So, for those of you who didn’t know, we were on vacation for about a week and a half, rounding lake Michigan. We camped our way from Chicago up through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the Mackinac Bridge, and then down through Michigan and back to Chicago.

Normally I would recount the trip in chronological order, however, the end of the trip sort of overshadowed what came before. So I’m going to start there, and then start back at the beginning for the rest of the trip.

So here is the story, as best I was able to piece together. We were camping in more or less the middle of the Upper Peninsula, and had been staying at the same place for a couple of nights. This was Saturday night. We were planning to leave the campground on Sunday and travel part way home, finishing up the trip on Monday.

We had been having the camp fires by our cabin, since they mostly took place after Oliver and Evie were in bed. Around 11 or so, everybody decided to pack it in, but Sara and I stayed up for a little bit with the fire. We had been sitting and talking for a little bit when we suddenly heard screaming coming from the other end of the campground.

There were many other people with campfires up on our end of the campground, and they all went silent, listening. We thought someone had played a prank on someone else. “There were some young kids down there,” said Sara. My first thought was that maybe someone had put something in someone else’s bed, or perhaps jumped out in the dark and scared them. But the screaming went on and on for quite a while, prompting one of the guys next to us to say, “Okay, it’s not funny anymore. It’s not funny.” So I knew they also were thinking it was some sort of prank. (More on these guys later, in the other post)

After a while, the screaming stopped, and everyone eventually went back to their conversations. Shortly after that, I realized I had to go to the bathroom, so I took my stuff to get ready for bed and left Sara to stay at the cabin.

When I was in the bathroom I ran into my father-in-law Tom, and we joked around a little bit before he left. When I left the bathroom a few minutes later, I noticed that someone had pulled their truck around and turned the headlights on, shining them on a tight group of people. I saw Tom over by the group, so I decided to go down there and check it out, thinking I could ask him what was going on.

My first thought was that maybe someone had hit a dog (there were a lot of dogs at the campground). I thought maybe the screaming had been from someone who had seen or found their dog after being hit. As I got closer to the group, I noticed that almost all of the people in the group were from our family. “Huh, that’s weird,” I thought, but not so crazy. After all, their cabin was close by, so if they heard screaming they would obviously come out to see what was going on. It still had not occurred to me at this point that these events could in any way be connected to our family.

When I finally got to where the people were, there was this surreal moment where they parted before me like the Red Sea, and I saw that my sister-in-law Anna was the object of all the attention. She was lying on the ground with her head in my brother-in-law Ben’s lap. My eyes traveled quickly down and I got a good eyeful of her ankle. The foot was clearly twisted at an unnatural ankle. It didn’t take a doctor to see that it was pretty seriously broken.

Anna and Ben had been walking back from the fire at our cabin and had just about made it back to their cabin. There was just a small hole or uneven place in the ground, and that was enough for Anna to trip and break both of her legs.

I should mention that Anna and Tom both have a genetic condition known as Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI). This condition causes their bones to be brittle (think Mr. Glass from Unbreakable). Therefore, a small trip or bump that normally wouldn’t mean much of anything to a normal person, could be a serious injury to someone with OI.

When Anna first fell, Ben dropped what he was carrying and ran to her. “I just broke both of my legs!” she gasped, and Ben turned and ran for the cabin. The second his back was turned, Anna began screaming, which was what we heard up at our end, by the fire. Ben ran the length of the cabin pounding on the wall, rounded the corner, threw open the door and yelled, “Anna just broke both of her legs.” Before anyone could even stumble out of bed, he was off again, running back to Anna. Anna continued screaming until Ben got back to her, where he stayed until she was loaded into the ambulance.

So, by the time I got down there, I was one of the last people to the party. The ambulance had already been called and things were more or less under control. “Go tell Lisa,” someone said and I went right away, happy to have something to do. On the way over to their motor home, I called Sara.

“Remember all that screaming we heard?” I said, “That was your sister.” Okay, in retrospect I probably could have broken that to her a little more gently. In any event, by the time I told the other members of the family, I decided I better head back up to the cabin, because I figured Sara would have gone down to the other end immediately.

Sure enough, when I got up there, Sara was gone and she had given the baby monitor to the random people camping next to us. “That screaming was my sister,” she said, “Our kids are in the cabin. Can you watch them?” “Are they sleeping??” they asked. So they were fairly relieved when I got back up there, not only to take back the responsibility of the kids, but also to give them some information about what was going on.

Around this time the first responders had arrived, followed shortly by an ambulance. This clued everyone at the campsite into the fact that something was going on, and that screaming they heard was more than just kids messing around. I kept thinking to myself, “Why didn’t I go down there right away? The screaming was so obviously painful. Even if it hadn’t been someone in the family, I should have at least gone down to check it out.”

