My Mission Trial- Knee Injury

This is a gross post.  If you are squeamish, skip it.  I haven't posted it before now for just that reason.  But, I decided I wanted to post it.  As I look back on our mission, this was one of my biggest trials.  It was scary and painful and difficult.  But it also was a faith-promoting experience- as trials often are.

Our cute, little middle school-aged neighbor, Ayano, was participating in a school track meet at a local sports park.  Ken and I went to watch her, support her and cheer her on.  We watched her run a couple of races, then her grandma came down to where we were sitting in the stands and invited us to come up higher with them to watch her throw the javelin.

As we were walking up, I focused on where we were going instead of watching my footing.  There was a drain in the concrete floor.  But, instead of sloping down to the drain as ours do, this one was actually cut out of the concrete, creating a dip with a lip or edge.  My foot caught and I went down hard, skinning both knees, but especially the left one badly.

We went right home and cleaned, dressed, and iced the wound.  It didn't look too bad then.  But just you wait.

It turned lovely shades of purple and blue.  It was badly swollen and it hurt.

The purple drained down into my foot and ankle.  My whole leg was swollen and painful. 
To this day, my ankle still is purple and a little bit swollen.  It has never completely gone away.

You can see how swollen it was.

For several weeks, we stayed in as much as possible and I elevated my leg.  We still did a lot.  We had to go to eikaiwa, missionary meetings, church, and even helped put on a missionary open house at the church.  But, we didn't do many visits or schedule extra appointments.  It was during this time that we traveled to Sendai to attend a special meeting with Apostle Gary Stevenson.

But the wound became infected.  That's scary when you have an artificial knee.

Sorry.  These pictures are particularly gross.  I was scared.  We had to travel to Yamagata for interviews with the mission president.  Our president was an orthopedic surgeon.  He volunteered to look at my knee. He cautioned about the dangers of infection.  I decided to put myself on antibiotics.  I had brought some with us.  So, I started taking them.

I would have Ken take pictures of the wound because I couldn't see it well.  It was pretty gross.

After I started the antibiotics, it gradually got better and better:

It took almost two months.  There is still a scar- it was a deep scrape.  We were blessed.  All throughout this trial, I was so fearful that we would have to go home.  It made me realize how badly I did NOT want to go home before our mission was complete.  I wanted to do the work God had sent us there to do.  The elders and Ken gave me a beautiful blessing where I was assured it would heal and that we would be able to finish our mission.  I am so grateful for the fulfillment of that blessing!