The Summer of My Broken Ankle

Here it is, August 2020, and like most of the world, I haven't been much of anywhere beyond a 10-mile radius of my backyard, thanks to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. In the absence of anything travel related to write about, I thought I'd share a memorable family vacation event from summer 2006.

For the past 35 years or so, we have enjoyed many summer weeks beachside in our favorite Cape Cod town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts. From the time our eldest daughter Kristin was a baby in 1982, we have rented various saltbox cottages fronting a stretch of beautiful bay vistas along Mayo Beach. With the addition of Jennifer in 1987 and then Amanda in 1991, our family of three grew to five. Nowadays, with the addition of our son-in-law James and two handsome grandsons Alex and William, we have expanded to two side-by-side cottages.

This particular week in 2006 started as any other - packing up the family vehicle, at that time a Hyundai Santa Fe. Jenn and Amanda, now ages 19 and 15, respectively, joined us for the early Saturday morning drive from Rhode Island to beat the traffic over the Cape's Bourne Bridge, followed by the customary stop for breakfast. Kristin and fiancé James would come spend Sunday with us just for the day. The weather forecast was for a week of sunshine with no rain in sight - one of those rare perfect weeks that comes along only rarely. We reached the cottage - one of two tiny 2-bedroom cottages fondly known as "Fore 'n Aft", ours being the "Aft" located behind "Fore", both of which we were familiar with, having stayed previously. After a beautiful Sunday at the beach and dinner on the grill, Kristin & James returned home and we called it a day.

"Aft" Cottage, Wellfleet

David and I woke early Monday morning with the sun, as we always do. The girls were still sound asleep in their room, as were most of the neighbors. David made a pot of coffee and went for a walk down the road to fetch his newspaper, while I puttered around in an attempt to straighten things up.

Some time after David returned with his newspaper, I decided to go outside and bring in the towels and swimsuits from the clothesline. Only, I never made it to the clothesline.

You know how sometimes you make a decision that you wish you didn't? This was one of those moments. The clothesline was located in a grassy area to the right as you step out the front door. The deck at the front door was flush with the ground and surrounding crushed seashells. As a shortcut to the clothesline to the right and the trash cans in the rear, there was an unusually deep step off the patio down to a couple of cement blocks, not a regulation-type step by any means, just something someone threw together to quickly reach the side yard and trash bins.

Jenn on the Perilous Step after Mom's Fall

Wearing a pair of bad-fitting slip-on sandals, I made the decision to take the shortcut instead of the safer route around the patio. As my left foot stepped down to the cement block, my ankle turned completely sideways, I felt a disturbing popping sensation, and I went crashing to the ground. The pain in my foot was immediate and excruciating.

I'm no doctor, but it didn't take a genius to see that my ankle was broken. I was gripping my foot so tightly, not only because of the pain, but because my ankle was flopping left and right. Instinctively - or in a state of panic - I did what anyone would do - popped the ankle vertically back into place and held it in there with my hands. I love telling that story for the WOW effect it draws!

Standing up was impossible, and my frantic calls to David were a sign to him that I wasn't asking him to come out and look at the sunrise. A call to 9-1-1 soon brought the Wellfleet ambulance manned by kind and caring paramedics who picked me up and loaded me in on a stretcher. In a highly medicated state to numb the pain, I was transported to Cape Cod Hospital, my first and only ambulance ride ever.

Not being familiar with Cape Cod Hospital, I had no idea what to expect. The orthopedic specialist on duty was called in to examine me, and I was diagnosed with a double ankle fracture. I had two choices: (1) perform an immediate surgical repair of the broken bones, spend a couple of nights in the hospital, and return home; or (2) return home to RI immediately in my painfully "as-is" condition and go seek medical help with my own physicians. It was quickly decided that surgery was necessary right there and then. Fortunately, for me, I had the best orthopedic surgeon on the Cape, and I made the right choice.

Meanwhile, back at the cottage, thinking that the vacation was a bust, the girls were throwing all our things into the canvas car roof carrier in preparation for the trip home. Imagine their surprise, when I decided upon discharge that, no, we're not leaving the Cape. I paid for this week and, by God, I'm getting my money's worth. We're staying! Furnished with a pair of crutches and a heavy knee-to-toe cast, David drove me from the hospital back to enjoy the rest of our vacation. If memory serves, the canvas car carrier, loaded with the girls' things still sat in the middle of the living room floor, where it would remain for the rest of the week just in case we had to make a quick escape.

In the meantime, we went about our week. I wasn't able to make it over the dune to the beach, but my patient and kind family drove me around to various ocean-front locations so that I could enjoy the view, and we even drove to our favorite Bookstore Restaurant down the road for a meal.

While it was a struggle hobbling around without falling on my face and still painful at times, it turned out to be a great week (almost as memorable as the Hurricane Bob week on the Cape in 1991 - stay tuned, that'll be another blog!), and better than being at home. When we returned the next summer to a different cottage, we took a walk by Fore 'n Aft and immediately noticed a change at "Aft" - that the grill was moved directly in front of the step-off, and the concrete blocks were replaced with a bush, no doubt a result of my mishap.

My husband tells me I should have sued the pants off the owners of the cottage, that I could have made out like a bandit. He's probably right, but I chose to leave the lawyers out of it and go a different route. Whatever medical bills not covered by my health insurance and sick leave not covered by TDI, were covered by the owners. They even gave us a free weekend in October when I was getting around better. So what if they forgot, and that when we arrived, we found both cottages were occupied by a police training squad and their big, loud dogs. I tossed it up to the owner's failing memory. We stayed in a motel and then returned for the next two nights, and enjoyed a fall weekend with no Cape crowds.

Like many cottages in that area, the pair of Fore 'n Aft cottages have since been sold and turned into condominiums. I saw the "Fore" cottage for rent this year, and if it weren't for the ridiculously high rent, I might have considered it for old time's sake. My family has many memories to share from those Wellfleet vacations, and this one sits at the top of our list. I'm not sure how much fun my family had, having to fetch for me and cart me around everywhere during that week. I do know that 16 years later, it still makes for a great story.

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