Say goodbye to the big black boot.

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.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Walk it off, Cupcake.

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.

Filed under: Non-Work

Extra gross Friday photo

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.

Filed under: Non-Work, Photos, bunion, doctor, scar, surgery

Home again, at last.

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.

Filed under: humor, mishaps, Non-Work, bunion, cat, coffee, crutch, foot, ouch, pain, recovery, surgery

Fl. Nightingale – guest blogger for peggy

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

Filed under: Uncategorized

update on Peggy’s foot fun

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.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Tomorrow, tomorrow.

Friday, as I was out running some errand which I’ve now forgotten, the podiatrist’s surgery scheduler called me and said “I’ve got good news! I have a cancellation for May 6th, so you can get that day if you still want it!”

Of course I said yes right away, lest she give the coveted appointment to someone else. The full impact of this didn’t hit me until I hung up the phone. All the stuff I needed to get done, which would have fit nicely into two and a half weeks, now had to be done in four days.

So all weekend I’ve been so busy I think my limbs have appeared as a blur to onlookers.

But it’s almost all done now. I just have to finish freezing some food so I don’t have to cook when I do come home (don’t start in on store-bought frozen meals. They’re vile and I’d rather starve), pack a bag as I’ll be staying at a friend’s house for a few days and finish cleaning the house. Oh, and I’m going to go for a late swim tonight as I won’t be able to get into the pool for a few weeks.

Much like the gremlins, I can’t eat anything after midnight, so maybe I’ll treat myself to some late sushi – you know, in case I die or something.

Tomorrow.  I guess it’s better this way – I probably would have worked myself  into a lather had I two weeks to ponder the implications of surgery, but now it’s all happened so fast that by the time I can settle down and really start to worry, the whole thing will be over with and I’ll be sprawled on a couch, out of my skull on pain medication.

Tomorrow, I have to get to the Motion Picture Hospital (yes, we have our own hospital. Not for much longer, though. It’s closing in October) two hours early so they can check me in and a physical therapist can give me lessons on how to properly move on crutches.  The one thing I didn’t get done today was a trip to the DMV to get the paperwork for a handicapped sign for the car, since I’ll be able to drive before I’m off the crutches.

Tomorrow, I’ll get up early, go water the garden since I won’t be able to do so for a week (hopefully. Probably more like two. All I can do is hope that it doesn’t get super hot and fry my tomato plants), do a load of laundry and then go to the hospital.

Shit. I’m having surgery tomorrow. I’m not ready.

Filed under: Non-Work