Lenawee Smiles: Some Mother's Days are more memorable than others

Please accept my greetings to all of you out there on this special day! Not all of you are mothers in the traditional sense but you are still mothers: You are nurturing and loving a child or children whose natural mothers are not with them for one reason or another. You have my deepest respect.

I would like to share with you this, my special 10th anniversary of Mother’s Day. Yes, 2014, May 12, was a Mother’s Day in San Diego that, for me will not be forgotten. Nor will my daughters or granddaughter be likely to forget.

Its excitement actually began in Daughter the Elder’s kitchen on the morning of May 10, 2014. Daughter the Younger and I were in California to attend my granddaughter’s commencement ceremonies from Loyola University in Los Angeles. It was to be held on May 12. We had flown out a couple of days earlier.

We were about 15 minutes from leaving San Diego to drive to LA when my body decided to faint in D the E’s kitchen. I only recall having some visual disturbances before awakening to the voices of my daughters calling an ambulance and my own voice arguing the point.

“No ambulance, I am fine, just help me up, we have to leave!” I recall repeating this mantra several times.

D the Y was on the floor at my feet trying to explain to me that my ankle was broken.

To me, this was just ridiculous. I had merely fainted. No one breaks an ankle fainting. “No ambulance!” I insisted. “Yes, ambulance,” she insisted. “It’s on its way.”

“Look, Mom, does this look like a normal ankle?”

I raised my head from the floor to look at what she was doing. D the Y was carefully holding up my right foot. What I saw was my foot bent at a 90-degree angle to the right.

I had to agree with her. It did not look normal. The ambulance had arrived very quickly, and the EMT fellows were there with their equipment and loaded me up fast.

Decisions were made with lightning speed: D the E was sent on to Los Angeles.

D the Y followed the ambulance to the hospital.

It seemed my blood pressure had tanked due to dehydration. Because of this, I could not have any pain medication for about 45 minutes. Fortunately, I didn’t feel any pain for some time.

I was delivered to the Emergency Room, offloaded to one of its beds and then loaded up with pain medication.

It was worked out that D the Y would then ride to Los Angeles with my granddaughter’s father. The whole gang were going to be there for the two nights prior to the commencement ceremonies on May 12.

Therefore, I was on my own at the capable hands of this small hospital.

Here is what I remember on that Friday in the Emergency Room. I remember humming to myself and probably singing. I remember various nurses, aides, doctors drifting in, lifting the blanket covering my injured foot, turning a peculiar shade of green, moaning and leaving.

If I had been verbal, I would have said, “You think it is tough looking at it, think about how it feels owning this mess!”

I have no memory whatsoever of Saturday but I must have been placed in a room.

Sunday morning, very early, an orthopedic surgeon tackled the broken ankle and broken leg — yes, its contiguous bone had snapped also.

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I was pretty much blotto for the next couple of days with pain meds. But then Tuesday rose, and in came a physical therapist with a pair of crutches. I thought he was in the wrong room.

“Let’s get you up and walking!” he sang out.

“Let’s smack you stupid,” I thought. My right foot and leg was in a cast up to my knee, and I was sure it weighed 37 pounds.

I tried to explain to him that I didn’t think I would be able to do anything. He insisted I could hop on my left leg and use the crutches.

Hop? I hadn’t hopped since I was 7 years old and wasn’t very good at it then. I weighed a lot more now. Hop? He rammed the crutches under my arms, pulled me off the bed and yelled that I must never ever put any weight on that cast — on pain of torture and death.

I think I hopped 5 feet the first time. Then I tried to figure out if I could find a hit man.

Susan Keezer lives in Adrian. Send your good news to her at lenaweesmiles@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Susan Keezer: Some Mother's Days are more memorable than others