On September 10th we arrived at the doctor’s office, full of hope that Raelene was healing fine and that she was going to get a cast. We talked to the physician’s assistant, she got some X-rays, everything was going fine… until the doctor looked at the x-rays, and then asked with a concerned look to see the emergency room X-rays. As it turned out, once the swelling in her ankle went down the gap between the broken pieces of bone in her ankle increased. The doctor sat down with both of us, and explained that our options were surgery now or wait six months to see if it healed and get surgery then if it did not (he was not hopeful that it would heal without surgery).
As scary as it was, surgery was the only realistic choice. She was unable to take care of Corinne, and it didn’t make sense for me to quit my job so she could convalesce for six more months. So we scheduled the surgery for the following Monday, and then Raelene went off to Mendocino for a fun weekend getaway with the girls while I stayed home and took care of Corinne.
The day of the surgery was, of course, quiet grueling for all of us. Corinne and I dropped Raelene off at The Surgery Center late Monday morning, although it wasn’t until later afternoon that they actually did her surgery. I picked her up after 7PM (I think it was closer to 8PM), took her home, and she started the post-surgery recovery process. She stayed in bed with her foot elevated while I rotated ice packs on her ankle to keep the swelling down.
The next weeks were a blur of Raelene care, Corinne care, and working from home. I was using PTO (Paid Time Off) to cover my absence from work,  but this wasn’t a good time for a vacation because I still had a lot of stuff I needed to get done. We did our best to make it through. I took Corinne to Studio Grow in Berkeley a handful of times, we went to parks, stuff like that.
Raelene and I also started researching preschools, so we had something to fall back on once my PTO was exhausted. I toured ECPC and Piccoli preschools, and wasn’t impressed with either (although to be fair the Piccoli tour was a complete misfire, so I never got the chance to evaluate the school). We tried to get a tour of Keystone Montessori, but the soonest they could see us was several weeks after my PTO ran out. So we went with a school a friend sends their daughter to, and we’ve been extremely pleased.
On September 28th Raelene went in for her first post-surgery checkup, and the doctor assured us that everything was healing just fine. They removed the split she’d worn after the surgery and gave her a cam walker boot with instructions not to walk on it. Corinne started preschool on October 1st, and I returned to work shortly after that. On the 14th we toured Keystone Montessori and fell in love with it, but in the end decided to keep Corinne where she was. There were pros and cons to both schools, but in the end I think we made the correct choice.
And on October 26th, almost exactly two months after Raelene first broke her ankle, the doctor gave her the okay to walk without crutches or the boot. She’s even allowed to drive. Raelene does need to wear an air cast for support, and walking after two months of recovering from a broken ankle isn’t as easy or straight forward as it sounds. She starts physical therapy tomorrow, and we are all pulling for her to be well soon.
And that’s the story of our interesting times. 🙂