Just 11 minutes after I returned from the hospital with a shattered femur, my mother-in-law kicked my crutches away. Ignoring my agonized screams, she and my husband dragged me into a pitch-black garage.

to the floor. My broken femur—fresh from surgery, held together with metal hardware and hope—struck the boards with devastating force. Pain detonated through my body in a blinding surge, so intense that my scream echoed through the foyer of my own home like shattered glass inside a cathedral.

I had been discharged from the hospital eleven minutes earlier.continue reading …