First Worst Pain

 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.

On that same lake this past summer, near the death hill.