caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- return of the gimpy prodigal I'm back! Well, sort of, anyway. I doubt I'll be updating every day, since I'm still not terribly comfortable at the computer, and I went back to work today, so I won't want to spend too much home time sitting at a desk. I'm only working part-time until Thanksgiving, which is when the cast is supposed to come off, but still, 4-5 hours a day at a computer is plenty for me, thank you. So, I know it's been like three weeks since I updated at all, and weeks before that since I've been here with any regularity. Oh well. I'm not even going to try to fill in all those missing weeks, many of which consist of me alternately napping and watching tv, too doped up on pain meds to concentrate on reading or anything more active. The surgery was fine and apparently accomplished what it was supposed to, although we won't know for sure until the cast comes off and I can actually put weight on my foot. They did general anesthesia and as I was waking up, gave me a morphine shot, so I really had very little pain that first night. The next several days were not so comfortable, and I did a lot of staring at the ceiling with my leg propped up on 3 or 4 pillows. Much napping due to painkillers. The day before I went in for surgery, the 14th of October, my mom pinched a nerve in her back and so was ALSO on painkillers and not able to help me very much; Blue's parents took YMB for the first couple of days, instead, and I stayed at Mom's while Blue was at work and at class. We were fairly pathetic, me lying on the couch, mom stretched out in her recliner, both of us doped up and pretty out of it. There were a couple of times I actually had to crawl to the bathroom. Oh, and a couple of days post-surgery, I managed to trip myself up while maneuvering back to the couch on crutches, and somehow broke the little toe on my other foot. So that swelled up and turned a lovely deep purple. Good thing I didn't need to get up very much. It's still a bit painful but I can put a shoe on that foot now, which I really couldn't for the first week. Got the regular cast on the 23rd, about a week later. That's when I saw the incision for the first time, and I admit it made me feel a tad weak-kneed. It's L-shaped, with about two inches across the outside of my foot and three inches up the side of my ankle. There were about 15 staples in it. For some reason, I think it was seeing the staples that really made me feel woozy; they looked a little Frankensteinish, and my foot was all swollen and purple and yellow. It was like a Discovery Channel medical show, only on my actual foot. Minnie took me to the doctor and was totally fascinated, but I didn�t watch when she took the staples out. Also because Minnie took me, I ended up with a bright pink cast. My other choices were purple, blue, neon green, yellow, white and black, and none of those appealed. I got purple in March 2001 when I broke my ankle, and it just looked like someone had grafted Barney's lower leg onto my body. And back in the spring I just went with the plain white, but it got really dingy. And since this cast will be on six weeks minimum, Minnie thought pink was the most cheerful color they had. Blue has had an insane schedule most of the time I've been down. In addition to work and class, he's also now doing an internship, 8 hours a week at one of the hospitals in Detroit. Usually he does this all day Wednesday. And work has screwed up and scheduled him to work the past three Tuesday nights, so he's been leaving the house at 5:30 pm on Tuesday and not returning until 6 or so Wednesday night. Which is just insanity, really. This is what happened the week of the surgery, so the plan was for my mommy to take care of me. And then the pinched nerve. It was an interesting week. Then � and those of you who are familiar with my karma will not be surprised � the following week my dad developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for a week. He was very very sick and I felt absolutely horrible not being able to go visit him or help my mom out at all. So poor Mom spent most days trying to be as comfortable as possible in the horrible hospital chairs, trying to keep Dad from going nuts due to forced inactivity and getting flashed by the crazy old man in the room down the hall. Blue was still working his insane schedule, and I still could not put any weight on my foot and was in fact not supposed to be up on it at all except to go to the bathroom. YMB was NOT in a good mood most of the week as he had to do most of his own getting ready, making his own lunches and etc., as well as fetching and carrying for me. We had a couple of Discussions about Attitude, which didn't exactly cheer me up any either. My sister Minnie took me to my doctor's