The Fun Begins

While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I called Duncan from one of the neighbor’s cell phones. I think he was as incredulous as I was, but he headed up from Boston to meet me at the hospital. The ambulance drivers kept asking me if I had osteoporosis as they tried to figure out why a relatively healthy 39-year-old woman would snap her femur running down the street. Being the largest bone in the human body, it doesn’t just snap running down the street without some underlying reason.

One of the ambulance staff cut my pant leg and confirmed that the bone had not broken through the skin. There was just a big lump in the middle of my leg where the bone was lying on itself. And, man did it hurt! The ambulance person said he was going to pull on my ankle to stretch my leg back out and promised me that it would feel much better after he did. He was right. The pain was from the muscle spasms because they weren’t taut and stretching my leg out put them back in a normal position. The next thing was that they had to lift me on the stretcher and get me in the ambulance. This was not easily done without excruciating pain and so they called the fire department to get some extra paramedics to help.