You broke it how? - How to reply to questions about yoru health

The next time somebody asks me what I did to my leg, I will tell them that I was attacked by beavers.

I’m not joking. I like to believe that everyone is good intentioned and caring, but that is not true. Some people are just nosey pricks.

I went to the mall for several hours this afternoon. This was a huge accomplishment for me. Not only did I have the physical strength to crutch around for about 3 hours (with a few breaks here and there of course; thank god for benches!), but I did it on my own. That’s right! I braved the outside world. Alone.  For the first time since surgery. On crutches. Without a tibia!  And I had a really good time as I got some of the last things I think I need for my ex fix surgery while being surrounded by other human beings.

What I noticed from my perspective as the cute chic on crutches slowly making her way through the mall was that everyone is extra nice to you when you are injured.  I have several theories on this.

One: people are nosy and they feel like they can get you to tell them about your health if they are nice to you. It seems that when some people open a door for you, they don’t do it out of the kindness of their heart or because they have good manners. They actually secretly expect you to tell them all about your health in return.  As if opening a door is a tool they can use to barter for personal information. I don’t like these people.

Two: there are folks out there who believe that your crutches scream something more than an injured leg. They see the crutches (or a wheelchair) and assume that you also have something else going on, like a hearing impairment, blindness, or a low IQ. They often assume that you have issues regarding your cognitive abilities because you are on crutches/in a wheelchair. As a result, they talk loudly, slow their speech, use simple language, and smile broadly at you like they would a preschooler. They smile at you because they feel sorry for you because they assumed you have a disability. And quite frankly, who is going to be mean to the crippled girl? I don’t like these people either.

Three: This group of people assumes that you are injured because you are an idiot. You are stupid enough to do something so idiotic that it resulted in physical harm. They are not smiling at you because you are stupid, but because you are stupid enough to severely injure yourself. They feel bad for you (and your stupidity), so they smile. I am not sure what I think about this group yet.

Four: The only ones I actually like – the people who are friendly because they either actually care, they have been exactly where you are right now so they completely understand how big a deal it is to be at the mall, on your own, on crutches, or they are simply decent human beings. These are my type of people.

At the end of the day, I can’t change whatever it is that motivates people to be nice to me while I am dealing with my tibia-less mess. Even if I could and wanted to, I don’t think I have the energy to try.  What I do know is that right now I can use all the love and kindness (real or not) that I can get. So whether someone holds a door open for me and smiles because their mama taught them right, they are genuinely decent or friendly human beings, or they have some burning desire to know why I am on crutches instead of walking on my own two feet, I will accept it and be glad of it too.

That doesn’t mean, however, that I will tell everyone who asks what actually happened to my leg. People are always going to ask; that is inevitable. Be it now while I am on crutches, in four months when I am well into my sentence with the external fixator, of in five years when I am at the beach and people see my misshapen and scarred leg (and trust me, there are plenty more scars to come with the next surgery), questions will be asked. And how I answer those questions will depend on things like how I am feeling and the context of the conversation. While at the mall today, for example, numerous people asked me what happened to my leg. I was not so inclined to explain the whole tale to the stranger in the elevator who would likely walk away within thirty seconds anyways once we reached the next floor. I was, however, more willing to discuss my situation to the friendly cashier at Winners who told me about her own experience with crutches.

I often find myself in a somewhat unique situation when I tell people what happened to my leg. When you see someone on crutches, what is your first thought? It is likely somewhere along the lines of “How did they get injured?”, “What’s wrong with them” or “Hey, they probably broke an ankle or tore a ligament!” People approach each situation with a framework that helps them classify things. They see a cast and they automatically know something is probably broken; they see crutches and they expect a broken leg, a sprain, or a torn ligament. So they expect my answer to include one of those things. This makes sense because the things I listed are the most common reasons a person is on crutches. What people don’t expect is for me to say “I am missing my shin bone”. This is a statement they have probably never heard before (from my knowledge, losing chunks of bone doesn’t happen to people that often). So when people hear this, it doesn’t fit into the framework they have regarding crutches and as a result they often don’t know how to process this information. Some of the most common response I get from people are “Huh?”, “Really”, and  “Oh!?!”. It is at this point that most people either become silent or turn away. If they do continue to ask questions, I inform them that I lost six centimeters of my shin bone due to an infection that kills bone and that my leg is held together with bone cement, but my doctors are hopeful that we can regrow the missing section of my tibia. Because that is the bare amount of information that will actually explain my situation. Cue the response, “What”? People don’t know that bones can get infected and die. They don’t know that bone cement exists. All they hear is “There is cement in that girl’s body… what?” They don’t know that bone can be regrown. So the answer to simple question of “What happened to your leg?” completely floors people. Everything about my situation is not common knowledge the way knowledge of a broken leg or sprain might be. As a result, the entire conversation went from well meaning (or nosiness or feeling sorry for me), to pointless. People have places to be, they don’t understand the things I am talking about, and they are probably caught off guard that I didn’t give a common answer like “I broke my leg falling/sports/stupidity”.  The conversation is pretty much over before it has begun.

So it is much simpler to have a response like “I was attacked by an angry herd of beavers,” and then to politely say that I prefer not to talk about my health at the moment. This way, my privacy is maintained, I don’t blow someone’s mind with the news that you can actually regrow bone, and we have all had a good laugh at my hilarious answer for what happened to my leg.

So, how did I actually break my leg way back in 2006 and why am I on crutches because of it now? Beavers I tell you! An angry heard of beavers who came back to exact even more revenge for me foolishly dismantling their favorite dam for fire wood.