Sigh… didn’t I promise myself I wouldn’t do this?!
It’s 2:15 on Friday afternoon, I am finished with my work for the week (until Sunday evening, anyway), and I am heading out to lunch with my daughter!
Need you even ask? Of course I’ll order a drink!
So it seems that last month I was using my knee walker as a crutch (so to speak), which prompted my meanie doctor to force me to give it up so I’d put more weight on my foot.
I was not happy to give up my knee walker because it made living with a broken ankle bearable. I could get around incredibly quickly, use my hands, and carry stuff from place to place in the handy-dandy basket.
Once my knee-walker was gone, I was forced to use crutches to get around. While I hated the crutches, I had no choice but to use them. Fortunately my cool storm trooper boot provided my foot comfort and security and I was pretty mobile using both together.
I dreaded the day when the powers that be would mandate that I give up the boot, but I assumed it was still a few weeks off.
Wrong.
I went back to Harborview’s Foot and Ankle Clinic today, expecting to be told that it was time to give up the crutches and walk using just the boot. But nooooooo… Instead, Dr. Benirschke the meanie, insisted that I lose the boot and keep the crutches!
Nooooo! Say it isn’t so!
But it is. Over the next week or so, I need to phase from wearing the boot all the time, to wearing it less and less and wearing – gasp!! – SHOES more and more.
Shoes? But not a single shoe in my closet fits my still-swollen left foot! How on earth will I transition out of my sweet, secure boot?
After my medical appointment, Tom and I went to our favorite Mongolian Barbeque, where I got this fortune:
Uh – huh. Wonders! You want to see my new look?
Well, there’s this corset-looking brace gizmo (very Little House on the Prairie, isn’t it?) that gets laced up and strapped around my foot and goes inside my shoes.
Are you wondering where all those straps go? Yeah, me too! They get pulled and wrapped and tightened around my foot, like this:
And then…
(Now don’t laugh. Really, it’s been a tough year and a tough week, so be nice.)
Over that lace-brace (which my insurance company will pay a hundred frikken dollars for!), I put on this:
You better believe I need that wide width! Getting the shoe on my foot was excruciating, but I did it.
(That wide gap between shoe hemispheres reminds me of my rectus abdominus muscle after my twin pregnancy!)
So yeah, this is my new look that, according to my fortune, will “do wonders”:
Thank goodness for wide sizes and long, stretchy laces!
I’d like to tell you how I feel about all this, but I really don’t know how I feel about it yet. Yes, I know that I need to progressively get back on my feet (so to speak) and that it won’t be comfortable to get there. And yes, I know that the pain, even when it’s in my foot, is actually more in my head. And yes, I know that fear and stress play a big role in how well -- or poorly -- one heals. (Stress? By the time I stopped work in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday morning, I’d already put in 31 hours!) I know all that. But I still miss my trusty knee walker… and I will miss wearing my secure storm trooper boot.
I know what you’re thinking. “Yeah, and in a few months you’ll say how much you miss your old lady sneaker.”
No way! That, I will NOT do!
Sing it with me now…!
Where did this come from? These trees weren’t PINK last week!
The sky wasn’t blue last week!
It wasn’t almost 70 degrees last week!
Could it be that winter in Seattle is OVER? Is that even fathomable? Sure, I have this constant reminder of ice and snow attached to my foot (I even put full weight on it for a nanosecond in physical therapy this morning!), but if there was ever a year when we need Spring, it’s this year!
When Kat procrastinates, she gets creative and crafty.
There’s studying and school work to be done today, so what does Kat decide to do?
This:
I wonder what assignment was nagging at her a few years ago when she did this:
Nora turns one in May and she’s already trying hard to take her first unaided steps. Her mom, Rebekah (my office mate) just sent me this picture, obviously just to taunt me (and make me swoon):
Lest you think I’m easily intimidated, Nora… backatcha!
I do not wilt under pressure, my sweet. In fact, my resolve to walk alone, without a boot or crutch, only grows when your mommy sends Blackberry photos to me, boasting “the race is on!”
You might or might not walk before I do, Nora, but I give you this: on the cuteness scale, you definitely come in FIRST PLACE!
I just submitted a time card for a 50 hour week. (Too bad I’m back on salary, eh?)
Immediately after doing that I poured myself a long, cold hefeweizen and pondered the week. It was a doozie and I’m exhausted.
In many ways Kristin’s death has been harder for me than my mom’s death almost five years ago. Although I live a full 9 hours drive from my parents, I was able to spend quite a bit of time with Mom in her last few months (and years), and I was with her constantly in her last few weeks. My job at a nonprofit health education organization was demanding, but I had an incredibly compassionate and understanding boss and I’d amassed weeks and weeks of sick time, so taking time off to see Mom wasn't difficult. Once her decline was swift and steady, I stayed with her constantly, actively involved in “helping her die.”
Although I dropped everything to spend time with Kristin each time she came to Seattle for treatment over a period of three years, there was never enough time for us. Even the full day we spent at the Washington Athletic Club, sharing secrets and memories in the Jacuzzi until our fingers shriveled, and melting into long, therapeutic massages, passed with the blink of an eye, and then we waited for our next visit – which, because it also meant cancer treatments for Kristin, was always bittersweet.
Kristin and I talked on the phone quite a few times in the past few months, and a little over a month ago she told me in a too-slow and newly-stilted voice that April 16th would be a good time for me to fly to the Bay Area to visit her. But somehow I knew that she knew that we wouldn’t be saying goodbye in person. I believe that Kristin, who was so incredibly full of life, didn’t want me to see her absolutely full of death, and she chose that date intentionally so I’d remember her as she wanted me to remember her. (Having been so involved in Mom’s death, I tend to think of her as she was in her last weeks instead of as she was for most of my life. I hate that, but it is what it is.)
In the midst of 50 hours of managing five detailed Microsoft projects that the powers that be in my professional life consider of life and death importance, I got the news that my full-of-life friend was dead. But I couldn’t take a single second out because all my projects were at critical points this week and business accounts and dollars might be lost if I dropped a ball.
Business accounts and dollars might be lost.
Really?
Let’s talk about loss, because if I know anything about loss, it’s that losses of dollars and business accounts don’t mean a damn thing when you lost your dear friend. And even when I’m mourning the loss of my friend, I can’t drop balls at work. (Or I try my damndest not to, anyway.) So I worked at least as hard as usual this week, tending to every meeting request, every draft revision, and every layout design with a lump in my throat and tears welling up when I least expected them, but finishing the work.
Fortunately, I’m still working at home since I can’t walk on my own yet.
And speaking of not walking yet, that’s where the miniscule loss comes in. I had to give up my security blanket, my Wilson ball, my beloved knee-walker today. Seems it has become my “crutch” (so to speak) and I wasn’t putting enough weight on my fortressed booted foot, opting to quickly fly around the house on my knee-walker rather than slowly hobble and shuffle around the house on my crutches. (Wouldn’t you?) I will miss it.
But I must heal and I must walk and I must move on, beyond losses big and small (and in-between… where does the loss of Tom’s job fall?). The weather report for the Seattle area this weekend is FINALLY for sunshine, and I fully intend to use that as a metaphor…
Can you believe this?!
April fools!
It’s actually rainy/snowy today. Sigh.
