On Wednesday afternoon I took Dylan to the neighborhood playground to push him in the swing. I'm not sure what our community planners were thinking, but there isn't a sidewalk that leads to the playground, so to get to it you have to push the stroller through a parking space, over a curb and then through the grass. I have twiggy, bird-like ankles and can basically twist them on a crack in the sidewalk (yes, I have actually done that before), so it came as no surprise that when returning home I twisted it pushing Dylan's stroller back over the curb. To my delight (and surprise) although it hurt badly when it happened, I walked home normally and without a limp or swelling. That whole evening my ankle barely hurt and I even mentioned to Bryan how lucky I was to not have a worse injury.
About an hour after we went to bed, I woke up with excruciating pain in my foot. It was paralyzed - I couldn't flex or point it, or turn it from side to side. Every move of the sheet over my foot caused a wave of pain to go through my ankle and up my leg. I thought surely it had swollen up to the size of a baseball, but every time I reached down to check it felt perfectly normal.
I decided to get some Tylenol from the bathroom to help with the pain, so I got up and limped across the room ... then everything went black. The next thing I remember, Bryan was standing over me with the phone at his ear and a panicky look on his face. I was confused and uttered "Where am I?" and Bryan stressed into the phone "She doesn't even know where she is!" At that point I realised who Bryan was talking to. When I passed out, he heard a thud and woke up to see what happened. I had landed next to his side of the bed so when he got up he nearly tripped over me. Then he shook me a few times and I didn't wake up so he called 911.
Within 5 minutes the paramedics arrived and 5 huge, strapping young men lumbered up the stairs and filed into our bedroom. They took my blood pressure and it was crazy low - like 90 / 50. They took it again and again, but it wasn't getting any better and I was still feeling light headed and nauseated so they insisted in taking me to the hospital because my sprained ankle didn't really explain the hypotension. So, off the Baptist South I go in the ambulance with Bryan and a sleepy Dylan following shortly behind.
I get hooked up to an IV and once I get to the hospital they take an X-Ray of my ankle. They had to keep asking which one was injured because there was no visible indication of an ankle sprain. Of course nothing was broken, but it did make me feel slightly better that the X-Ray did show some inflammation so I wasn't totally crazy to be in pain.
After several hours, my blood pressure returned to normal and the Doctor told me that I had a vasovagal (rhymes with bagel) response, which basically means I'm a wimp and passed out from the pain of a mildly sprained ankle.
Since we've been home, for pretty much everything I do Bryan tells me to be careful otherwise I might pass out. I guess I deserve it. I walk very carefully when pushing Dylan in the stroller and I haven't been back to the sidewalkless park for fear of hopping the curb and twisting my ankle again.
On a different note, Dylan was a champ at the hospital and despite being woken in the middle of the night he was very well-behaved. On Friday I took him to his doctor for his 1 year check up and he is 95% for height at 33" and 85% for weight at 26 lbs (although he feels more like 30-35 lbs).
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