2006-06-20, 4:53 p.m.: Inflammation. I took off my CAM boot, I had to. It's hot here and the bag of frozen broccoli (we didn't have peas) was not helping. I thought I was going to faint. R. and I trying to distract ourselves by watching 'Country Boys' on DVD. I thought my leg was going to explode. Very pretty pictures of my hardware, I have. I'll post them someday. New vocabulary I'm working with here: hardware (HW) (i.e. screws and plates and rods and pins), plateau, FX. I have a fib-tib FX and now also an IM rod. CPM machine. I call it the Trough. It's this trough-like machine into which you sling your entire leg so the knee can stretch from 70 degrees (or whatever you can manage) to 0 (due to inflammation, had to change mine back to 4 degrees). It moves all night. So you sleep, but your leg doesn't. Inflammation - with two m's, like flammable. Times like these, it's good to have 2 sisters who are nurses. (The short form for nurse in German is "Schwester," or sister.) One arrives today to take care of me, the other one next week. 2 comments
2006-06-18, 10:24 p.m.: Got a long rod inserted down inside my tibia, plus five screws to hold it in place at ankle and knee. The whole thing lasted 3 1/2 hours, followed by about 24 hours of utter drowsiness and some nausea and pain varying (on the scale these medical professionals are always bandying about) from 2 to 9. Much upset, hospital food, phone calls with family BAM one after the other. Can't remember the last weekend when I spoke to all my siblings at once - AND my mom. Att saying to me last night in his sweet phone whisper: "I love you Mama soooo much." Then we found out a close friend had died today. Just found out, maybe two hours ago. Father of a four-year-old and a newborn, just four months old. It's so wrong and sad. I simply refuse to believe it. The whole weekend has been a dream and a blur and a whirl. Unbelievable crazy. 0 comments
2006-06-16, 7:45 p.m.: Thought I'd be spending the evening modeling my new cast and/or splint while raking friends over the coals at poker. Instead I'm packing for the hospital. Yep, surgery tomorrow promptly at 9AM. We leave here at 6AM with two kids who don't usually get up till 6AM. It turns out that, not only has my break not healed, it's gotten worse - no longer aligned. Bad angle. "Little to no chance" it would heal as-is (said the physician's assistant. I swear there was not a doctor in the building - never seems to be at Kaiser here). I get a plate and screws or a rod, they don't know yet. Don't know how long the surgery lasts, how long I stay in the hospital, what kind of anesthesia, anything. Don't know anything right now except that I'm mad at the motherf*cking orthotech who, I was so sure three weeks ago, re-broke my tibia while very roughly and hurriedly fitting my 2nd cast. I KNEW IT and I should have demanded another x-ray right then and there - but I was so humiliated at the pain and the whole thing, how he treated me. I just wanted to get out of there, after three hours. And now we can't prove anything. And what does it matter anyway? Two months of supposed healing down the drain and I'm not sure what to do with it. Two months of sitting and waiting for something to happen that did not happen. That's usually when other things happen, lovely windfalls of things. But none of those things happened either. 1 comments
2006-06-11, 8:52 a.m.: What I wrote in one of my secret/private/locked/miserable/whiny/hard-to-remember-where-it-even-is online diaries on 7/29/05:Aspen - fears and worries of unknown origin Impatiens - impatience Willow - resentment, self-pity
Elm - overwhelmed by responsibility Walnut - protection from change and outside influences
Not sure why I am so miserable sometimes in my perfect life. Wondering ... has anyone tried to e-mail me? Because I've gotten no e-mails at my Linkology address and I've expected one or two. 0 comments
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