go to the ER, but the thought of a trip back to the car was excruciating. And I also thought that if it were broken, it would look injured. I didn't know what it meant that it looked normal. So I decided on ice and bed. No way could I walk to the kitchen then down the hall, so I ended up crawling. I crawled to the kitchen and made a bag of ice (our freezer is the bottom drawer kind so I didn't have to stand) and then crawled down the hall with the bag of ice in my mouth. I pulled myself up on the bed, and that is where I spent the majority of the next 68 hours.

Saturday morning, I still couldn't put any weight on my foot, but I could bend and flex my toes in a way that would have been impossible on Friday. That gave me hope so I decided to spend another day in bed and see what Sunday morning was like. Sunday morning I could put some weight on the side of my foot. Around lunch time I decided to try and take a shower, and I was SO PROUD when I made it through without an incident! I celebrated like a toddler celebrating a trip to the toilet. By Sunday afternoon, I could get around pretty easily with a borrowed crutch. Using both crutches made me feel unsteady, but leaning on one took most of the weight off of my foot when I took a step, and it was enough to let me do some laundry and get ready for Monday.

It is two weeks later, and my foot is pretty darn good. But Brett's mom is in the hospital. It is a strange but fortunate truth that until yesterday, I had never visited anyone in a hospital who hadn't just had a baby. Well, once before when Brett's mom was in the hospital we went to see her, but it was a brief trip. Last night we were there for an hour and today we were there for a couple. Today she had lots of visitors, so we didn't stay as long as we had planned to. Last Sunday, she was trying to hang some curtains and fell off of her step stool. We spent Sunday morning in the ER waiting for them to come stitch her up. Also a first for me. They told her that she could go to work on Thursday, but when she did, her leg swelled so much that it burst some of her stitches and now it is infected. We were hoping she would go home tomorrow, but Brett thinks that Monday is more likely.

I have a lot of thoughts on the hospital experience, but I think I will save it for another post. I feel that I've rambled enough tonight =-)

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. We have a chance of rain tonight, which would be great for this hot Texas city. Here's hoping!