Will we get to keep the crutches?

Saturday, May 17, around 6 p.m., I was lounging in the living room, reading, when I noticed a burly man with shaggy blond hair parking his car right in front of our apartment. I peeked in through the lacy curtains, and heard him say,

"F," and my ears perked up. He was mentioning hubby's name.

Few seconds later, hubby appeared from the passenger seat, one leg bent, and limping.

I thought to myself, "Oh no! What happened?! It must be bad because hubby is not one to need help such as that with simple sprains. This must be bad!"

Well, I urged him to go to the ER, against his soccer buddies' advice.

"Just go on Monday. You'll be waiting for hours if you go today," they said.

My motherly instinct was appalled at the advice, and hubby, being a man, of course agreed with his buddies. I insisted on at least calling a doctor or the ER to ask if he needs to go or what to do and how to take care of his leg.

"Yes, sir, yes!" was the reply of the ER nurse, when he called and asked if he should go.

It turned out he has a stretched ligament. We were actually thinking it must be a torn ligament. We were expecting the worst, with surgery, so alhamdulillah, it was a stretched ligament, though they skipped the X-ray because a trauma just came in, so hubby's case became low priority.

Hubby came back with a knee brace, and silver metal crutches, which I didn't see until much later, because it was maghrib when he came home and we were busy getting ready to pray.

So, our tennis Sundays are no more. We stayed home the whole day yesterday.

The kids were pretty awed I suppose by all that happened. When hubby was at he ER, Sh called me to update me on hubby's condition, since T had driven hubby to the ER. It was then that I found outhe had a stretched ligament. I told the kids. Naturally, we went a-googling.

ACL, PCL, LCL, MCL, we got it down to a pat, at least H did, and when hubby came home with home care instructions that also included an explanation of the injuries, the terms referring to the four ligaments above were already familiar to H, as I heard him state with utmost confidence,

"Oh yeah, I saw that!"


Before hubby came home, we talked about hubby's future with soccer.

"Abi can't ride the bike? Then I can't go to the masjid with the bike anymore."

"Are you sad if Abi can't play soccer anymore?" I asked H.

"Yes, because then he can't practice with me anymore."

I also expressed my disdain at hubby's involvement in soccer, that after a certain point becomes a burden to me. H said to me,

"You say that because you never played soccer. It's fun."

He's right. Maybe I've never been able to put myself in hubby's shoes. They're too big.

H, as is typical of any boy his age, bombards hubby with his questions.

"Will we get to keep it after you're done with it?" referring to the crutches.

"Will we get to play with knee brace too?"

H probably thinks all this is 'cool'.

The only thing I feel sorry for the kids for is that we most probably have to forgo our planned trip to Southern Illinois University for the Malaysian Midwest games since hubby is in no shape to drive a 7-hour journey with his crutches, and I'm not going to drive, no thank you! We had already bought blank papers for them to use on the trip, and they had already created their own handmade 'notebooks' using those papers.

I told them last night,

"Maybe if we go, something bad will happen to us, and so that is why this happened. Allah is saving us from a worse thing."

To which hubby added,

"Your mom doesn't want me to play soccer next week. Allah loves her so much that..."

and I burst out laughing. I did tell him not to play soccer next week if he could help it because I had two articles to submit by this weekend, and I was also studying for an exam that alhamdulillah I took last weekend. Hubby had been sneaking out to play soccer day after day, which I personally think is going overboard, and let's just say, it felt like Iowa all over again to me.

Well, it seems like, now, he's not going anywhere, for a while, and in the meantime, I'm going to have to bear a lot more manual labor which hubby used to take care of. Alhamdulillah ala kulli hal. Maybe I'll lose more weight this way.