In the sort of surgery I had it's necessary to, in a manner of speaking, shove all the tendons and muscles to the side in order to get to the bone. When the screws are in and everything is sewn (or stapled) back up, things still aren’t exactly as they were. This means that afterwards, the tendons sort of slowly drift back into their precisely proper place. It provides for some very odd sensations - one wakes up and things feel different down there, and then you get used to that particular feeling and things shift again. Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, it produces an odd sense of internal drift.

None of this is particularly horrific. Mostly, it’s just sort of interesting. The only horrific element is picturing what it must have looked like when it was being done, and thinking about that brought back a peculiar memory for me. As I’ve written before, I sometimes remember dreams that I had years ago. When I was in my early teens, I dreamt that it was somehow necessary for my ankle to be dissected while I was still alive. I knew that when they were done they’d put everything back, but I was still so horrified that I woke up in a cold sweat. I told myself there was no reason that such a thing would ever happen. When I mentioned it to my mother, she agreed. Why would it?

The ankle that was sliced into in my dream is the same one that I broke.