My sad tale of woe

Perhaps you’ve been wondering to yourself, hey, why has Molly not been making any cute observations, or reading any books, or putting up semi-funny spam? Why did she not attend my Risk Party on March 16? Well, I can tell you. It is a tale of woe.

It did not start as a tale of woe. It started as a perfectly lovely trip with some co-workers to go skiing in Whistler. We left on a Friday afternoon. We had some laughs on the way up, and we had salami and wine when we got up there. We played Apples to Apples, which is probably one of my favorite games of all times. Saturday was lovely as well. Two people went snowshoeing. One person went snowboarding. Four people, including myself, went skiing.

Perhaps you are saying to yourself, hey, Molly has always been very anti-skiing, ever since she busted her head open in a tragic middle school accident, on the first time (and until recently) last time she went skiing. But the thing is, the people in Seattle are c-c-c-crazy for the skiing! Apparently it is really good here and I’m supposed to do it more often! Okay! I said. Time to ski!

Well, at Whistler, it was amazing. Even a novice like me could tell that this was pretty incredible snow, and for several hours, I was doing pretty well. I fell, but not that much. I was into it.

Now begins the tale of woe. I like to keep the blogs semi-anonymous, but I am about to use someone’s real name. This person is my co-worker and she probably would not like to be in a blog but she must get credit because, as you’ll eventually see, she saved my life. This person’s name is Elizabeth.

So Elizabeth and I were trying to replicate an easy run that the more experience skiers had taken us on earlier (the more experienced skiers off having a challenge for once, deservedly so). But I guess we took a wrong turn, because we got to a point where we could go left, or we could go right, and either way was going to be a blue run. We were trying to do green runs. Anyways. We just randomly chose a blue run.

Basically on the first hill, I fell, but more than fell, I somehow twisted my leg over my body somehow. I felt my knee immediately. I knew I was sunk. Elizabeth sat with me and I kind of calmed down, and I was moving my knee a bit. We heard it pop back into place, and it didn’t hurt anymore. So I thought I should keep going, just to get to the next lift (we were very near the top of the mountain, but not near enough to walk back up). So I got back up and tried to ski. I could tell I was not putting any weight on the hurt leg, because I was going the wrong way, and to go the right way, I was going to have to put weight on the hurt leg. So I did, and I immediately fell again. It hurt even worse. But there was no one else around, besides Elizabeth, so I figured I had to get to the bottom of the hill. So we went through the ordeal of putting on my skis one more time, and trying one more time. I am sure you see where this is going. When I fell the third time, it felt like my leg was going to snap in half. I was convinced I had broken my knee.

Elizabeth helped me get off to the side of the mountain, and she staked her skis in an X around me so I wouldn’t get hurt. She kept me calm. We debated about whether she should leave me, and go try to bring help back, but eventually more people started coming down the mountain, and a ski instructor radioed for help.

Ski patrol showed up, in the form of a kind foreigner named Andres. Elizabeth said later that she thought Andres was high as a kite, but he was nothing but perfectly nice. He loaded me up on a toboggan. I guess the idea of being tobogganed off the mountain is mortifying to serious skiers, but to me, it was actually pretty cool, except for the whole being hurt part. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, you lie on your back on a sled. They strap you in and put a tarp on top of you, and they rope your skis on top. Then the ski patrol guy skis down the hill with you behind. I got to go down the hill really fast.

The one bad part is that Andres told Elizabeth to ski beside him, but he had to leave her behind in order to get me to the bottom faster. I spent a lot of time feeling bad about this, since Elizabeth refused to leave me, and we were in a strange town where we didn’t know our way around, we didn’t have a cell phone between us, etc….all the kinds of things were present where you really shouldn’t be leaving people alone.

Andres stuck me in a van with two other injured people, one of whom was just a kid who had appeared to be tired of skiing. The kid was in the front seat of the van and wouldn’t move the seat up when I was trying to get in the back, and by this time my leg literally wasn’t moving. So I had some hatred for that kid.

Then we get to the clinic. They put me in a wheelchair. The other two people in the van with me were Canadian, so they got all sorts of nice treatment, and they were in and out right fast. But they told me, that as a foreigner, that I was probably looking at a $700 bill, and that if I had any sort of ability to put weight on the leg at all, that I should try to wait til I got back to Seattle. I said I’d wait til my friends showed up, and then I’d decide.

Then began the long wait. I didn’t mind sitting there, but my mind was full of all the steps that had to be taken…Elizabeth had to get down the hill and figure out how to message the others. The other people had to get down as well. We had left a message for some people earlier to meet us in a different place than originally planned. A lot of logistics were very poor, and I didn’t have anyone’s number. When I heard the troubles they all had meeting up later, then I felt even worse, and thought it was even more amazing that we all found each other. It was an ordeal, but I’ll save you the details, because this blog is all about ME.

Eventually everyone showed up and we went back to the condo. Everyone was terribly nice to me and brought me beverages, food, helped me walk, took pictures with a camera phone of the Scrabble board when we were playing games later. I still had a great time, but I knew something was wrong.

The weather was crappy the next day, so we packed up and left. The ride home was fun. We stopped for nachos and other pub food in Bellingham, and we stopped for Dairy Queen in Stanwood. We made it back to Seattle and Clair (another friend who is losing her anonymity in this account) took me to Urgent Care, which shall be the topic of the next post.