the view from my mat

Someone once told me that if you don’t learn your lesson the first time… or the second… or the 15th then the lesson will just keep getting harder until you get it. 

Well, for anyone who read this little ditty: How Not To Use Yoga To Meet Men you’ll soon realize I did not take my own advice when it comes to drunk yoga.  A summary? My advice was: Don’t do it.

Last Thursday I’m sorry to say I didn’t listen to my own wise words.

The evening started out innocently enough.  My roommate and I had two friends staying with us and had promised them a night on the town over the bridge on South Beach.  While my roommate and I rarely consider ourselves to be club goers we strapped on our high heels and prepared to show our guests how to get down on South Beach.

Unfortunately what ensued was us spending the evening wandering around trying to find a reasonable place to go.  Remaining unimpressed by any of our options and getting some drinks at a bar in a hotel lobby (like classy ladies) we headed home around 3am.  Are you wondering when the drunk yoga will come in?

At 4am my roommate and I were reasonably sauced up, to the point where any and all reason had slipped right out of our heads.  It  was at that moment we decided we were one thing and one thing only: a dynamic acrobatic duo.  After multiple attempts at a two person cart-wheel I decided to show off my handstanding skillz.

We do have this on film, but in an effort to save even a little face I’ll sum it up like this: I threw my legs proudly into the air and then began to fall backwards.  One of our house guests shouted: grab her legs, grab her legs to my roommate, but Kara was confused by my sudden gymnastic stunt and boom.  I flipped over into a backbend and landed safely…

Except for my baby toe.  My baby toe got caught on the carpet and a tiny sad little “pop” suggested something was not right.  At first I was laughing happily, after all this was a scene that had gone down many a time in a yoga class… however when I looked down at the smallest toe of my left foot… this is what I saw…

As you can tell it is a terribly demented toe.  Laughter quickly turned into a total panic attack.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am a total and complete hypochondriac.  So at 4am wasted out of my mind, tiny toe askew I could think of only two people to call.  1) my college roommate who is a nurse.  She told me to go to a doctor immediately.  I didn’t like that advice one bit as I was in no shape to drive anywhere.

And 2) my mother.  Dear mom was not happy to hear from me at an ungodly hour and she was even less pleased to learn that in a drunken fit on handstand inspiration I had probably dislocated my toe.  She also insisted I go to the hospital; but I wasn’t having it.  So, Kara and our two house gusts did what they could: they put a bag of frozen brussels sprouts on my foot and elevated it while I tried to sleep.

The next morning my roommate took me to urgent care where a very lovely doctor took X-Ray’s.
“I’m sure it’s just dislocated and we can put it back into place and send you home,” was her first impression of the situation.

No – it was not nearly as simple as that.  This is what she found when she X-rayed my foot:

That little pinky toe bone was totally snapped right at the base of the bone.  She regretfully informed me that she couldn’t set it and called her husband to get me to an orthopedic surgeon.

So with a new set of crutches under my armpits my roommate and I slowly cruised out of  the urgent care and off to an orthopedic surgeon who was waiting for us at The ER of Mercy Hospital.

Once they confirmed that my toe was most definitely broken they prepared to inject my foot with lidocaine, which was probably the most unpleasant part of the whole process.  (‘What was the most pleasant part?’ You’re wondering… Our REALLY handsome resident… we’re talking Grey’s Anatomy style).

Anyway that is what my foot looked like post lidocaine:

You’ll notice how fat and silly it looks.

After my foot was totally numbed up they proceeded to yank and pull my toe back into place and splint it to its small friend to the right.  Warning me that because of the nature of the break I would have to be very careful not to put too much weight on that foot.

When I told them I was a yoga instructor who had to be on my feet at least an hour a day to teach my students they gave me this… Talk about adding insult to injury.

So what have I learned throughout this experience (besides the fact that it takes at least 4 weeks for a bone to begin to mend and crutches really hurt your armpits even when used correctly)?

I have learned that drunk yoga is emphatically a terrible idea.  No I didn’t learn it when I konked my head trying to show off drop backs during a party.  And I didn’t learn it after face planting at a bar.

Nope, I had to sacrifice the littlest piggy who goes wee wee wee all the way home before I was finally able to understand the true dangers of practicing yoga while wasted.

Now I have to figure out how to do yoga with only one foot.  Talk about a challenge.

Wishing you a toe-tally awesome (and safe), Sunday!

XO
Heather C