As I
type this I am sitting in my lounge chair, on my balcony, and drinking a cup of
coffee. The weather is 80 degrees with
the wind whispering of the storm to come.
Sounds marvelous right? What I
left out was that my left foot is propped up with a bag of Trader Joe’s frozen
white corn masquerading as an ice pack.
I am also continuously forcing myself to not open the bag and pour them
directly onto my foot while speaking in a British accent to poorly re-enact a
scene from one of my favorite movies. It’s
swollen, it’s painful, it’s a weird color orange, a flesh colored band-aid
marks the spots of my multiple injections, and when I attempt to put weight on
it I feel even more unstable than usual (hard to believe I know). The exciting part is that this is supposedly…..
the end. Now as all things medical there
are chances of sequels, but I’m of course hoping that this was more like a
short story.
Over
the course of the last two months I’ve had multiple appointments, three X-rays,
two CAT scans, and one boot cast (I like things listed sequentially). I went from working holiday hours of forty
plus on my feet to ‘limited light duty’ of maybe twenty five and contemplating
picking up work on my back to help keep the lights on. (Of course things were never that dire, I just
wanted to use the phrase ‘work on my back’ somewhere in this rambling. It makes me giggle.) The diagnosis from my delightful podiatrist
was a broken foot bone. Yeah I cracked
it. As many times as people asked me
while wearing the cast I’ll admit I never did find out how exactly I broke it
or when. I was hoping that when we got
to the 300 mark the answer would magically appear and I was indeed ‘doing
something fun’ as everyone had hoped. In
all seriousity I probably knocked the damn thing against the coffee table, or I
stepped funny on a stair and then just kept walking through the pain, because I’m
brilliant. In my mind I was of course
saving baby gorillas from poachers or I fell off the stage after being asked to
judge ‘Northern Territories Next Top Lumberjack’ (ß I wish this were a real
thing. *sigh)
For
four to six weeks I was sentenced to the cast.
I could remove it only for showering and sleeping and let me tell you, I
was soooo thankful for that (and so were all those around me).
“For
the next four to six weeks you’re going to have to limit your physical activity
to swimming, rowing, bicycling, and other low impact sports. Running, jogging, jump rope and Zumba are all
out of the question.” This is what my
podiatrist explained to me while I stared at his gold chain strategically viewable
due to the extra button unbuttoned. (Well
played sir. One more and you’d feel
uncomfortable, right now only I do a little.
But I can’t. Stop. Staring.)
Now clearly my doctor took one look at my size ten, six pounds away from
being ‘overweight’ body and thought, ‘This here’s a girl that’s into Zumba’. I almost feel guilty that it was false…. Almost. I instead did something that is completely unlike me and I did what I
was told. Shocking right? First thing in the morning I put on pants,
then the boot. Every night I wore it
until I climbed between the sheets and dreamed of a world filled with two
working feet. I wrapped it in a very
stylish plastic shopping bad when venturing out into the winter that we
actually had this year in Ohio and I definitely tried my damnedest to put my
best boot forward every day.
On
check up day I was loath to tell my doctor’s gold chain, I mean face, that my
foot was not only still a considerable pain in the…. foot, but that said pain
may have increased even though during my boot confinement I followed all the
directions. After my second CAT scan
(which I lovingly refer to as a very slow, very expensive carnival ride through
a hole) it was finally determined that the bone had healed but that my foot
bones had been dry humping this whole time.
This is also known as the arthritis.
Thus the pain. Man do I know how
to mess up a foot! The tunnel light is
that today I walked, ok, hobbled into a hospital to have a date with some
injections. (Not the hot beef kind
either! Zing!) After finding my way to the EPIC suite (and
that’s not me trying to throw out some hipster lingo to make myself feel
younger after having the arthritis, it’s really called EPIC) I signed my life away
and sat in a room with two other ladies having foot issues of their own. I’m no mathematician but I’m 80% certain that
our combined ages would be in the 190 range.
The TV was playing a health show to help inform us about other concerns
and at the bottom scrolled, “Up next, 7 ways to have a better sex life!” I figured I knew what number one was….. find
a willing participant (after much
debate in the last 24 hours I’m quite certain that willing is a key word. Yelling SURPRISE
first does not make it some sort of a present and less rapey. Schucks thought I had found a caveat.) I was
wrong, the first step was ‘hanging her head over the bed’. REALLY?!
That sounds more like the first step to getting me to pass out, but I
suppose that could make it better for the other person. When they called my name I was more than a
little excited to be done in the lobby, watching a ‘sexologist’ in a room with
grandmas was making even me uncomfortable.
“Please
sign this form. All it says is that you’ll
try not to fall down while you’re here.”
I
signed that paper while in my head thinking, ‘you’re lying Angie. If anyone is going to fall down, it’s you.’ Don’t tell my mom I’m a liar, but I did get to keep the socks with treds on both sides. Maybe in case I'm crawling? Then they wheeled me back, ‘numbed’ my foot,
a very tall, large handed, not bad looking radiology tech put my foot under the
X-ray and they went about injecting me with what I can decipher from the
medical jargon to be ‘free range organic grass fed unicorn tears’. My
sister (otherwise known as One of the Greatest People on the Planet aka OGPP- I
just made that up) came with me and drove me home, helped me walk up the stairs
with my very swollen, very painful, weird color orange foot and put me in this
lounge chair complete with a bag of frozen corn and a netbook.
Which now if you’ve managed to make
it through my long winded story will bring me full circle to my point (I had
one). To some it may seem I have an
unending supply of optimism and positivity, but being forced to slow down and
walk one. Step. At. A. Time.
Gets old, real fast. I had days
that I faltered, I’m not superwoman, but with the help of all the wonderful
people I’m blessed to have in my life I made my way to this lounge chair now. I easily could have let all the appointments and
missed work drag me down, but instead with the help of a very amazing cast of
characters I was able to make it a funny adventure instead of an ‘ordeal’. Thank you, everyone. I’m humbled and honored to be so
blessed. No one should be as lucky as I,
but you know what? I’ll take it. CHEERS!!!!!
