Horseback Riding Accident

So... I thought it would be a good idea to write about the accident here and then post it on my Facebook as well as my standard blog. I've had a few questions and know there will be more, so this is an excellent way to answer everyone at once! :)

For those who don't know, I lease a horse named Rebel. He's a beautiful stocky Paint who stands at 15'2 and weighs approximately 1200 pounds.
Rebel has some old bad habits with his gaits and so I've been working hard to teach him to canter correctly. Slow, easy, controlled, while bending. He's struggling to learn but overall doing fairly well. He has stumbled with me on him, but never come completely down on me. That all changed last night...
We had been riding for about 30 minutes, he was nice and warmed up, and I took him into the round pen as it helps keep him well in control and forces somewhat of a bend. We picked up the canter, he was doing so *great*, but then broke his stride into a fast trot. I squeezed with my legs to push him back into the canter and when he went to pick it up, he stumbled ... didn't regain his balance ... and went all the way down.

I felt him falling, kicked my feet free and hit the ground with my hands and forearms first, catching myself; and for a millisecond thought I was okay, until I felt his body come down on top of my left leg. They say to judge your pain on a scale of 0-10, this was by far a 10 on the pain scale and I screamed louder than I probably ever have.

Next door to the stables I ride at is a mental institute and one of the men who work there was outside taking a break and saw most of it happen. He scaled their 12 foot chainlink fence (landing in a pile of horse poo on the other side I might add) and was almost instantly at my side. Total sweetheart. He had a friend call 911, and by that time the barn manager and several others were by my side as well.

..............and... I apologize but I'm going to have to finish working on this later due to my mixture of codeine and tylenol having knocked me out again. I can't keep my eyes open. Write more later....

So... funny thing... I had to re-read everything I typed earlier due to the meds because I couldn't really remember any of it.

Anyhow, the firetruck paramedics got to the stables first. After checking my head, neck, back, and hips and being assured everything was alright in those areas they went to my foot. Sadly I was sobbing and begging to just pass out the whole time. I just wanted the pain to stop. One of the paramedics was so extra kind, he kneeled down next to me and started to talk gently to me, asking me random misc questions and asking me to breathe his speed (I was hyperventilating). I appreciated him so much. He's also the one who held my hands and let me scream practically directly into his face while they unzipped my riding boot and pulled it off.

About 10 minutes in the ambulance got there and they loaded me up onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. Again, the paramedics were wonderful. They were very sympathetic to the amount of pain I was in and quickly got an IV started. Oh, before they loaded me into the ambulance they had to stabilize my foot/ankle with a pillow and ace bandage and that's when I first realized the deformed angle my foot was laying at. Despite my begging for them to not touch it and leave it alone, they had to stabilize it and gently talked me through the process. I've felt pain before people, all kinds of pain. Multiple surgery recoveries, broken bones, labor, etc .. this pain I can pretty easily say topped them all.

Once the IV was started they administered my first pain meds and I could've kissed them all in gratitude. Within about 60 seconds my pain of a crying whimpering 10 went down to a breathing easy 2.

We arrived at the hospital and about everything went standard from there. The male paramedics handed me over to the female nurses at the hospital and disappeared fairly quickly. The nurses I had were excellent too. They kept a steady dose of morphine going that had me very loopy and not very aware of anything going on around me. The Dr came into see me and ordered the xrays, he said that he was fairly certain it was either broken or dislocated due to the angle of the foot which at this point was hugely swollen.

It was during his exam that we realized that my knee was also fairly badly injured. I hadn't felt any pain there as of yet, but when he was examining me and pushed down on my knee, I just about shot into the ceiling panels. Ouch! So... xrays ordered for the knee too.

As a surprise to us both. The xray came back with no breaks and no dislocations. The bad news that goes with that is that the injury is worse than either of those and will take longer to heal. As the Dr stated, I have a severe amount of muscle, tissue, and ligament damage. That damage is why my ankle/foot was hanging at such a gross angle; ya see, most of the tissue that holds it in place is torn up. Same diagnosis for the knee, though not quite to the same severity. Additionally, my knee is having some pretty severe sharp pains which may indicate something else is wrong.

The Dr in the ER referred me to a Orthopedic surgeon that I'll be seeing this Thursday at 8:30am. My guess is that he'll be doing an MRI to determine the extent of the damage and we'll go from there.

Until further notice I'm pretty much bedridden. I'm taking codeine with tylenol and will be taking Ultram (? - I think) once we get it from the pharmacy today. The foot and knee need to be above my heart level so being on my back in bed is about the only fix. Thank goodness for laptops.

Anyhow, I'll keep everyone posted on how things go and what the verdict is after my appointment on Thursday.