Sunday, May 27, 2012

My introduction to the Lisfranc fracture


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My introduction to the Lisfranc fracture
We started off down the highway to Oshawa to watch our grandson play football.  Not knowing what will happen in the game.  Will he be okay today? Will he get hurt? Will they win?

The cell phone rang and my wife answered the call.  The conversation went something like this… (from what I heard)… “We are on the #115 highway just about to the 401…(long pause)… are they at the hospital yet?  Sure we can turn around and be there in about a half hour… sure we will go right now…(more pause…)  Okay we will call you soon. Bye.”

By that time I had pulled over on the highway shoulder and was waiting to hear how our grandson was doing. I waited to hear which hospital we had to go to.

My wife looked at me and said, “No football game today we are going back to Peterborough. They are taking Emma (our granddaughter) to the hospital right now… she fell off a Zip Line and hurt her foot or something…”

My heart stopped. I serve as an On Call Chaplain at that hospital. I have attended way too many crisis calls when something terrible happens. As I drove back to Peterborough the memories came flooding back.

A zip line? Emma?  A fall?  How? When? Why? It was a long half hour home.

In the Emerge waiting area Emma saw Grandma and started to cry. Her foot was elevated with the shoe and sock off.  She needed Grandma big time at that minute.

Her friend Serena and her mom Laura were sitting with Emma trying to make her comfortable.  Both were scared from what they witnessed happening to Emma.

The zip line is a cable stretched between two large trees.  It has a pulley on it with another cable hanging down attached to an old bicycle handle bar. While sitting on a branch that Emma climbed up to… the idea was to hang on tight and then zip out from one tree to the next.

Emma moved forward while hanging on to the handle bars… but something happened when she left the branch… the handle bars were loose… or they turned slightly… Emma lost her grip… or something.  She fell down about seven feet landing awkwardly with her left foot taking the brunt of her weight… before she rolled over.

After X-Rays were done they told us that she has four broken bones in the foot.

It is a Lisfranc fracture – four of them in fact. 

The Lisfranc fracture is a fracture of the foot in which one or all of the metatarsals are displaced from the tarsus. It is named after 18th- and 19th-century surgeon and gynecologist Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin.

Wikipedia goes on to tell me that… quote…
This type of injury classically occurred when a horseman fell while riding, having trapped his foot in the stirrup or fallen into a drain. At present, such an injury happens typically in activities such as windsurfing (where participants' feet are in foot straps that pass over the metatarsals), or when one steps into a hole and the foot twists heavily. Falling from a height of two or three stories can also cause this fracture. High intensity activities such as body movements in which a person leaps into the air and then rotates one or more times while airborne. American football players occasionally get this injury, such as Matt Schaub and Darren McFadden in 2011, often when they have their foot pointing down and someone lands on their heel.

Oh boy. They have inherited their grandpa’s tendency to get hurt from doing too active a sport or activity.

I love to do stuff that is dangerous as well.  Emma’s wanted to try the zip line is just like me. That isn’t from one of her other grandparents – only Grandpa Murray Lincoln.  If it looks like fun… I would/will try. And I often got hurt… in fact I hurt all through my teenage years and into my twenties and thirties… in fact I am hurting now!

I apologize to the parents of my grandkids… I am completely responsible.

Emma… your friend’s mom told me that the line was being taken down before you left for the hospital.  Serena’s dad was making sure that no one else will get hurt.  Darn!  That would have been so much fun!

We are praying for four bones to come together quickly and heal well.  Emma will likely be running by the middle of summer… !!!!

Did I ever tell you the one about the time that I was…. Ouch! That really hurt!  But I am running again… well walking now!

~ Murray Lincoln ~

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