She Made It

Beerina made it through the day without a broken ankle for the first time in 3 years. As many of you may know, Beerina, the oldest girl here, fell off a horse and severely hurt her ankle just a couple days before I arrived 2 summers ago. The local x-rays were basically worthless, so several days after I arrived we were headed to Windhoek, the capital (13 hours away), to get proper ones and to have it casted. But the pain and swelling only worsened over the next month and we were forced to cut the cast off with pruners (you make do with what you have when the only doctor on call is off fishing, haha). We then took her back to Windhoek for another opinion, which led to determining that she had a parasympathetic nerve problem in addition to the hurt ankle. This is very similar to phantom pain, where her brain was perceiving severe pain even though there wasn’t a physical ailment to necessarily warrant it. Once on proper meds for that, things were much better and she was soon back to walking. BUT last summer, on the same day, she fell off a horse again and hurt her ankle again pretty badly. But at least this time the healing process was not as long. Gary, the father here, jokingly told her she was not allowed out of her room this year on June 17th. Well, today has come and gone and though she was allowed out of her room she did not ride a horse and both her ankles are intact, haha.

Pictured above is Beerina and I having a crutch race 2 years ago on some baby crutches I found.