checkup
The short version
Back from the first post-surgical checkup. Negotiating the stairs, the ice, and the car wasn’t as big a deal as we thought it would be. The break-away cast is gone, the staples are out, and I have a new, full purple cast. They tell me everything is healing nicely, but that I must remember that I am healing, not healed. My job is to lie still and get better. My leg must remain elevated as much as possible. I go back in four weeks.
The long version
I had not expected to cry. After they pulled and cracked and sawed the first cast away, the nurse muttering Break-away cast, my ass, I saw what was under the bandages for the first time. It was nothing like my fiction-writing dreams, full of lumps from misguided screws. It was smooth, puffy, still full of pooled blood. Purple. Skin sloughing. Incisions with staples, one on the right side and two on the left, shorter than I expected but quite long enough. I have always been vain about my feet, even with their slightly long monkey toes. In the place of my foot they had sewed on a Frankenstein foot. I had never before felt so separated from a body part. It was not mine. It did not belong to me. And I felt so sorry for it. I burst into tears, thinking not poor me, but oh, that poor foot. My surgeon is very traditional, focused entirely on the body and not the mind or soul. He wanted to know if I was okay, if I was sure I was, and why? Why was I crying? He only looked confused when I told him.
Don’t let anyone tell you the removal of staples doesn’t hurt. It does. But it is probably nothing compared to whatever led you to get stapled in the first place, and it feels much better to have them out. There is such a thing as phantom staple pain.
Whoever cast me the first time didn’t set my foot at a 90 degree angle, so the tendons had to be stretched before the second cast could be set. Don’t let anyone tell you that doesn’t hurt, either.
I am healing. The pain is generally minimal. The ankle moves, both back and forth. It doesn’t feel like I thought it would feel, moving with the screws and plates inside. Mister Boyfriend sat with me through the entire thing today. I will walk again sometime in April. All in all, things are good.
I will take a nap.
Comments
Purple! Cool! :)
Posted by: Dorothea Salo | March 4, 2005 5:20 PM
Four weeks? One month?
Doesn't look too long looking back at my surgery. Unfortunately, it looks longer lying in bed with your foot up.
But, heh, hopefully you're having boyfriend doing all the cooking and housecleaning.
Nothin's all bad, as they say.
Posted by: loren | March 4, 2005 6:49 PM
Hang in there.
Posted by: senioritis | March 4, 2005 8:34 PM
Horribly aggravating. But, look how far you've come. You can so do 4 weeks.
BTW, I can't say aggravating without thinking of how some friends pronounced it in Tennessee: ag - ra- vate - in. Other people I worked with in TN had this delightful saying, "He's got brains baked worse than a baked potato." You could have banged your head up bad and have baked potato brains with steel accessories instead of a pretty purple cast. Small consolation when you're not feeling good, I know.
I'll send some healing thoughts your way! Take care.
Posted by: Marcia | March 5, 2005 2:22 AM
EW.
I hate it when my foot turns purple and stapley!
All kidding aside, best wishes for your swift recovery.
Posted by: Pascale Soleil | March 5, 2005 6:16 AM
My mother-in-law was thrown from her tractor while she was brush-hogging (or bush-hogging, depending on which southern state you ask) her farm a few years back.
The tractor managed to miss her; the brush-hog managed to NOT miss her foot.
She, too, had had cute feet. She, too, had surgery and staples and whatnot all stuck into her ankle to make it right.
She walks again. Her one foot isn't AS cute as the other anymore, but she wears sandals proudly. How many get to say the have screws in their feet?
BTW, hooray for monkey toes. Prehensile, I bet? :)
Posted by: madeline | March 5, 2005 8:26 PM
that almost made me cry TOO!
i am thinking of you often. and will be glad for you to be up and healed. funny how the grass can be greener and one can think. mmmm...sigh...imagine just being able to do nothing but lie around and read and draw and dream...but i am sure it must not be as much fun if you have no choice.
you will be all better soon!
Posted by: bobbi | March 7, 2005 8:53 AM
Oh. This just hurts. Knowing me, I would have passed out or hurled (or both at the same time).
Posted by: shelley | March 7, 2005 11:27 AM