Sunday, July 20, 2025
So what if boat chore day arrives and you don’t feel like doing boat chores? It happens. Instead we started our day with a long walk along the waterfront, through a nice neighborhood of waterfront homes, and eventually hooked up with a beautiful forested trail just up from the shoreline. After days and days of sedentary life, we felt we had to push our bodies a bit today. We ended up leaving the trail and hoofing it uphill to intersect with a road that would eventually wind back down to the harbor. Along the way we passed the Port McNeill hospital where just two short years ago we spent a few hours while they evaluated John’s crushed big toe. I know most of you know this story but for those that don’t, here’s what happened in 2023. We were anchored in Turnbull Cove, a remote location in the Broughton archipelago in BC, Canada. It was our typical lazy morning, drinking coffee, reading, me snuggled on the couch wrapped in my blankets. John went outside to do something and a few minutes later I hear a hatch slam and a lot of colorful language, which isn’t John’s norm. I jumped off the couch to see what was wrong and found him limping around the back deck in distress. Apparently the hatch cover to the lazarette jammed as he was pulling up on it, which caused it to slip from his fingers and slam down hard. As he was thrown off balance due to the jammed hatch cover, somehow his foot (just in socks) edged forward just enough so his toe was smashed by the falling hatch cover. He had to reach down and lift the hatch to extract his toe. He then literally had to flip the top part of his big toe back over in place, as it was hanging on by a thread and completely smashed. We quickly realized this was not something we could bandage up and keep going, and the closest hospital was at Port McNeill, about 3-4 hours away. We pulled anchor and left as quickly as possible but being on inside waters we couldn’t spool it up and throw a huge wake getting out of there. We had John patched up as best as possible, parked him at the helm with his foot elevated, and made our way to Port McNeill. We had called ahead for a taxi to be waiting for us, and also told the marina that we were going to basically pulling in and dropping everything headed for the hospital, which is exactly what we did – didn’t lock the boat, didn’t clean up the back deck, just grabbed our wallets and phones and left. After a couple of hours waiting at Port McNeill hospital, John was finally seen by the head doctor (only one on duty, it’s a small hospital). The doc took xrays and examined his toe and quickly realized that it was more than they were equipped to handle, as John clearly needed surgery with the extent of the injury and exposed bone. Once bone is exposed it becomes emergency surgery due to the risk of infection. The doc called down to the Campbell River hospital which is a much larger facility, and made arrangements for them to receive us as soon as we could get down there, a 2-1/2 hour drive. We were on a boat. We had no car. There are no cars for rent in Port McNeill. There was no taxi service willing to take us there because by now it was 3:30 in the afternoon. The only “rental” agency I could find in town was a U-Haul place about 1/2 a mile away. It closed at 4PM. Once again, no car, and no taxi would pick me up. I begged the staff at the hospital for someone to give me a ride because unbeknownst to John I had plantar fasciitis that had flared up so it was extremely painful for me to walk. Nobody would do it (still angry about that.) So off I went on a brisk walk to the UHaul place, picked up the smallest truck possible which was about a 20’ box truck. I returned to pick up John and off we went bouncing down the highway to Campbell River. We arrived at ER around 6:30PM and John was finally seen around 8PM by the orthopedic surgeon. He suggested amputation as the best route, but we asked him to please try and save the toe and if we had to amputate later then so be it. Surgery was scheduled for 11:30PM so John encouraged me to just go get a hotel since there was nothing for me to do. I implored the surgeon to call me as soon as he was out of surgery which he did at 1:30AM, they cleaned it up and sewed it up as best they could and now it was a waiting game to see if the nerves would reconnect or the toe would die. We discharged around 11AM the next day and hit the road back to Port McNeill. I dropped John off at the boat and helped him get settled. He was ordered to be non-weight bearing for 3 weeks which is a little challenging in a boat. We also had an appointment in 1 week to get the bandage off and see if the toe was alive. Returned the truck, fired up the boat and we spent the next week slowly making our way back down to Campbell River, John hopping around the boat since crutches aren’t exactly easy in small spaces with stairs. A week later in Campbell River we are sitting in the surgeon’s office with baited breath waiting to see (as John says) whether it was “Halloween or Christmas” either the toe would be black and dead or would be red and alive. It was RED! We were both so happy, and I am sure the surgeon was also thrilled. The surgeon was such an awesome guy, we were both so impressed. Anyway, two years later, the nerves in the toe are slowly coming back which John says isn’t always fun as they are hypersensitive. But he has a toe! It’s kind of a fat squatty toe as he lost the top joint which was crushed beyond repair. Needless to say, we are both ultra aware when opening that hatch.
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