Returning to Routines

I am starting to feel normal again. I still have the neuropathy (now that I've started sleeping without the elastic bandage I have noticed it is affecting my entire foot from the ankle down). I'm still wearing the bondage boot (with more walking comes the awareness that the top strap hits my upper shin right at my knee joint and puts an odd pressure on my knee). I am still afraid of my shower (I have managed a couple showers without slipping by being overly cautious). But, I feel like I am taking back my life.

I have started walking around the apartment without the aid of the cane - haven't told Marco or Dr. Hubbard. More importantly, a week after my walking restrictions were lifted, I have started getting out of the house.

When I'm home I always feel better if I can get out of the apartment for some part of every day. Doesn't matter if it is taking a walk with my camera, or meeting friends or colleagues for coffee (or Chai). Fresh air and not being surrounded by my four walls can help calm me and I can often return home with a better focus for my current projects.

So for the past two days, despite the cold rainy weather, I have walked the two blocks to the bus and gone to my favorite coffee place. Today I even brought my net book and am writing this post with a Chai latte and blueberry muffin.

Getting out of the house has also created a return to a more interesting sociology observation - mentally tracking the gender, age and ethnicity of people who offer me a seat on the bus. I have always been interested in the question of whether it is lack of courtesy or obliviousness that causes people to ignore others in greater need of a seat on a bus or subway. I observed this when my mother was noticeably ill with her cancer and have continued with my own time on crutches or boots and friends pregnancies. Ethnicity seems to play the smallest role, while overwhelmingly it is women over 30 who will offer their seats. Of men, it tends to be those over 50 who will offer a seat with those in their 20's and 30's least likely to move. It would be interesting to see if these observations are universal or simply here. Anyone want to fund trips to all major cities with a mass transit system? I will happily play guinea pig.

For now, I am simply happy to be expanding my world to beyond the loft and the doctor's office. I see Dr. Hubbard again in a week and Dr. Williams has recommended a neurologist if my neuropathy doesn't start to get recede.

The scar itself, still looks red and angry, and while I have it uncovered in the shower I have only  washed it directly with a gentle washcloth. Today is a big day for my foot and scar as I covered it with gauze, but went without the elastic wrap, which also means I am getting a better idea of how the neuropathy is impacting my foot. What I really want is someone to tell me I'm going to get back into my pretty shoes and not spend my life in hiking boots, sneakers and flats!

Questions Never Asked

Two questions it didn't occur to me to ask at the time have been bouncing through my head.

How big a scar am I going to have? This will join the three major surgery scars (or as in my knee duplicate surgery scar) on my body not to mention the numerous almost invisible ones - where I cracked my chin on the playground or where I got my finger caught in an old-fashioned folding elevator door to name two I can remember the cause of. Will this scar reach the blue heart tattoo I got on my ankle two weeks before my Dad died? Will it make slingbacks uncomfortable?

The second question is how much nerve damage will I have? Having been through leg surgery, I don't believe for a minute that some of the nerves on my foot and toes didn't lose their connection to my brain. I can already feel, or not feel as the case may be, spots between the little piggy that went to market and the little piggy that had none. I don't know what else I will or won't feel when I am out of this cast and can begin to move my foot.

I was very proud of myself this morning. I managed to do a load of laundry and scoop kitty litter. I then realized I can't get the dirty litter bag from my apartment to the trash shoot and am still trying to figure the logistics to get the laundry out of the dryer and put away, which takes away some of my pride in the moment.

I want to thank all my friends who have called, e-mailed or texted to see how I'm doing and if I need anything.  Thanks to them I now have a safe container for my used needles, though the sharps will now smell like Basil laundry detergent. I have Extra Strength Tylenol to replace the Percocet I mentioned I seem to be allergic to, and have been kept in good meals - today's lunch arrived via a local Chinese restaurant from a friend in California. (Have to remember that trick for far flung friends in the future.)

It's the boredom that is getting to me. I don't have the concentration required for the minutia of the grant proposals I hope to finish while I'm laid up, and I need more narcotics than I have available to manage to sit through one more Republican Presidential debate. Friends shocked to learn I had never seen any of "The Godfather" movies lent me the trio on DVD, I gave up about 20 minutes into the first one.

At least after my knee I had the CPM machine twice a day, which gave me some semblance of a schedule. Now it's get up when the cat's yowling starts to drive me mad, move to the couch so he can climb on my lap, try to watch tv, or play Sudoku, realize it's only 10:30am, try to watch something, check the internet, or read from the large pile of books and magazines, lunch, more of the morning activities, doze, listen to the cat cry for 90 minutes before his actual dinner time, feed the cats, write up my day while I eat dinner, answer any email's I hadn't gotten to, get my evening shot, do my nightly ablutions, go to bed, try to read, sleep and do it all again tomorrow.

And I know I need to be quiet this week so I can push it to attend a meeting Tuesday night, still trying to decide if I'll be able to bake for it and then host a meeting Thursday night. And then a week from Tuesday it's back to Dr. H to hopefully change to a walking cast. Any particle physicists with the ability to speed up time please contact me at this blog. Your gift to mankind will be greatly appreciated by this woman.