Prepper Fail: I Broke My Ankle Because I Ignored A Prep

I’m sitting here in a significant amount of pain with my right foot in a boot because I ignored one of my preps and went blindly about my business. 

Ignored Prep

This morning I was heading off to work (I work about four blocks from our in-town residence) like any normal Monday. I grabbed a couple of grocery bags that we keep in the car (we take our own bags into the grocery store) that needed to go back out, plus a bag full of peppers from our garden that I was taking into the office to share with my co-workers (our garden went nuts with all kinds of peppers late in the season).

I walked out not paying attention to anything, hit the first step and down I went.

Hard. 

I felt something pop, but I’ve felt that before without breaking anything… I also had some scrapes and abrasions here and there.

There I was, laying on my sidewalk in a pile of grocery bags and peppers, wondering if I had actually injured something.

A Call For Help

I called a friend from work to come check me out. He’s been a coach for years, and before that was a military MP with medical training. 

I didn’t want to move because I thought I may have really injured my lower leg. He hopped into his vehicle and drove over to our house and checked out the ankle and knee.

We both decided that it looked iffy enough to go to the ER or urgent care and have an X-Ray done.

The ER

I went to the ER and we found out that, indeed, I did have a broken bone in the ankle. It didn’t look like surgery was going to be needed according to the ER doc, but I’m scheduled for an orthopedic appointment later in the week.

Sorry To Hear It, Salty, But What Does This Have To Do With Prepping?

I can feel that thought running through your minds… am I right?

Here’s the thing, at 3BY we are all about being ready for the big international or national The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI) disasters… but we are also all about being ready for small, personal disaster avoidance.

We want everybody to be ready for a huge TEOTWAWKI event or a local ice storm, for a Pandemic all the way down to avoiding getting a houseful full of people with the seasonal flu.

We are 100 percent prepped for ice. I just didn’t look to see the frost on the truck’s windows in my driveway. I simply ignored looking around and engaging my brain.

If there is frost, then our front steps are slick. Every. Single. Time.

I know this, and I didn’t check… I ignored my surroundings, and down I went.

The ignored ice melt was right there, all ready to go since we did our “getting ready for winter” preps recently. 

There’s no excuse except carelessness.

New Lessons Learned

We’ve also learned that we need to beef up our preps a bit in the ‘care for somebody with a broken leg’ department. For the next X many weeks, my mobility will be terrible, and while we have crutches and even walkers, we don’t have anything like a wheelchair that may be needed to move injured people around quickly. 

We do have SAM Splints, but as I was laying there (not even in a coat, I didn’t wear one because it was 38 degrees but I only had 4 blocks of driving) I realized I had absolutely no way to self rescue myself if my injury was bad and my phone broken.

Fortunately, even though my phone fell and bounced off the concrete I have it in a very, very rugged case and it was undamaged, allowing me to call. 

The Bottom Line

Preps are great, but it’s even more important to be heads-up and paying attention to the surroundings. My failure today wasn’t because I wasn’t prepped… rather, it was because I was oblivious to my surroundings.

Slipping on icy steps and falling? An accident.

Ignoring the ice melt set out already, sitting there ready to go? Prepper fail. 

Ouch.

Das Boot