Thank you all for the information! I felt yesterday like I'd lost my brain. I was in a haze. When my husband looked at the x-rays his face blanched and his concern started to freak me out.

I did call a couple of Dr. friends, though neither is an orthopedist. One even said he'd show the x-rays today to an orthopedist he works with. And my new orthopedist was on call, and said not to worry for the reasons that you've mentioned, about the swelling.

One bit of info I learned was that most commonly people break the tibia -- the big weight-bearing bone -- and fibula at the same time. The fibula is a little thin bone that wraps around the tibia. And the ankle gets implicated because it has ligaments that connect the two bones. Sorry, I'm not much of an anatomist and truthfully don't have the stomach much for it -- I went to that "bodies" exhibit a year or so ago and really sympathized with the woman who passed out while she was looking at the body that showed female reproductive organs.

I work on a hilly campus with lots of stairs and hardly handicap accessible at all. And since I start teaching when the semester starts and continue until it ends, there's really no way I can miss work. Yes, they gave me crutches. The hardest thing is going up stairs. In the house, I can go down on my butt, like a little kid.

So they called campus safety to drive me to the clinic, and to take me back. On the way back I was told that HR wanted me to stop by and fill out paperwork! I'm glad people are so conscientious about their jobs.