crisis on ice

Picture it: late afternoon last Friday, the day after Christmas, St. Paul, Minnesota:

My sister Joan, an all-around cool person with just the right touch of eccentricity, was leaving work to catch the bus home.. The streets and sidewalks were wet, deceptively so. You wouldn't have realized there was ice. It just looked wet.

I was just leaving the gym, and Jerry came rushing in to find me. He had just gotten the call. Joan had just fallen and broken her ankle. An ambulance had taken her to the hospital.

So we rushed to the Emergency Room and sat with Joan while she endured xrays and doctors and nurses and being (almost) knocked out while they reset her ankle. She was in remarkably good spirits, which apparently says something good about the drugs they had her on.

Now she is confined to her apartment for a while, surgery lined up for Wednesday (New Year's Eve day -- good riddance, 2008!).... We bring her Big Macs or whatever else she requests. Our sister Mary arrives tomorrow from New Jersey for a few days to help out. And Joan's cat Alex is also looking after her (Cats sometimes when sense something is wrong?).

The doctors say she may be out of work for as long as two months. Life changes in a split second. Hang in there, Joan!