I’m working on a 40-day devotional to help you cope with pain. (Click here for more about that book.) I’d been editing the forty entries I’d written when it dawned on me that I hadn’t shared the first time I had the “worst pain” ever. Even though it’s not winter and no one has sledding on their minds, here’s that first story of pain.
We have suffered terror
and pitfalls, ruin and destruction.” (Lamentations 3:47, NIV)
One Sunday afternoon in
the winter of 1975, when I was in seventh grade, my dad dropped my sister Pat
and me off at a friend's house so we could go tobogganing. There was a steep
hill that ended at the lake, maybe a quarter mile from their house. Two of us
hopped on a snowmobile, and the third settled on the attached toboggan. Her
parents weren't home.
When we got to the
treacherous, narrow trail down to the lake, Pat was the first to hop on the
sled and ride it down head-first. I noticed only several inches of clearance on
either side of the path. With a grin, my sister pulled the toboggan back up the
hill.
"Next?" she
asked.
I turned the sled around,
pointing it to the frozen lake far below. I sat down feet-first, grabbed the
reins, and pushed off. Within seconds, I was about to careen into a tree, so
without thinking, I stuck my leg out to stop myself.
The next thing I knew, I
was on my stomach, being dragged down the mountain by the sled. Pat and the
friend slipped down the hill after me.
When the snow settled, I
tried to get up. I couldn't put any weight on my left leg.
The three of us looked at
each other and then at the hill. I don't remember talking about it, but it
seemed apparent that no one could drive the snowmobile down the trail or pull
me up on the toboggan.
The friend knew of a
place further along the lake with easier access, so she trudged to the top, got
on the snowmobile, and drove it west. In a few minutes, she was riding towards
Pat and me along the lake's edge.
With me safely on the
back of the snowmobile, we slowly retraced her steps and then headed back to
her house.
Pat called home, and Dad
said he'd be right over to get us. Mom was off doing something.
When we got me in the
house, we tried removing my boot, but pulling on it caused excruciating pain.
Dad resorted to cutting off the boot. My ankle was already swollen.
He called Mom (wherever
she was), and she told him to take me to the ER.
Since this is getting too
long, let me jump to the parts about pain.
Yes, it hurt like the
dickens when I hit that tree and hurt some more when I tried stepping on it.
Once in a wheelchair at the hospital, I was comfortable. Until after the x-ray.
They put me back on an exam table, and the old coot of a doctor on call said to
my dad, "Hold her down, Paul."
Crazy how, all these
years later, I remember those exact words as if I were right back in that
emergency room.
When the doctor yanked on
my leg to set it, the pain was way worse than anything I'd ever experienced.
Sure, I was only thirteen. I'd had a few belly aches and lots of typical
kid-falling-down injuries. But I'd never had appendicitis or tonsillitis or any
other -itis. I was your normal tom-boy living in the country, climbing trees,
riding my bike, and sledding down death hills.
They say kidney stones
are the worst, or maybe childbirth. But I am here to tell you – having your
broken leg set with no anesthesia is the worst!
And I'm not entirely
done.
I wore a cast from the
tip of my toes to halfway up my thigh for six weeks. The only good part was
staying home from school the entire time, doing my homework at the kitchen
table every day, and waiting for Mr. Lintereur, one of the kindest teachers
from our school, to bring me my assignments. Mom had baked peanut butter
cookies one day when he was there, and he told her that peanut butter cookies
and milk were the best thing to heal a broken bone. So Mom made them every
week.
Okay, but back to pain.
My mom worked at the
doctor's office, so she was the one who cut that horrible, smelly cast off of
my leg while I laid back and licked a cherry sucker that one of her co-workers
had given me.
At the end of her work
day, she escorted me on my crutches to her car and eased me into the front
seat. At which point, my knee bent.
Unless you've been in
that situation, you may not realize how much your joints lock up when they are
immobilized for six weeks. I'd been holding my leg straight until I slid into
the car. No one told me not to bend it. But it bent and locked that way. I could
not straighten it. All I could do was scream in pain.
The doctor had left his
office already for the day, so Mom drove to his house and pounded on his front
door.
Next thing I know, he's
reaching into the car's front seat and yanking my leg straight. "You'll
have to work on bending it slowly," he said. Or something like that. I
don't remember his exact words at that time; I was pretty much done with him by
then.
.JPG) |
| On that same lake this past summer, near the death hill. |
