Home alone 2

Dear Family and friends,
     Well our week has been busy with new adventures.  Tuesday through Friday the temple was so busy.  This is the last week we will be open for three weeks so the people have filled the temple each day.  We expected Saturday to be even busier than last Saturday, when we had 19 sessions.  The Area Office of the Church gave us back our passports just in case we needed them during the break so we hired a taxi Friday afternoon and went to purchase bus tickets for a weekend trip to see our mission family in El Salvador.  The other Senior Couples here have a few trips planned to sightsee Guatemala during the break.  We were excited to be able to go on a couple of these trips and get to know these people better.  And then the Reid Klutz Gene (as my sister Judy calls our gracefulness) attached me!!
     At about 3:00 we put the backpack on Lon and headed out to the store to get some bananas and milk.  We took the route that is mostly down hill from our apartment.  We had gone about a mile when I forgot the rule of "look down, look down" ( I love that song from Les Miserables).  The sidewalks are non-exsistant and the roads have lots of holes and manholes without covers and just rough so you have to watch where you are walking at all times.  Well, Lon and I are visiting about our wonderful day in the temple and our trips that are planned and I forgot to look down.  My left foot went into a cement rain gutter, twisting as I fell and my right knee came down hard on the uneven cement.  I went down very hard but sat up and rubbed the ankle and knee and had Lon help me up so we could continue and I have never felt such pain in my life.  I sat down on the curb  and then laid on the grass, we happened to be where there was grass.  After a little while, we tried it again, only to have to lay down again.  The pain was so intense.  Lon was trying to figure how we were going to get me home.  We had a mile walk, uphill, then the cross over with all the steps to go up and down, and we had no phone numbers with us and after the third time of trying to get up, I told him that without a car I was going nowhere.  Lon said a prayer in his heart and told our Heavenly Father that we were in trouble here and needed some guidance and help.  Just then a lady backed out of her garage and pulled over to ask if we needed help.  Our little angel helped Lon get me into the car and we headed for home.  She was such a sweet little lady.  I was in the front and she would reach over and pat my head and try to comfort me.  I started throwing up now.  Lon figures it was shock but I figured it was my Minears kicking up.  Which ever it was it was not good.  But thankfully he had his backpack so that was my bowl and I didn't destroy her car.
       When we got to the house, Lon ran upstairs to get President Harris to help get me into the house.  They got a kitchen chair and carried me to my bed.  President Harris couldn't get the mission doctor on the phone and they were trying to figure out what to do with me.  After they gave me a blessing they both knew that it was time to get to the hospital.  One of the temple guards brought down a wheel chair from the temple and the temple van and loaded me in to it.  That would have  been a fun picture to have, trying to get me up into a van with two legs that didn't want to work. 
     The ER at the Hospital Herrera Llerandi was wonderful.  The doctor, Dr. Castillo, took care of the throwing up first.  They started an IV with anti-vert medicine then the ex-rays of the feet.  It wasn't good news.  He called the orthopedic surgeon Dr Amenabar and they showed Lon the ex-rays.  The left foot has a hairline crack at the ankle and the right knee cap is broken in two pieces.  The only good news was that the two pieces were about even so the screws and wires would be easy to attach to put it back together again.  I was admitted to the hospital to have surgery the next morning, Saturday the 11th at 8:00 AM.
     My nurses were wonderful.  Sometimes it was sign language that we used, but I thankfully had enough words that I could tell them what I needed.  They took such good care of me.  Of course, there was not much sleep on that night, the pain was so intense and I had to lie flat on my back and I have never been able to sleep that way.  I told Lon to go home about 8:30 and the temple guard again picked him up and took him home.
     The surgery went great and this is how I woke up.

 

My left foot has the boot on so I can put some weight on it to get to the bathroom and back to bed.  The right knee is to be immobile for about 6 weeks and I can slide it along as we use a walker to get around.  The pain medicine is working great, but there is no sleep in a hospital.  On Saturday afternoon, a group of people are in the first part of the hospital room waiting for the patient to come from recovery.  I am in a two bed room.  The 23 year old girl has had a tumor removed and she has olverian cancer.  There is a lot of crying, conversation, and cell phones going off all afternoon and night.  They have come from 6 hours away and the mother, sister, and aunt spent the night with the patient, I think mostly because they had no other place to go.

  Sunday morning the doctors came in and I told them it was time to go home so I could get some rest.  Lon had taken a taxi this day to get to the hospital and we were trying to figure out a time to have a taxi there to take us home when the mission doctor and his wife walk in.  His internet had been down and he had just found out about all this and came straight to the hospital.  They brought us home and went to get the prescriptions filled.  They are going to get the walker for me to use also.

    This would have been a great picture too.  Lon is walking backwords pulling the wheelchair with me in it up to our door and the doctor is holding onto my leg to keep it out straight when Lon comes to the step up and trips.  Suddenly my leg is straight up to the sky and Lon is on the ground.  At the time it didn't seem funny but as I think of it now, what a sight that must have been.

     I am so thankful to be home.  We both slept great last night and I took about a two hour nap today.  Our missionary family here have brought in food and are taking care of us.  They don't all go anywhere at the same time until their trip to the Xela temple.  Yes, that is the very temple that we tried to visit twice while we were in El Salvador.  Just don't think it is meant for us to go there.  But we will wait and see how the recovery goes. Thank goodness we have these 3 weeks to recover before the temple opens again.  There is no plans to come home at this time.  The doctors are great and we expect a full recovery.

       Please remember me in your prayers and if you live near a temple, please put our names on the prayer rolls.  That is the best help you can be to us now.  We are in good spirits and Elder Thompson has promised not to feed me hotdogs every day.  He is taking very good care of me.  We send our love to all.  Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma, Lon and Nancy

Lon decided that as Sister Petersen always said, without a picture it didn't happen

my left ankle is turning real pretty colors