Broken Bone

A few days ago, Xander said, "An illustrator is the person who draws the pictures and a aufor is the one who writes the book, right?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "Then I want to be an illustrator. And I want Nick to be a aufor."

Nick, contentedly sitting eating his Cheerios, did not object.

The big news here is that the wildfires all around, on top of destroying about 1,000 homes in our town and surrounding towns and taking two human lives, also prompted Erik to break his ankle. Last weekend was particularly dangerous because of the high winds. Firefighters, working around the clock for days, could not contain the largest fire at all until a day when the wind died down. On Tuesday night, the night before Grandma and Mom had a flight to go home to Minnesota, there was a fire in an apartment complex less than a block away from our house. We could see the smoke and hear the fire itself.

I had previously thrown some things together in bags by the door, just in case, but now we tried to get ready to leave at any moment. Erik got up on the roof to wet it down with our hose. Next thing I knew, he was inside the house in a whole lot of pain. He doesn't complain, so when he shows a whole lot of pain, that means it's painful. We elevated, iced, and gave him Advil. Lots of Advil. Finally that kicked in and he felt better. We still didn't know if we would have to evacuate or not and I didn't think trying to get him to the hospital or urgent care would help. The city's emergency personnel were very busy at the apartment complex.

Fast forward a couple of hours and they had the fire down to a smolder. Only two buildings in the entire complex were burned. After picking up some crutches at Walgreens, we finally went to bed.

In the morning, we had to get Mom and Grandma to the airport almost immediately after dropping off Xander at school. Our doctor's office didn't open until the moment that we had to start driving to the airport, so we dropped off poor Erik on crutches, hoping they would be able to take care of him and I would be able to get back in time to pick him up.

Nick and I did get back to the house about the same time as Erik, but in the meantime he had decided to crutch all the way home instead of waiting. We had to bring him to a referral appointment in the afternoon after picking up Xander. It was broken, and he was scheduled for surgery first thing the next morning.

All of us got up extra early to drop him off at surgery and then take Xander to school. Later, Nick and I picked up Erik. They had put two screws in his ankle that looked extremely large on their pictures. Let's see if I can hold one of them up to show you.

 

He is now doing fine, on a regimen of medication and exercises and icing that we need a spreadsheet to keep track of. I thought he would pass out during the day, but he was up the whole day, longer than I was. So far so good. Today is probably the day that the pain really comes. The block will have worn off. We set an alarm for 4:00 this morning to make sure he got in his pain relief dosage.

Now, we NEED to get rain.