Fractures and Faux Berries

I did it! I put up my first Christmas decoration today. Two, even. I’d been bummed out about not getting everything out, and then remembered…baby steps. A little Christmas is a good start. This coming weekend is packed, but my goal is to put up lots of non-tree decor to liven things up.

Now, I didn’t want to be alarmist, but if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll have seen that my son, Cleveland, was in an accident early Monday evening. He was hit by a minivan on the SIU campus. Fortunately, it wasn’t going terribly fast, and he was in the crosswalk (a badly lighted crosswalk for that matter).

He had his first ride in an ambulance, which he thought was very cool. (“Riding in an ambulance was on my bucket list, but I thought it would be at the end of my life!) The ER staff took great care of him and their radiology folks spotted a fracture on the top of his tibia (the plateau). So he went home on crutches, his leg in a long immobilizer. Today the orthopaedic doc put him in a full-leg cast. No driving! 6 weeks!

Just know that he is doing well. Lots of adjustment for us all. But here’s an interesting thing: He’s 18 but had a sudden growth spurt of about an inch over the past month or so. If he’d been an inch shorter, his knee would’ve been completely wrecked. That, combined with the fact that he is upbeat and doesn’t appear to have anything else broken, seems like a miracle to me.