Continuing Tales of the One-Legged AT-ST
Had my first appointment with the orthopedist Tuesday. He ordered new radiographs and then told me that it wasnât the medial malleolus that was broken â it was the distal tibia re-broken. Although he canât say for sure that I didnât knock a wee chip off the medial as well. Keeping it short and sweet, it looks like another eight weeks stuck at home â gets me back to work just in time for Christmas.
The Prof is full of ideas of how I can spend my time while stuck at home. Most of those would happen in the upstairs portion of our house though, so if they happen it wonât be for a few weeks.
While Iâm doing better than this time last broken ankle, it is still very painful at night. I broke down and took one of the painkillers they gave me at the hospital last night so Iâd sleep, but Iâm now totally convinced the pain is easier to deal with than the cure. Percocet really does nothing for the pain; it just makes it so I don’t care. I donât much see the point in that. Besides, I’m not sure I’d want to navigate a bathroom run on crutches while under the influence anyhow. It would be terribly embarrassing to be discovered facedown on the floor, high as a kite while lying in a puddle of my own making.
The area that I live in is artsy-fartsy and has really nice Christmas Craft festivals starting in a week or so. I always go to the big juried show at my former high school, and to several smaller but worthy shows that happen in November. In advance of 404Errorâs suggestion, I went online Tuesday to shop for a âknee walkerâ scooter device that will allow me to brave the crowds that mass at these events like flies to road kill. I have hopes that people will give way to a gimp in walking boot and knee-skate when they see me coming, but probably the best that will happen is that Iâll be harder to knock over than if I tried walking in on ch0p-sticks (something Iâm getting better at than I ever wanted to). I got a nice portable one that folds up and weighs about 20 pounds. An added benefit is that it was designed with short people in mind – my 5’1.5″ self is right in the middle of the recommended user heights. For most other knee walkers I was barely tall enough to qualify. With luck, it should arrive tomorrow.
Useful things Iâve done so far while stuck at home:
Three loads of dishes
De-scaled the coffee maker
Purged the cupboard
Ordered Christmas gifts online
Re-watched Orville in anticipation of its return on December 30th
Purged my Gmail account of about 750 messages hogging up valuable electrons
Read three books
Learned how to use my new phone (I dropped my old iPhone on a stone floor the a few days before I broke my ankle and used the opportunity to escape the evil clutches of Apple)
The Prof is taking me out this afternoon so I can pick up this weekâs med refills and get an overdue flu shot. The cats havenât had to do without a readily available food vending machine since all this started. I suspect there will be some unhappy felines attempting to evolve opposable thumbs while Iâm out.