Lisa showed up to the cabin to sit with the kids, and I went back down to see what was going on. Anna wanted Sara to ride with her in the ambulance, and she didn’t want either of her parents to drive (their car, not the ambulance)(she probably didn’t want them to drive the ambulance either), in case they were too upset. In retrospect, I don’t think they were, but it was kind of hectic at the time and it was sort of hard to get everything sorted out. So the plan was that I would go bundle up Oliver and drive him and Tom and Barb to the hospital. Orlan would follow after to take me back to the campsite.

Of course I was stumbling around in the dark in the cabin trying to put together a bag for Oliver and Sara (diapers, change of clothes, toothbrush, etc.) and Evie woke up. She wanted a drink and wanted to know what was going on. “Nothing,” I blithely lied, “Just getting some stuff that mommy wanted.” I knew she couldn’t see me take Oliver out, or she would know there was something up. So I managed to sneak him out without her noticing, which I think was a major feat. Oliver obliged me by being a good little kidnap victim, rather than crying out.

We got to the hospital quite a while after that. Not only was the hospital pretty far away (we were in the middle of nowhere after all), but the last thing I wanted to do was hit a deer or moose on the way to the hospital. So we were going fairly slow.

We were trying to guess about what was going on based on what we could see going in and out of the emergency room. The doctor came out and told us he had put her on morphine. Shortly thereafter we saw them wheeling in a portable x-ray machine. It seemed like maybe they were getting ready to set it, but it seemed too soon for something like that. Later we found out that the break was bad enough, and unstable enough, that they wanted to set it as soon as possible.

This part was a little hard to take out in the waiting room. There was a lot of screaming. I was surprised at how much screaming there was, given that they had told us they were putting her on morphine and versed. It was just that painful. In fact, Sara later told us that they had given her a considerable amount. The doctor kept saying, “Give me one more of morphine. Another two of versed. Another one of morphine.” etc. The versed is specifically to get rid of the memory of setting it, so she actually doesn’t remember this part, which is probably for the better, at least considering what it sounded like out in the waiting room.

I didn’t see the x-rays, but Sara said that the foot was dislocated quite a ways from the leg bone. They had to set it and then when they x-rayed it to see if it was right, the realized it needed to move still further. So it must have been pretty far off.

Finally, they let Tom and Barb go back to see her. “Write down all the silly stuff she says on morphine, for my blog!” I said. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to report, other than when she very first got the morphine and she said, “Ollie ollie oxen free, and all that stuff.”

We finally left the hospital and got back to the campsite at about 3:15. The plan was to get some sleep and then pack up in the morning. Tom and Barb would probably check into a hotel by the hospital, and we would continue on our trip as originally planned. However, this was not the way it went down.

First off, Evie was up before 6, which was a little rough. Second off, I got a call at about 6:45 which changed everything. The hospital there in the U.P. wasn’t equipped to handle the surgery Anna needed, so she had been discharged at about 3:30. Rather than have her transferred to a different hospital nearby, they propped her up in the car and started out immediately for the hospital at home.

We were a little worried about this, because we now had one less car than we came with. However, everything worked out well, and we left by about 10 or so. Tom rode with Evie and I (because I have tendency to fall asleep, even when I have more than 2 1/2 hours of sleep) and we followed Ben. Evie fell asleep and totally missed the Mackinac Bridge, but other than that it was a wildly successful trip. Evie colored in her coloring book for like 2 hours.

Anna had surgery to put some plates and screws in the one ankle. Evie might not have been completely clear on this part, because after Anna got back from surgery Evie asked, “Can I see your plates and forks?” The break in the other ankle was much more minor, and in fact, she has a walking cast and can put weight on it.

There was some trouble finding the right medication (the initial mix of vicodin and oxycodone wasn’t cutting the mustard), but the current mix seems to be working good. She can get up with a walker / wheelchair combo, although it is enough of a pain (literally and figuratively) that it’s not worth moving very much.

The one upside to all this (if it can be called that) was that, while at the hospital, we bumped into an old friend of mine who was doing a rotation at the hospital. We managed to catch dinner one night and discussed the magnificent yogurt parfaits they had in the hospital cafeteria. Reid has been doing these rotations away from his wife and kids and living in the hospital, so I think he appreciated seeing us as much as I appreciated seeing him. At least he thanked Anna for falling and breaking her leg and creating an opportunity for us to get together. 🙂

Anyway, that’s the story. Luckily (?) it happened at the end of vacation, so it actually didn’t change much about the rest of the vacation, other than extending it by a few days (although they were a little stressful for “vacation” days, if you know what I mean).

Here’s hoping Anna’s recovery is swift and the lingering effects are minimal!