Sunday Sundries: Ankle breaks up with Socket
The next chapter in their stormy romance
CW: ankle dislocation, fainting (but funny!)
My Cuddles is wonderful and funny and kind and generous and beautiful and amazing.
My Cuddles is also a bit clumsy at times.
When she was a mere slip of a Cuddles, around 6/7 years old, she was running across a playground when someone else tripped her for funsies, and she got a small ankle break.
The lunch monitor sent her hopping inside to sit down telling her to rest it and it’d be fine.
Her teacher at that point was awful, and made her stand through a 45 minute assembly because everyone else was, so tough shit.
She tried to then hobble to the school bus, and the headteacher noticed and took off her shoe.
Well, she tried…but shoe did not come off.
Headteacher drove her home, and Cuddles just sat down and started screaming and crying and bawling and her Uncle had to come, pick her up, carry her to the car, drive her to A&E, and carry her in.
So, she was in a cast for 6 weeks, and was told that her ankle would be a weak spot going forwards.
So over the next 2 and a bit decades, this ankle has been sprained many times, and dislocated again a number of times. Normally, Cuddles can just pop it back in. It’s a task which is super unpleasant, but that she has become quite nonchalant about over the years, even when mid-dislocate.
It happened again this week—she’s fine, but we did this time have to go spend the day at the hospital. I’ll probably tell that story in a future Sundries, but I have an earlier story to tell you today.
The first time I was present when this dislocation happened, was in the first house we lived in together. She was working from home, and was on her way to get set up in the office/guest room.
To get between our room and that one, there was a square where the top stair became the landing, and both rooms had one further step up.
So she clips her heel going down, and her ankle just…pops right out!
She lets out a scream and yells for me, and I go from being wayyyyy deep down in sleep to upright and conscious, without going through any of the stages inbetween.
Cuddles, though gritted teeth, tells me what’s happened, and I go over to her.
Unfortunately, that speed with which I stood up? Way too fast! My vision is going a touch dark around the edges and I am swaying a little, but trying to persuade her to let me call an ambulance.
Cuddles tells me no, she will fix it herself, and this goes in a circle for a bit.
Next Cuddles asks me for my phone, because she’s about to be late for her shift and mine is closer and has the right numbers on it. But I’m now very busy losing more of my vision and trying desperately to order my brain NOT to pass out.
Slight aside here: the company she worked for was pretty draconian about things (we can agree that employers that don’t trust their employees are the worst, right?).
This is the company that helped me into a mental and emotional breakdown (not my first, not my last, not 100% them either, but a fair bit). And then HR told me to give them a date I’d be “better”. This as they made me cry and forced a choice on me that came down to: “No, we don’t care that you’re consistently the best, by all our own metrics, at this other thing you’ve been doing. You must go back to also doing the thing that’s broken your brain, starting from right now”. I cried in the meeting, then I curled up on top of Cuddles and cried, then I went back to my desk and wrote my resignation letter. Unfortunately my managers, who had been happy with what I was doing and really didn’t want to lose me, were unable to do anything about the HR assholes.
Also: yes, they worked Cuddles into a breakdown too.
Anyway! Back to the story. The rules say it MUST be her that calls and she MUST do it prior to shift (an hour at least, a day more preferably, but really, it’s so difficult to truly plan these things. Entirely our oversight though, of course).
So, for this she needs my phone. So. She asks for my phone. The phone which I had already brought over at some point and left on the stair, it's just out of her reach.
But, as my vision clouds over yet more, this is where my memory goes away, so the next part is what Cuddles has told me.
I stagger back to my bedside cabinet where my phone lives at night, and grab it. I take it over to Cuddles, who gives me an incredibly confused look.
Cuddles (incredibly confused): This is…a toilet roll.
Me (reverting to caveperson-speak because only lizardbrain is still conscious at this point): Is phone.
Cuddles: No, look, it's a toilet roll.
Me: Is. Phone!
Cuddles: Your phone's right there, love.
Me: *falls over backwards, stiff as a board*
The next few minutes involve her trying desperately to wake me up, but unable to properly reach me, and trying to get someone at work to answer the phone.
Eventually she gets through to work and explains the situation. They try to suggest that she can still come to work and are very firmly told no she cannot.
Next, she manages to brace her foot and pop the ankle back in again.
Then there’s a bit where she apparently manages to make me get sat upright, but then I just collapse sideways, get pinned between the bed and the wall, and start struggling to breathe.
So she panics a bit and moves as well and as fast as she can to move me again.
She manages to get me kind of half conscious again, but my brain is absolutely, determinedly, stuck on its last thought, and I just sit there, still half-unconscious, yelling “MUST HELP CUDDLES!” on repeat.
So Cuddles, being kinda a genius tbh, pulls herself over and gets herself onto the bed. From there, she starts coaxing me.
Cuddles: Come on han’sum, I need you here.
Me: HELP CUDDLES;
Cuddles: Yeah, I need your help here on the bed.
That happens for a couple of minutes, and I finally get enough brain back to a) form memories again, so we’re back to my narration for this last bit, and b) drag myself onto the bed.
Unfortunately, the slats on that bed were somehow just a tiny bit too short on my side. Generally I'd just learned to be gentle with them, because by this point I had a slipped disc and a collapsing bed just fuckin hurts!
So I make it onto the bed, and…yep. The slats collapse.
So now it's both of us screaming in pain and the only thing we can really think to do is help each other downstairs, grab a blanket, grab some stuff to help with Cuddles’ pain shock and my fainting shock and just…not move for the rest of the day.
I hope you enjoyed the story! But in case they’re unclear, your takeaways here should be:
No matter what’s going on we can, and will, always find the funny (though sometimes the funny is super dark and will remain tightly enclosed within either the circle of friends we absolutely trust, or just between us and the animals).
Sometimes we are an unintentional slapstick show, except we really feel the pain.
There is never a moment in which we are not helping each other. We are Team Cuddles. We are an A-Frame. Nothing can knock us down.
And Cuddles is the best.
Cuddles and Team Cuddles are BOTH the best. 🥰 I’m glad y’all always have each others back.