Slippery ice and voting

As we were getting ready to go vote yesterday my dad and I slipped on the ice outside on the porch and went down. I thought that the ice had been cleared away with that ice melt stuff and sand, but it turns out that the stuff that was used on it had been that clumping kind of kitty litter. For those of you that don’t know, that is not a good thing.

Clumping kitty litter is made from clay, this makes it clump together when the stuff gets wet. When it gets wet enough it causes it to become a muddy clay. A very slippery muddy clay. That is not a good thing to have on top of slippery ice on a walkway. I stepped down off the porch, dad followed me down… I saw my dad's weaker foot start to slip and tried to get one of my feet over there to brace it - no good. The seemingly solid looking dirt was in fact very wet clumping kitty litter. My foot had no traction as his slid sideways into it and we both lost traction, then to make it worse both of those legs went right into my good leg. Me and dad went down - hard.

I tried to brace him as much as I could, but it was useless. He threw his good arm around, bracing from hitting his head on the planter beside the porch, but his hand caught on the planter. Me and the nephews got him up and sitting on the porch steps. Discussed injuries and how he was doing and he said he thought that he might have broke his thumb. I asked if he wanted to go to the ER, get it x-rayed and he said yes… but after we went and voted.

So, off we went to our local polling place, then went to get the thumb checked out. X-rays did not show any breaks, but the guy was concerned about torn ligaments, so referred us to a specialist and put the hand in a brace. I called the referred to doctor and his receptionist said he’s booked solid all week and they are not accepting new patients at this time, she’s getting dad’s stuff from ER anyway to take a look at it and will call me back tomorrow. I then called my dad’s regular doctor to let her know what’s up, her receptionist is going to let her know about this.