Now that the foot’s feeling better (still not 100%, but much better, although it’s very sore today), I’ve been spending lots of time in the gym attempting to lose the weight I gained while flat on my back.
Now that I’m officially middle aged, this isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be, especially since I can remember the days when just laying off the martinis would take care of any bulge issues – now, after countless hours of workout, I’m still about the same weight as I was two weeks ago, only now I’m really tired. And sore.
So for the holiday, I won’t be going to any parties – I’ll be at the gym, followed by my annual Independence Day cowering in the house as the neighbors shoot guns into the air. I really wanted to go to Northern California, but disability just doesn’t pay enough for gas, food and lodging. Maybe later in the summer.
The one bright spot is that it’s nectarine season. Nectarines are one of the things that cause me to lose all vestiges of self-control – I don’t mean those hard flavorless things that one purchases at the supermarket, either. I mean the farmer’s market ripe sweet perfect fruit which is only available for a few weeks and, of course, doesn’t taste good when it’s canned or turned into preserves.
I’ve probably eaten 10 pounds of them in the past two weeks. Which, now that I think about it, may be causing some of my gym related problems.
Meh. Nectarine season is short and there will be time enough for self-denial later.
Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Happily, I’m walking almost normally now. I don’t need the crutches or a cane any longer, altough I’m still a long way from being graceful (although one could argue that I was far from graceful before the surgery).
The foot has improved so much that I’m able to do lots of cardio in the gym (not on the treadmill, though – mostly the elliptical since it doesn’t hurt the foot) in an effort to lose the post-surgery bulge before I have to go back to work. I can ride my bicycle, but not for very long – about half an hour and the foot’s had it.
I’m still really worn out in the evenings so the semi-hiatus will continue for a bit longer (and I’d like to thank the three of you who are still bothering with me), but things are definitely looking up. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to work very soon and take advantage of the sudden surge in production.
In other news, since I’ve never before posted a bunch of pictures of my foot on the internet, I was unprepared for the consequences.
Creepy Internet Foot Fetish Yokel (CIFFY) has taken to sending me angry emails on a daily basis expressing his anger about my posting my decidedly unsexy foot photos on the internet, where, apparently, they have sullied his precious retinae.
CIFFY is outraged – outraged – that there’s a woman somewhere in the world who hasn’t bothered with a manicure (in ‘hore red’, no less), and yet has the unmitigated gall to post such pictures on his internet.
How dare I forget that all photos of any woman’s feet anywhere are for the sole purpose of making CIFFY want to touch himself like the parish priest used to do before Mom found out.
CIFFY’s misspelled rants have called into question my physical appearance, my ancestry, my ‘moarel fibar’, etc… Each email becomes progressively more insulting as I fail to react in a manner that CIFFY deems appropriate.
I’ve had to block CIFFY from commenting on my Flickr photos and here, but he’s still sending me emails using proxy servers (I guess when you sit at home all day on the computer, some actual knowledge manages to seep in).
So, CIFFY, this one’s for you:
All through the surgery/rehab process, people have been warning me about hitting ‘the wall’.
Last week was my wall.
The physical therapy didn’t seem to be doing any good, the foot wasn’t improving, still hurt all the time and by the time I had done the exercises and gone about my day I could hardly stand up. Instead of coming home and sitting on the computer typing something or other, I sat in the comfy chair in the living room and cried. Every night.
The constant pain was also making me behave in a truly deplorable manner. Think temper tantrums for small things like the grocery store being out of something I wanted or someone not sneaking the LA left turn* quickly enough.
Did I write earlier that I didn’t understand how people get hooked on pain pills? Scratch that. I completely understand now. Adding to the general misery was the physical therapist deciding to do ‘desensitization’ on the scar, which involved rubbing stuff against the very tender part of the foot and felt just fucking great.
Luckily, I seem to have moved past said wall – although the toe’s stiffened up a bit, the rest of the foot’s not aching so badly anymore.
Everything is much better now, although I’m still not doing very much with my life other than working out and sleeping.
*Los Angeles, in a stroke of genius on the part of some smartass, for years didn’t have left turn signals at intersections. Anywhere. In order to make a left turn, one would have to coast out into the middle of the intersection while one had the light and then make the turn in that brief interval between when the light turns red and the traffic travelling in the other direction starts moving. I’ve never seen drivers in any other city do this – probably because other cities had the foresight to install left turn arrows at intersections.
