The Smelly Train Disaster

It has been a while since we last checked in.  I think we were in Sweden and I was complaining that the aroma from Katrina's cast had taken on its own personality.

Just after I had broadcasted the fact that the cast smelled to high heaven we found ourselves on a train from Stockholm to Copenhagen.  Jordan ate a chocolate candy bar (or two or three) and then mysteriously and uncharacteristically got motion sickness and promptly threw up on poor Katrina and her cast, with a significant portion of the throw-up flowing down her leg and INSIDE the cast.

The smell was horrid.  And since I carry Katrina on my shoulders anytime we have to walk anywhere significant, I get a front row seat everytime I hoist her onto my shoulders because her thigh-high cast is only inches from my nose.

After we arrived in Copenhagen we caught a taxi to our hostel.  The cab hadn't been in motion more than 60 seconds before the driver had all the windows down.  Since according to the last credible evidence we had at the time, Katrina was about to have her cast off the next day, I took matters into my own hands.

After we arrived at our hostel, I retrieved the wilderness survival saw that September had purchased from the Army surplus store before we left California.  I don't know who panicked more, September or Katrina, as neither thought I could trim off the nasty bits without taking off significant portions of Katrina's leg as well.   When I was through, the top six inches of her cast were trimmed off so that her cast now only came to just above her knee.  This really helped the smell factor.  There were also zero bits of her leg removed.

We saw the doctor the very next day and got Katrina's leg x-rayed.  The doctor told us that there was still a 5-mm gap in Katrina's bone that needed to fill in, and that she would need to keep her cast on for "at least" 2 or 3 more weeks.  But luckily he blessed the new cast length.  Poor Katrina almost broke down in tears right in the doctors office.  Our plans for a swimming party that afternoon were promptly canceled.

When we left Copenhagen, all of our spirits were dampened quite a bit.  We are a biking, hiking, swimming sort of family, and that was what the plan was for travelening in this part of the world.  We had tried to make the best of it for six weeks of Katrina's cast, and had been so looking forward to doing some of the things that had been off limits, only to have that freedom taken away yet again. There have been times that Katrina has been on the verge of depression, but 90% of the time she has been a real trooper.  To not have a perfectly functional body has been a hard lesson for her, and by extension, all of us.

We started to research waterproof cast covers on the web, so that at least we could swim.  We found a product that looked promising that we could order from a company in California, and after calling friends of friends, we found an address that it could be shipped to in Germany, so we started south so that we could pick it up.