Tom and Michelle’s house and boat
Finally hooked up with my cousin Tom, his wife Michelle and their 3 kids, Cameron, Heidi and Andrea in Alabama. It’s been years since we’ve seen them so it’s been a great opportunity to visit and catch up. They’ve been living here for around 5 years now so they’re almost “locals”! :-)
They’ve got a full house so their neighbours across the street have graciously put us up in their spare apartment above their garage. It’s a great set up and they’ve been so nice to us.
Tom’s got a boat, so of course one of the first things we’ve done is get out on the lake. Saturday we went to Lake Martin. It is a 39,180 acre lake with 743 miles (1,200 km) of wooded shoreline. Lake Martin was formed after the completion of Martin Dam on the Tallapoosa River. After construction of the dam in 1926, Lake Martin was the largest man-made lake in the world. It’s great for swimming etc because there’s no ‘gators in it!
All my family knows how much Tom’s family back in Canada loves their water sports so of course it comes as no surprise that all his kids are fish. They swim, water ski and wake board.
Dave and I haven’t water skied since our high school days but we thought this was the perfect chance to give it a try. Well.....Dave tried, he didn’t get up though. When we went back to pick him up, he was in agony. He said he felt something snap in his leg and we could hardly get him back in the boat. Once he got in and got some ice on his hamstring, he seemed OK while he was sitting.
Getting out of the boat was another story. He couldn’t put any weight on his leg and when we finally managed to get him on the dock, he almost passed out from the pain. Dave was able to pull himself to the end of the dock where a couple more big guys from the marina helped carry him to the truck.
From there, I drove him to the Jackson hospital ER in Montgomery Alabama, about an hour from the lake but closer to Michelle and Tom’s which was a good thing. The Dr’s and Nurses in the ER were great, he got looked after right away. The Dr there didn’t think he’d severed the muscle, which is what I was afraid of but it’s definitely a bad hamstring pull. He can’t put any weight on his foot at all. So while he was in ER they gave him a shot in the hip of some sort of pain killer that’s 10X stronger than morphine.
Unfortunately, all it did was make him dizzy and he rarely reacts to any drug like that. Poor guy, he was soooo sick. After being there for about 4 hours, he finally felt human enough for me to drive him back to Tom and Michelle’s for the night. They sent him home with crutches and a prescription for pain killers as well as a referral to one of the best sports medicine Doctors in Alabama.
He felt much better the next day once the shot wore off and is now resting back in the apartment while we wait to see the Doctor this coming week.
No idea how much the ER visit is going to cost us so this will be a real test of the travel insurance we bought and an eye opener of the US medical system.
So traveling is on hold until he gets to see the orthopedic surgeon for a better diagnosis of the injury and what therapy etc he needs to get back in shape. All I can say is I’m happy this happened near family because I know Tom and Michelle will help us out any way they can while Dave heals.
And oh yeah, he’s taking full advantage of his inability to get things easily....I’m now his personal slave! ;-) when I’m at the apartment, but most of the time I’m hanging out with Michelle and leaving him to heal in “peace”.
We left him alone yesterday to rest and heal while we all went out on the boat again, it was a beautiful, hot sunny day...almost a 100 degrees. All we could say is “Poor Dave” while we hung out on the boat and had a great time...we were thinking of him though! :-)
His accident did put a damper on any thoughts I had of water skiing. As much as I would have liked to try again, I thought it was better to be safe than sorry because one of us still needs to have 2 functioning legs to drive.
I’ll keep you posted on the “gimp”, in the meantime check out these happy water skiers in the ALBUM.