Today was the big day – the day I got back in the swimming pool – the day I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.
The physical therapist, who has taken to lecturing me about the evils of overdoing it (to be fair, I usually get the lectures after I come limping in admitting that I’ve done something silly like trying to cram my foot into my bike shoe or doing squats at the gym), made me promise to limit my first swim to 15 minutes.
Which turned out to be not that hard – swimming hurts, but at least it’s a different hurt than walking. Walking hurts the joint where the toe’s trying to flex, but also really hurts on the bottom of the foot – it sort of feels like the foot is folded under on the sides and I’m putting all the weight on the outside of the underside of the foot. Plus the ankle really starts to ache. Swimming made the toe flop around which hurt like hell, but just in the joint, not the bottom of the foot. The ankle didn’t hurt, either. I’m going to call it a win.
I don’t usually bother with a kickboard (the gym pool doesn’t provide them and it’s just one more thing to carry), but for today I dusted it off and kicked a few laps before giving up and going to sit in the steam room (something else I haven’t been allowed to do until today).
I missed swimming. Even though the toe hurt, it was good to be back in the pool.
Here’s a link instead of a photo (for those of you who would like to not look at the gross foot photo):
At yesterday’s doctor visit, I got the good news – although my foot is a really weird color*, it’s healing nicely and I no longer need to wear the giant black walking boot that’s been the bane of my existence for the past three weeks (hard to walk in, hard to balance on, and very, very, sweaty).
I still can’t cram my foot into one of my regular shoes, though – so I went out and purchased a pair of those slip-ons that look like tennis shoes which I normally hate but are, at the moment, the only thing I can wear.
I also got cleared to go back to the gym (although I can’t swim yet), which makes me happy as the sedentary portion of the program has been driving me completely crazy.
So, the plan for today was to get up early, do two weeks’ worth of laundry, and then hit the gym and start trying to melt off the blubber I’ve packed on while sitting on my ass watching daytime television (actually, that’s not true. I’ve been chained to my laptop working on a writing project which will actually earn me some money).
Except that I failed to take into consideration that laundry involves standing on the tile floor of a laundromat for two hours. After I fluffed and folded everything, my foot and my ankle felt like complete crap. Of course the one bench in the place was taken by a nice lady who was in even worse shape than I was, so I didn’t feel that the ‘let the cripple sit down for a while’ routine was going to get me anywhere.
I understand the foot, but the ankle? It’s a pretty serious design flaw when a body part goes to crap after not being used for three weeks. Someone is going to get a strongly worded letter about this, I’m just not sure who. Yet.
*Remember the days before spray on tans? Do you remember the people who were out in the sun all day every day smearing themselves with coconut scented glop until they turned a very, very dark brown – then they either forgot the glop or went water skiing or to some tropical destination (where the sun was really strong) and burned on top of the tan which turned them that weird mahogany color? That’s what color my foot is right now. It looks like it’s gone on vacation without me.
I’m normally one of those people who has minor surgery and then goes straight from the hospital to the gym to work off the anaesthesia.
However, for the past two weeks, I’ve been taking the advice of friends, family, and complete strangers on the internet and taking it easy on the foot – not pushing it too much and being sensible. Turns out, that was the wrong thing to do.
Sadly, since my friends, family and said strangers have only had my best interests at heart, a sense of self-righteous vindication would be totally inappropriate.
I’ve developed adhesions in the foot (which, to be fair, are probably more because of the infection than inactivity) and now can’t move the toe at all. The doctor seems to think this is temporary and a little physical therapy plus increased use will sort the whole thing out without the need to resort to surgery.
So no more using the crutches in the house (I still need to use them whenever I venture out among the hoi polloi, though – they seem to be aiming for me. I wonder if it’s extra points to knock me over or something), and I’m to try to walk without the boot (again, only in the house).
I’ve got my first PT appointment Friday, and until then I have to move the toe as much as I can, which, not surprisingly, feels like crap and is making me very, very cranky.
The good news is that the doctor thinks I’m going to be up and about sooner than scheduled, which is good since there does seem to be a bit of work around.
And it does feel awfully good to jettison those crutches, even if it is just inside the house.
