Beginning of August 2011 - Once again I have drama to write about, my life is not particularly drama filled, but when something happens, there’s no holding back. So I leave for netball at 9am on a Tuesday morning, as usual, in a rush, dishes still on the sink, the spare bed covered in washing and a to-do-list as long as my arm awaiting my return.

I usually play GD (that’s Goal Defence for non-netballers) but today I grabbed the GK (Goal Keeper) bib to avoid the giant girl who’s usually in GA on the other team, the match up of her and I is quite comical when I’m 5’4” and she probably close to 6’ something…. but it turns out she wasn’t in goals after all, she played in Centre on our shortest player – far more uneven and comical! Anyway enough netball talk, that info will make sense in a minute!

3 or 4 minutes into the first quarter I rolled my ankle because I landed on my opponent’s leg when coming down from a very unheroic jump to contest the ball. I felt intense pain when I hit the ground, I’ve rolled it several times before (as most netballers have) and have never felt pain like this, I even heard and felt a crack. I couldn’t catch my breath, was on the verge of hyperventilation and felt like a complete fool because I was making the ‘pain’ face and was carried off the court.

I rolled my ankle against this particular opponent last year and when we played each other earlier this year she roller her ankle, so it seems it was my turn again and needless to say we will be avoiding each other like the plague.

The girls I play with are all very experienced; one might say Veterans when it comes to injuries so I was in good hands. At the end of the game I was pushed out in a wheelchair by my good friend Lisa who plays in our team, she got our kids from the crèche and we proceeded to the exit to devise a plan of action.

It’s hard to know how your kids will react to you being sick or injured, sometimes you think they are un-empathetic little buggers but when Parker saw me in the wheelchair (the pain face had turned to tears by now) he leans into me and says “I love you Mum”! - So beautiful.  

Lisa’s Dad had come along to watch her play (she’s 37 years old, how fantastic) & saw me fall, he had to go and pick up his wife Margaret from an appointment and because they live right near the netball stadium he saw that Lisa’s car was still there and called in so he could see his little 3 year old granddaughter Beth, again!

So lucky for me, Lisa’s Dad is completely, absolutely besotted with his grandchildren, he literally lights up when you mention them and when trying to work out the logistics later in the day (at the hospital), his smile filled his face and he literally started to cheer like a kid at the possibility of him going to pick up the older two from school, what a wonderful man!

So back to the netball stadium car park, surrounded by my very supportive team keeping me laughing, Lisa put my kids in her car and took them home to her place, as they drove off I was relieved they were in good hands and I knew they would feel comfortable with her, they were off on a play date with Beth.

Lisa’s parents drove me to Casey hospital to have my foot x-rayed just in case. I went there expecting to be x-rayed, I was seriously hoping it would show nothing, they’d strap my ankle and I could go home.

During my time there I saw the triage nurse, the nurse inside, the doctor, the physio, the radiographers, the nurse and physio again, the nurse and a student plastered my foot, an occupational therapist, the physio returned (after her long lunch break) with two students (one of whom stood on the toe of my bad foot), then we waited for the nurse to return from her lunch break so I could be discharged. Although the process felt reasonably quick, all of that took 6 hours! 

During our waiting time I’d been expressing to Margaret how much I had to do & how inconvenient this whole situation is, there’s the usual stuff like taking care of my family and house and the not so usual stuff like the ‘Peninsula Family Health Expo’ and running the 10km leg of the Melbourne Marathon in October and being excited about the challenge of training for this and get fitting and losing 6kg in the process.  

Oh the disappointment of being told “NO, you can’t do these things, you’re going to be on crutches for way longer than you thought” was too much to hold back the tears when the physio told me my foot is fractured and I’m not going to be able to bear weight on it for 8 weeks.

So obviously no Mum is ever able to replace your own, but out of all the people I could have had there helping me, the most unlikely, Lisa’s Mum Margaret was absolutely amazing, such a beautiful, caring, compassionate lady who stayed with me the whole time and made the experience much lighter and calmer than it otherwise could have been.

I really hate hospitals, there’s so much sickness & suffering and I can’t help wondering how much of this is preventable, so at 3:00pm I was extremely happy and relieved to be heading home.  

When Marg & Gary dropped me off, Jay had picked up the Kids from Lisa’s and just arrived home too. Margaret said how fortuitous it was that they happened to be there, Gary said “It was the ‘allure of Beth’; I saw Lisa’s car was still there and I wanted to see my little girl one more time”.