Yesterday was completely unexpected in so many ways.
Allow me to walk you through my day.
I woke up about an hour earlier than my alarm, so I packed up my bag to stay and my bag to go very leisurely. To put it simply, my morning was a fun combination of relaxing yet exciting! The cold morning air also helped me feel awake in a way I hadn’t all of Indonesia.
Fast forward a couple hours, it’s almost 9:00. All the bags have been loaded into the vans and most of the people as well. I’d volunteered last night to carry the cooler of our lunch into the trailer, so I picked it up and headed down the stairs with it.
Let me say this: the cooler was not heavy. What happened next was not because it was heavy. It was because my brain was focused on too many things to pay attention to where my feet were landing.
I was talking with someone, and as I stepped down from the last wooden step and onto the gravel road, my foot twisted to where I was putting all my weight on the top of my foot, rather than the bottom (like we were designed to).
Now, I actually do this a lot, and normally, I can recover with a little hopping movement that keeps me on my feet. This time, however, I couldn’t recover and I crashed onto the ground, the cooler saving my face and hands, and my knees catching the rest of me.
There were a couple witnesses to this (people who had just asking if I needed help), so to prove that I was fine, I jumped to my feet as quickly as I could. That was when I heard a crack in my ankle and I went back to my knees.
Did it hurt? No. Did it feel way too weird for me to put weight on it? Yes. And on another level, I was aware that this was probably the worst I’d twisted my ankle and that the crack sound couldn’t have been good, so I waited a minute before trying to walk on it (I hadn’t waited before getting back to my feet after the crack, I just didn’t put any weight on my foot).
After a minute, I still didn’t feel steady enough to walk, so I allowed Maggie Claire to support my weight as I hopped my way to the vans (the cooler had been taken as soon as I fell).
After only a few hops, I felt light headed and nauseous, so I asked her to wait. And wait. And wait. A girl from another Squad offered to help carry me, and even though I did NOT want to be carried, I was aware we were supposed to be leaving and I was in no condition to hop my way all the way to the vans, so I let them.
I resisted as they started going down a grassy slope that had just been rained on, but they ignored me and it turned out fine. They got me to a van, set me up on the front seat so I could elevate it, and gave me some Advil, even if I didn’t want it because it wasn’t hurting.
My brain was still working clearly, so I removed my shoe, since I knew there was going to be swelling. I was not expecting there to be so much swelling already (I’ll include a picture at the end, so it’s optional if you want to see it or not). Honestly, the shape of my ankle fascinated me.
I texted my mom and updated her on what had happened during the past few minutes. I had so many people taking care of me, and doing whatever they could to help, but a couple big questions remained.
Was it broken or only sprained? Who was going to take me to the doctor? How was I going to get to Black Mountain?
I’ll answer those questions in the next blog😆
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