We’d been at my oldest daughter’s track meet hours earlier, and it was about 10 p.m. The two younger girls were already asleep, but I was waiting for the runner to make her way home. A quick text from the parking lot let me know she was on her way, so I made my way – rather quickly – from the living room toward my bedroom.

That’s when it happened.

As soon as I rounded the corner, my foot connected with the doorframe. Hard.

I felt the flash of pain, and then nothing. It was like my brain and my body weren’t connecting on an operating level, and I knew I had hurt myself very badly.

You’d have been proud of me. I didn’t cry. I didn’t cuss. Instead, I drug myself the four feet from the door to collapse on my bed.

I thought I was going to die. Listen people, I’ve given birth three times and had emergency appendectomy surgery and I have never felt pain like that in my life. I seriously thought I was going to pass out.

I was praying to the baby Jesus – audibly – when my kid came into the room.

“What did you do?” she asked.

I should probably disclose, at this point, that I am extremely clumsy and am not allowed to wash knives or any other sharp instruments because I will cut myself. So, her concern over my safety was warranted.

“I hurt myself. I think it’s dislocated or broken,” I said, pointing to my foot.

I should also point out too that my oldest and I are in aggressive negotiations about medical school. I think she should go; she isn’t sold.

She was quiet for a minute before leaving the room. I figured she abandoned me to my pain, but instead, she returned with the iPad. Her head was bent, like she was studying something.

“I think I can pop them back into place. YouTube says I can do it.”

While my heart jumped at the thought of her “doctoring” on me, I kindly said we shouldn’t take medical advice from the Internet and asked her to drive me to the ER.

Sure enough, broken.

Now, a few weeks later, I can laugh about how we looked homeless arriving at the ER in our pajamas and how we had to wait as an inmate tried to convince the nurses he’d had a “stroke” while in his jail cell.

That night, though, it was rough. I was pretty close to wanting to kill someone or committing a controlled substance crime with the leftover drugs from my girl’s wisdom teeth surgery.  I did neither, thank goodness, and am so glad that’s all behind me now.

Note to self – don’t walk into any walls. It’ll only hurt you in the long run.