A Montrose woman has had a series of bad breaks and wonders when her luck will turn.
Marion Stewart and her boxer Skye are both stuck at home in Glenprosen Street nursing fractures to their left legs.
Marion, who is married to taxi driver Tommy, cannot believe her run of bad luck.
She said: “One week I was made redundant, the next week I broke my leg and then the next week the dog broke his leg.”
Seven-year-old Skye broke his leg on Saturday. Bounding out the back door to play, his leg buckled underneath him and he went crashing down.
Marion said: “He thinks he is still seven months rather than seven years old.”
Marion heard the sickening crunch of broken bones when she tripped near the foot of the stairs at home on September 1. She lay undiscovered for 45 minutes after 40 phone calls to Tommy went unanswered because he had accidentally locked a key on the phone that stopped the incoming calls.
Tommy said: “That’s no exaggeration I had 40 missed calls from her on my phone.”
Marion had been walking downstairs with a basket piled high with washing. She was three steps from the bottom when she lost her footing.
The fall occurred just days after she lost her job at Forfar firm Ross and Bonnyman where she was a customer services administrator. That misfortune proved to be a “lucky” twist in the tale.
Marion said: “I have never been unemployed. I had been to the local Job Centre and was looking for work.
“When I fell, by luck I had my mobile phone in the washing basket. I was taking it everywhere in case I got a call about a job.”
Continued…
Unluckily for Marion, she couldn’t get through to Tommy. She was lying in pain and just inches away from the front door but she couldn’t move to open it.
She said: “There were kids passing on their way to school. If I could only have got the front door open, I could have shouted for help.”
In excruciating agony, she was starting to go into shock, sweating and feeling faint, when she decided to send a text to Tommy.
That message did get through and when he looked at the phone and saw the barrage of missed calls from his wife, he realised something was far wrong and rushed home to find Marion lying at the foot of the stairs.
He called an ambulance, fending off Marion’s protestations and her priority that he get her out of her pyjamas and into some day clothes.
Marion said: “The paramedics were brilliant. I lay alone for 45 minutes but they arrived in seconds.”
She was taken to Ninewells Hospital, Dundee still wearing her pyjamas. She knew what had happened long before X-rays and staff in accident and emergency confirmed it.
Marion said: “I knew I had broken my leg because I heard it cracking. It is gut wrenching to hear that noise. It is horrible.”
Normally very active, she expects to be laid up with Skye for at least another five weeks, depending on how the fracture heals.
The 48-year-old was grateful to neighbours who helped her in the immediate aftermath of the accident, allowing her self-employed husband to go back to work.
Her mother Nan Leathen travelled from her home in Airdrie on Saturday to help her while she is recovering. At the end of her journey she found an extra patient. The Stewarts picked her up from the bus station after spending most of the morning at the vet with Skye.
Marion said: “They say back luck comes in threes. I got made redundant, broke my leg and then the dog broke his. I hope that’s the end of it.”