For those of you who don't know, the "Tumble Gym" is every kid's dream place, or at least mine. It's filled with spring boards, trampolines, foam pits, blow up toys, etc.! 
It's amazingly fun, but apparently it's amazingly easy to get hurt. In fact, you have to sign a waver upon entry for legal purposes (ahem). Anyway, so Heather and I ended up going with the group of kids! It was a blast! We were having a great time, jumping around on the trampoline, doing tricks into the foam, and playing on giant blow-up teeter-totters, and hamster wheels.Around 12:30ish, it was time to leave, but Heather wanted to jump on the trampoline one more time. Well, she did, and it was definitely the last time. As she took off from one trampoline to jump to the other she twisted her ankle, and felt her leg snap. As she explained, her foot was "flopping" as she flew through the air, and then landed on it on the other trampoline. As soon as she hit the trampoline, she started yelling out in pain. She was definitely hurt. I ran over there to see what I could do. She was pretty upset and kept moaning and groaning. After using a few "choice" words (hehe), she struggled to prop herself up to examine the damage. She reached down and used her hands to pull her knee and lower leg off of the trampoline. As she did so everything from about 4 inches above her ankle fell. It was awful. It just simply flopped, a clear indication that the bones were completely snapped in two! Well, after she yelled at the owner of the gym about 6 times to call the 911, he finally did. At this point, I was doing as she asked and holding her leg together. Not the most fun thing to do. Imagine trying to hold a person's leg in place to prevent things from moving, as well as to prevent the bone from coming through the skin. Yeah...it was pretty intense. As we waited for help to arrive, a couple guys were able to give her a blessing.
About 10 minutes later a couple fire trucks pulled up to the scene. They came in and asked her some questions, and made her wiggle her toes about 10 times.
I'm guessing it was pretty painful because she didn't seem to keen on continuing doing so. Anyway, then they took some vitals and managed to place an air cast on her leg, as I held it in place. They placed a sheet under her, lifted her from the trampoline, which was also painful because her leg was continuously jostled, and set her on the stretcher. They got her outside, where it was conveniently snowing, and placed her in the firetruck. I climbed in front, and then we took off to the hospital. Surprisingly, at least to me, firetrucks don't drive very smoothly. As I guessed, and was told later, it was kind of a bumpy, painful ride for Heather.We arrived at the hospital a little while later, and she was examined and x-rayed, another uncomfortable process.
Let me just say, wow! The x-rays were pretty crazy, bones shouldn't snap like that, but they do. She was pretty lucky though that the bone hardly penetrated the skin. She just had a little tiny bit of blood on the surface. Anyway, they didn't splint it or anything because they wanted to get her right into surgery. So, they suited her up, AKA put her in a sheet with a hole in it for her head, and prepared her for surgery. Because her family wasn't there, I got to go with her and meet the Orthopedic Surgeon, her Anesthesiologist, and wait with her in the "holding" room until they took her in for surgery.All of it was pretty exciting, but she was a total trooper! She seriously handled it all so well! She was able to answer all of their questions, and remember significant things like her birthday, etc. I was totally impressed. I think if it had been me I would've been in shock! Anyway...they got her ready and took her in for surgery.
From there, I'm not sure what happened, except that they put her out, inserted a catheter, and an air-tube down her throat. Then they made an incision near her knee shoved a titanium rod down into the tibia, and made two more incisions, one at the top and one at the bottom to screw it into the bone! Apparently, the surgery went perfectly, so that's good news.
Anyway, while Dr. Bacon was performing the surgery, Heather's parents arrived and we sat in the waiting room together and just chatted. After a couple of hours the surgeon came out and described the process to us, and told her that she was waking up. After 20 or so more minutes we were able to go see her. She awoke, and they moved her to recovery. After getting her settled in, I left around 5:30 AM. It was quite the night!
She's now recovering in the hospital and will be there until Sunday or Monday. She will likely be on crutches for the next 3 months, and will not be able to drive. She broke the left leg, but she has a stick-shift car, basically making it impossible! Anyway, at least things went well with the surgery, and she'll be able to heal properly, but things are going to be a bit different for her for the next little while! Anyway...a fun time was had by all...or not.
