Big Hero 6.....

We saw the movie Big Hero 6. It was excellent and laugh out loud funny; I would recommend it! The theater screens were located on an upper level so when we came out of the movie we headed towards the escalators but they were not running and blocked off. So we started down the several flights of dimly lit stairs. At each break in the stairs there was a yellow line on the stair flush with the level landing before beginning the next set of stairs. I went first lightly running my hand along the railing. Not many know this but as a small child I fell down an escalator and was just lucky enough that my very long hair didn't get caught in it. Admittedly, I've been scarred for life and try to be extra careful when riding escalators and going down stairs. Hence, the reason I was walking close to the railing. I reached the bottom set of stairs, saw the yellow line denoting level ground and then before I knew what was happening my foot was crumpling under my weight and my mind was working to get my body to catch me as I fell to the ground. For some reason that last yellow line on the bottom stair meant there was still one step to go before level ground.

My mom rushed down to me and asked, "Oh my gosh, are you ok?!". At that point I was standing, clutching the railing with my left foot raised off the ground. The misstep was so unexpected that it took a couple seconds to realized what had happened. Then I started to see stars and said, "Mom, I feel like I'm going to pass out". I sat down on the steps straightaway and waited for the stars to pass. They did and from there, leaning on Mom I limped back to the hotel. Thankfully, it was only around the corner. We arrived at our room where I elevated my foot on a big pile of pillows and packed ice around it.

Sitting there I began fuming. I was so angry with myself! How could this happen?! This was my time to enjoy DC and walk a million miles around the National Mall and all the Smithsonians! And here I was with a mangled ankle! Then I began to worry. What if it was broken? Fractured? Ligaments torn? PERMANENT DAMAGE?! And beyond my time in DC what about traveling back to NZ???!!! As you can imagine, I was freaked out, angry and scared. At the same time I was so thankful that I wasn't by myself.

The following morning we perused my foot and ankle, taking in the swelling and terrible bruises that had bloomed overnight. Then my mom said, "That's it! We're going to Urgent Care!". Even though I wanted to have it checked out, just to be sure my immediate response was, "I don't have insurance in this country anymore and what if it costs a lot and they need to do x-rays or whatever else?!". My mom was not dissuaded by any of this talk. She said she was willing to cover any cost and just wanted to make sure I was ok. So we arranged to have the hotel shuttle take us to Urgent Care and I there I handed over my funny looking (to them) NZ ID and they entered my info into the system. After waiting a few minutes we were escorted into an examination room. With some effort I situated myself on the exam table and my mom took another chair. The PA asked me about my overall health, medications and details of the injury. Then the doc came in, took a look, performed the examination and gave us the good and bad news. The good news was that, as far as he could tell, it was not broken, fractured or torn. The bad news was that I had sprained it good! Both sides sprained as evidenced by the swelling and bruising. He wrote me an order for an x-ray if there wasn't any improvement within the next two days and a prescription for Tylenol with codeine. He wrapped it up and let me pick out two more rolls in the color of my choice. I immediately snatched up the purple ones, lightly put on my shoe and I hobbled out of the office. The hotel shuttle picked us up and took us to CVS Pharmacy so I could get the prescription filled. This was challenging because they didn't want to take my NZ address but were happy to take my mom's instead. At that point I didn't care. Then we were told that it would be 40  minutes before it would be ready. I laughed out loud, then collected my wits and said, "Ok, we'll be back". The shuttle took us back to the hotel where I iced my foot again. After the forty minutes had elapsed we returned to CVS to pick up my prescription. The woman asked for my date of birth to make sure I was actually the person that was associated with that particular prescription. I rattled off, "May 4, 1983" without thinking about it because after all that is my birthday. She frowned at the computer and said, "Um, no, do you have another birth date?". I'm usually not so quick on my feet, no pun intended, but immediately said, "No, I just have the one!". :) Then I realized what had happened. When Urgent Care entered my info into their system they took it from my NZ driver's license. And you know, in this part of the world they do dates in the day-month-year format instead of what we know in the US: month-day-year. Then I went on to explain this silly nuance and asked if the date entered had been April 5, 1983. Sure enough. Problemo solved! From there we returned to the hotel where I took some meds, immediately felt the codeine kicking in and got to resting.

We had originally planned to go into the city to meet up with my older brother, Jess, and our mutual friends, Meredith and Meegan for dinner. But with the ankle debacle we had asked if they could come up to Silver Spring and have dinner with us at one of the restaurants attached to our hotel. After they arrived we relayed everything that had happened. I was so embarrassed and felt as though I had ruined this portion of the trip because we had planned to spend time in the National Mall doing a walk around to all the monuments (several miles in total) and visit some of the Smithsonian galleries. But this is a testament to the graciousness of people: none of them were upset but rather expressed concern for me. And from there we hatched a plan to visit the Air & Space Smithsonian and see some of the monuments. I was humbled by everyone's willingness to make it work. :)