Day Sixty-Eleven: Screwed

I went to the hospital yesterday to get my stitches taken out. It wasn't during Goldman's regular office hours, so I had to wait 3 hours for him to get out of surgery. I asked him what he had been working on; he told me a guy got shot up about a week ago and one of the bullets entered his femoral artery, which then got infected. Goldman had to take off the leg at the hip joint. 

So a little ankle fracture in comparison seems like a walk in the park. Or, not a walk, exactly. 

My fortune cookie from chinese food last night said, You are a practical person with both feet on the ground. Katie said, Well, one foot.

Goldman took off my cast. It turns out I have two incisions, one on either side of the ankle. One is about two inches long and one is about seven inches long. He took the stitches out-- not painful, but the incisions are ugly. The whole leg from the knee down is ugly, in fact. Yellow and disfigured. The ankle is fat, the calf is thin, the toes orange. Scaly, hairy skin, no muscle left, bruised. And the scars, maroon and bunched. I didn't look at those too closely. 

Goldman cleaned the dried blood and the iodine stains off, and rewrapped my leg in cotton gauze. Then a nurse put me into a long white sock and this black walking cast that looks like RoboLeg. I can't walk on it yet, though. I am supposed to go back in a week for more x-rays and a prescription for physical therapy. On Friday, I'm allowed to start taking showers! But I can't start trying to walk for 3 or 4 more weeks, so that sucks. I'm supposed to go back to work in 2 weeks. I may have to actually not go back, or at least certainly not full-time. Crutches in the subway...ugh. 

Goldman also showed me post-surgery x-rays of my ankle. I have sixteen screws in there, and 4 plates. My ankle seems to be mostly hardware at this point. It was a bit shocking to see how long some of the screws are, and how they are literally holding my bones together. To think that I will have a full recovery from this is something of a leap of faith.

I know I'm making progress on healing this thing, but it feels like it's going nowhere. I am still lying around all day. I am still on painkillers, because my leg still hurts. I still can't walk. My ankle still looks monstrous, like it doesn't even belong to me. I still can't carry anything from room to room.  I'm still on crutches. I'm still wearing this gigantic cast on my leg (although now it's black and strappy--- that makes it sound sexy, but it's incredibly not. Like I said, RoboLeg). 

The frustration of being crippled is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I am on Martha's Vineyard right now. It is an immense relief to be out of the apartment. It is cold and raw here, but beautiful. And this house with its high ceilings and huge windows and views of the ocean is an easier place to while away hours reading or sleeping. Also, Anne is here, and Katie with Michael, so I have company. Everyone went out on a walk this afternoon, except for me. I took a two-hour nap on the couch. 

Invalid can be pronounced two ways: invalid, and in-valid.