appointment that week, but she wasn't exactly available to stay with either me or Dad because she was in the play at college, and it was production week so she had rehearsal every evening and classes & homework most of the day. I spent a lot of time on the couch, surrounded by my big water bottle, the telephone, the tv remote, several books and magazine, my cross-stitch, my bag of yarn and crochet stuff, blankets, pillows, a box of crackers, various snack foods, etc. This was all good, as it meant I rarely had to get up, but when I did it was a pain in the ass to shift everything around so as not to kill myself maneuvering around all that stuff. I also ate fast food too much, as people would occasionally bring us lunch or dinner if they were coming by the house. After the first week and a half, I could get around better on the crutches and was able to rustle up food for YMB and I, mostly things like scrambled eggs or grilled cheese sandwiches, things that could be made quickly and easily while sitting in a kitchen chair pulled up to the stove. Last week Dad came home from the hospital, on Monday, and I was finally able to get out and about a bit. Went to see Dad, who is doing better but still feels fairly awful and is driving my mom insane with his need to get up and do something, but inability to actually do it. He is not the type to sit around, so forced inactivity is about the worst thing that could happen to him. I don't think it's made me quite so nuts, but after the first week, when I was too uncomfortable and too drugged to care, it did get annoying. I got really tired of the couch. And daytime television. And middle-of-the-night television, which I saw quite a bit of as for a while there I was getting maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. I watched a lot of BBCAmerica (Changing Rooms! Monty Python reruns!), way too much TLC with all their real-life hospital shows and birth stories and of course, Trading Spaces and While You Were Out. I feel very very strongly that Doug and Hildy both should be tortured and killed, or at least forced to live forever in rooms with hay stuck all over the walls, furnished only with blow-up furniture and a ceiling fan. And I realized what a huge slacker Ty is as compared to Amy Wynn. Must have been blinded by his cuteness before. The carpenter on While You Were Out, whose name, unlikely as it may seem, is @ndrew Dan Jumbo [edited for spelling 12/31/02, due to an insane amount of people googling for info on said carpenter, which, for the last time, I DO NOT HAVE, I just think his name is funny], is also cute and has an adorable accent, but he's an even worse slacker. He always puts off the hardest stuff until the end, and then complains about having to still work when everyone else has gone home, or having to work in the rain, or whatever. Oh well, it's your own fault, Mr. Jumbo. Hee! Mr. Jumbo. See, way too much tv. Told you. Have also been watching Days, which is completely and entirely Swwoop's fault. It is too awful for words, but just too hilarious. I entertain myself just watching Drake Hogestyn's eyebrows, which seem to move about independently of the rest of his face. Didn't read much, as my concentration was impaired by pain, uncomfortableness, and drug-induced wooziness. Did finish the new Aurora Teagarden mystery by Charlaine Harris, Last Scene Alive, which I like much better than the previous one in that series. Started several more books but couldn't get through them. Did a bit of writing, but upon rereading had to trash most of it as the wooziness and tiredness and pain definitely impaired my ability to write a coherent sentence, let alone something that moved the plot forward any. I did make progress on my Learning to Crochet project. Just last week, I finally figured out how to make the damn things be circular when they are supposed to. I made several lovely coasters. It's definitely improvement over the long chains of yarn I had been producing; at least these are vaguely functional. Still don't know if I'll ever progress to making actual baby booties and bonnets, which was my original goal. Also finally got the binding down on my autumn-theme quilted wallhanging, so that's now hanging on the wall in the living room looking quite nice, if I do say so myself. Started handsewing the pieces I cut last year for the Christmas quilt that I never started, since I can't use the sewing machine with a big-ass cast on my right foot. Finished a teeny cross-stitch I started months ago and started the Plumpkin Snippet, although I didn�t get it done in time for Halloween. So, that pretty well sums up the past deadly dull three weeks. Worth waiting for, eh? 4:48 p.m. - November 04, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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