Into Every Life Some Pain Must Fall

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Good Grief things did not go right today, but that is not unusual at all. The OFM got up and piddled around in the usual manner.  Then he stepped on the cord for the heater on the edge of his left foot.

Time out for some background now. In Viet Nam out in the jungle the OFM stepped in a hole and fell with his foot trapped in the hole.  That got him a helicopter flight to the Cam Rahn Bay hospital. It was a diagnosed as a severely sprained left ankle. After a week in the hospital and six weeks in a cast at the 6^th Convalescence Center he was pronounced “healed” and was sent back to his duties as an infantryman running around in the jungle.

“Healed” was an optimistic term to say the least.  Since then the least little unevenness of footing on the left side can put him down. That left ankle has not really recovered in 45 years but the OFM can normally work around it. Now back to the original story.

The left ankle immediately registered its disagreement with that event.  The ankle was given the regular remedial care.  The order of the day became being very careful and taking it easy on the ankle to aid in the healing.  Normally it only takes a day or less to be OK again.

A little before noon the Teams decided to go to the harbor pier to just get out and be gentle to the patient.  It was good to be out as the day was incredibly beautiful.  Fish were even being caught. Here is Mike with a nice ladyfish.

 On down the pier Bob caught a small undersize speckled trout.

Well it was time for the OFM to get his fishing rod out.  The ankle was doing well and pier fishing does not need a lot of walking, at least at this pier.  The Fishing Team came back onto the pier equipped for fish battles. As usual there were no fish battles for this Team.  Eventually the Team worked its way to the end of the pier. At the end of this pier is a nice handrail that you can hold onto as you go out on the rocks at the end of the pier.  The OFM has done this a few hundred times without any trouble and today the rocks were even dry. A few steps around on the rocks while holding the hand rail led to one small uneven step with the left foot. 

Yep you guessed it, the ankle failed again and the OFM was being very gentle with no amount of bravado at all. We stayed on the rocks about twenty minutes fishing and waiting for the ankle to quit hurting. Eventually the Team made its way back past everyone and to the Truck.

Since then the OFM has been being lazy at the Castle with the ankle wrapped in a towel to create a warm area around the ankle. The heating pad on low is too hot for a small area like this. Ibuprofen is, of course, in his system now.

With a bit of luck the Teams will be back into action in the next day or two. Sitting and doing nothing is not our idea of trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.