I’d like to say it was something cool I had done. Ironically, shortly before I broke my foot, I bought a Penny Board I was trying to learn to balance on. At least I would’ve been trying to do something cool if that’s how I broke my foot.
Alas, I broke it in the most mundane of ways. (Both the doctors I saw told me it’s never something exciting. Friends have told me about people they know breaking something just by walking.)
My apartment is really a studio, but it has a loft bedroom area separated from the rest of the apartment by four steps. This raised loft area was a big reason I wanted this apartment. I looked at other studios, but this use of space was really cool and useful. Once I moved in and had to go up and down the steps in the dark half-asleep every time I needed to go to the bathroom, I thought to myself, “One day I am going to slip and fall.”
But on that fateful morning when I broke my foot, I didn’t even slip on the stairs. I forgot they were there and bypassed them entirely. My brain didn’t even give me a fighting chance. In midair, as I was falling, I thought to myself, “Oh my god, I missed the steps.” And then I hit the ground.
It was entirely unnecessary. I live on the west coast and I had something I needed to send out in the morning after something else was released first. So the night before, I set my alarm for 6 a.m., which is 9 a.m. on the east coast. I assumed I could send out my report after that sometime. Instead, the thing I needed to wait for came out at 8 a.m. local time, or 5 a.m. for me. As soon as I woke up and looked at my phone, I realized I was already late.
So, my first thought was that I had to send this out immediately. I popped right out of bed and made the beeline for my computer. And that’s when I took the tumble. I was in such a rush, I was still not fully awake and it was still so dark, that I missed the stairs.
I thought maybe I broke it, especially when walking on it was painful. But I stumbled my way to my desk, sent out the thing I needed to send, and then looked at my foot. It looked swollen and it hurt. Was it broken? I googled like crazy but the consensus was clear: Only an X-ray could tell me.
Broken Fifth Metatarsal 