Well, for those who haven’t been following my Twitter or Facebook and who haven’t learned via other means,  Mandy broke her arm.  She was riding a horse at my parents house in Georgia.

I grew up around horses… and while I never really got into riding them, I’ve managed to absorb a little bit of knowledge about them via osmosis.  One of the peculiar things about riding a horse is that horses typically have a distinct personality… often complete with personality quirks and the like.  Of course, this isn’t much different than dogs or cats, who often have their own little idiosyncrasies as well.  However, these personality traits can take on much more significant meaning when they are influencing the behavior of a 1,000 lb animal you are riding on the back of.

Mandy was riding my Mom’s horse…  a good horse, by most accounts.  However, his personality makes him want to be in the front at all times.  If he knows that there’s another horse “beating” him… well, he’s not too pleased and he tries to catch up.  Mandy had been riding with my sister, who was on my Dad’s horse.  They had brought the horses into the back yard so that the boys could see them and sit on them.  Tyler climbed up with Katie (who he loves!) and Logan climbed up with Mandy.  They walked around the back yard a few times and just generally let the boys have a tame “horse experience”.

Katie and Tyler decided to head around to the front yard.  Mandy decided she didn’t want Logan on the horse with her anymore, so, she stopped to take him off and give him to my Mom.  At this point,  Mandy’s horse was behind. So, they trotted off around the side of the house.  The horse kept picking up speed cause it wanted to be in front.  Mandy kept trying to slow it down.  As they headed around the house, they came up to a small decorative fence/garden thing that my parents have in the front yard.  Mandy was convinced that the horse was about to jump it (which would have been really bad, as there is a flagpole there that the horse would probably have hit).  So, at this point both Mandy and the horse pretty much freaked out.  Mandy hauled back on the reigns and the horse went from gallop to hitting the brakes.  During the run around the house, Mandy’s right foot had come out of the stirrups.  The horse’s sudden stop threw her off the horse.  The particular location that all this happened in was just above a pretty severe slope…  meaning another foot or two got added to Mandy’s fall.

No one got a clear view of exactly how she landed.  I was still in the front of the house when it happened.  Katie saw Mandy flying through the air, but couldn’t see how she hit the ground.  Mandy doesn’t have a clear memory of it, although she does remember rolling her neck badly….  so things could have certainly been worse.

My Dad called an ambulance.  Mandy… um… “coped” with the pain.  I’ve seen her give birth twice.. break her ankle… and every other painful thing she’s ever done.  This was by far the most pain I’ve ever seen her in.  She was pretty much crazy, honestly.  She lost all rational thought.  Once we got to the ER and took some xrays, it was clear to see why.  She had broke her humorous (upper arm bone) in a very nasty looking break right up close to her shoulder.  Her wrist was also broken in two places.  My trauma nurse friend tells me that the humorous is the second strongest bone in the body behind the femur (upper leg bone), so she must have really popped it hard.

She had to have surgery to repair all three breaks.  Two plates and 17 screws.  She was in the hospital for 4 days.  After coming home from the hospital, we stayed at my parents house for a few days and then drove back to Ohio.  The drive back start off really bad with Mandy having some real motion sickness problems.  She says puking with a broke arm on the side of the road is lots of fun.  However, once we got that under control, the trip went pretty well.

The kids, for their part, have been pretty awesome with it all.  They had a rough time while we were in Georgia out of our routine.  They went to a daycare at my Mom’s school, which was a really nice option to have, but, it was rough on them.  Lots of new and unexpected things that we didn’t have time to prep them for.  The trip back, they were great though.

Honestly, since we’ve kinda done all this before, its been pretty easy.  The kids no the drill about staying away from Mommy’s hurt arm and I know the drill about keeping Mandy on schedule for her medicine.

She’s doing pretty well now.  She hopes to start back to work next Monday.  At first, part time and then she’ll see how she feels.  She’s been doing physical therapy so that she doesn’t have any long term loss of motion in her shoulder and that has been really hard for her.  She says it is really painful and she’s usually pretty sore in the evenings after that.

As for me, I’m just kinda plugging along.  I’m Mr. Mom during the evenings.. and especially the weekends.  My escape is to watch college football.  Thanks for reading.