Since the foot’s been bandaged since surgery, I didn’t have the opportunity to take a photo of the oft-requested disgusting looking stitches – until today, when the sadistic doctor cleaned and redressed the foot.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
It’s bandaged again, and of course it hurts like hell since it got scrubbed. Today, after the doctor’s office I ran some errands with a friend, had lunch, and picked up my handicapped placard for the car. Despite being dropped off curbside everywhere I went, this is the most physical activity I’ve done in almost 10 days.
I’m completely exhausted.
Long ago, at a party, a friend who had spent her entire adult life in a wheelchair said to me “When you’re handicapped, everything is a procedure.” At the time, I nodded sagely and sipped my drink while I tried to look like I had a fucking clue what she was talking about. After the last 24 hours, I completely – truly – understand.
I’m still working on the procedure, but since I’ve only been up and about for the past day, it’s all fairly new. At my wonderful saintly friends’ house, the only time I had to get up was to go to the toilet – everything was brought to me and I even had help taking a bath. Now, I’m on my own and were there webcams in my house, my antics would be comedy classics.
See me try to carry a cup of coffee (yes, I know it was stupid) while on crutches and spill it all over the cat!
See me trip over a throw rug!
See me try to coax hissing coffee-soaked cat down from the top of the bookshelf!
See me try to retrieve errant crutches after they fall just out of reach!
See me try to wash the dishes and keep my foot propped up at the same time!
Best of all – see me try to bend over and pick something up off of the floor!
Hilarious.
I’m sure it’ll get better – I just missed out on the crutch practice days that I would have had without the complications.
Because nothing ever seems to go all that smoothly for me, I picked up a staph infection at the hospital. Not at the incision site – on the top of the foot. I was fine at first, but as soon as the hospital’s anesthesia wore off, the foot began feel like it was on fire. Since I have actually set fire to myself (on more than one occasion), this is a feeling that I know well and quite frankly don’t care for all that much.
The medication wasn’t helping the pain at all, so the doctor was called and he told me to take more of the medication, which made me vomit. Repeatedly. I have now officially poisoned myself with vicodin. Sweet. Remind me not to do it again. I don’t know how people get addicted to that stuff.
I got a better pain drug and was much happier once I managed to get my face out of the trash can.
Although I didn’t have internet, I had cable TV (I’m going to miss that), the best dog ever to keep me company and wonderful people who kept me fed and updated my blog for me. I owe all of them something spectacular now.
When I went to the doctor for a check up, he just scratched his head and said that he couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten the infection – then wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and said that if there was no improvement in five days that he was going to have to re-admit me to the staph factory hospital.
The good news is that the infection’s definitely clearing up – I still can’t put any weight on the foot, but it’s stopped hurting so much when it’s not elevated, which was the one obstacle to my going home.
So now I’m back home and I have the internet again. Of course, the first thing I did was go online and order some padding for the crutches because my armpits look like hamburger.
I’m going back to the doctor in the morning. I don’t suppose he’s going to let me drive yet, so I’m planning on being stuck in the house for another week.
Which isn’t a bad thing – I have a lot of stuff I have to get done if and when I can manage to balance.
I guess I should have specified that Peggy doesn’t have internet at Nurse Ratchet’s place. She’s doing quite well. I wrote her last post to update you all, and hopefully she’ll be home and online to entertain you all after the cute-but-married (darn)doctor signs off on her Monday or Tuesday. On the subject of feet, I once crewed on a soft core porn video aimed at the foot fetish market. We spent several hours lighting a glowing display rack for the featured footwear, along with a glowing turntable for the nekkid girls and their very high heels. Then the product placement guy brought in the ugliest product placement shoes in the history of mankind. And we filmed them, ’cause that’s what we were paid to do. But I ask you, didn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? Surely anyone who’s enough into shoes to buy the movie is going to have, I don’t know, some kind of taste in shoes? And wouldn’t the ugly shoes kind of kill the mood, so to speak? The production company on that show accidentally underpaid me by a day, and the guy who owned the company called me to apologize and offered to loan me some cash until they could get me a check cut, if I needed it. I didn’t, that week, but it was weird to realize the porn guy was the nicest producer I had worked for up to that point in my career.
–Fl. Nightingale
Peggy’s surgery went well and she has been delivered to the home of Nurse Ratchet, who is sure to enjoy the opportunity to mess with Peggy’s head while she’s all loopy on vicodin.
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