Unipod

Those furrows you see dug into the ground coming from the old site and leading to here? Those are my heels, digging in and being dragged through the ether-field, showing the last of my remaining resistance in being brought over to the new site. My Salamander background is gone. My formatting is gone, and weird “this girl doesn’t know how to type” nonesense has been inserted randomly into past entries. Near as I can tell, anyone who was following me is gone. Maybe that’s all for the good. This post marks a transition from old to new, regardless of whatever has been lost and gained.

Woe be to the first person who dares type “it’s easy, you just…” in a comment, taking charge of my narrative and telling me how to configure my own diary. I’ll figure out what I need to figure out. Eventually. Till then, this monochrome page represents my feelings. Murky. Ambiguous. Ambivalent. Let the fog surround the entry. It’ll either find its way out of the murk, or it won’t.

Why the hell does this draft page have to tell me I’ve just written a paragraph. Does it truly believe I can’t figure that out on my own? My own nascent entry insults me.

Monday this week I broke my ankle. Again. Since I had gone through the entire year of 2019 without doing injury to any body part I considered significant, I had allowed myself to believe that ankle-breaking was consigned to history. This time, the break is bad. I won’t be going back to work in six weeks.

I was in one of the downtown train stations, nearly to the bottom of the stairway when I watched my ankle turn on the second to last step. I had my hand on the railing, and was going fairly slowly, a lesson learned from the previous breaks. I had my eyes on my feet to ensure that I stepped squarely on every step. So no, Dr. ER know-it-all, I didn’t do anything wrong. My ankle simply gave out on me. A fraction of a second later, and the pain hit. Simultaneously, my knee buckled, my hand lost its grip on the railing, and I fell the remaining step to the floor.

There’s a millisecond of time immediately after something bad happens that complete denial rules the world. I’d just pulled a muscle. I could walk this off. No harm, no foul. I got up with my denial intact, realizing that I’d come down the wrong stairwell. My ankle hurt. I walked up the flight of stairs to the station hall, and stopped off at the bathroom between the stairwell I’d just pulled myself up and the stairwell I needed to descend, and let my bowel have it’s comment on the situation. I’ve noted that my bowel usually has something really pithy to say immediately after I do something stupid. Having reduced my weight somewhat, I packed up my pain and took it with me down to the correct track where, by coincidence, my train was just arriving at. By that time I was reassured that nothing major could have occurred, because who the hell can go up stairs, into a bathroom, then downstairs and board a train with a freshly broken ankle? I was convinced that I just needed the 40 minute ride home to let my ankle recuperate and all would be well.

Forty minutes later found me at my station in the suburbs, relying on every seat-back of the train to give me the leverage I needed to propel me one step closer to the exit door of my train car. Standing on the platform as the train pulled away, I eyed my car in the center of the parking lot on the opposite side of the tracks and contemplated the chances of the trusty Veloster coming to me if I whistled to it, like Trigger to Roy Rogers when good ol’ Roy was hanging from a cliff edge. The chances were not good. So I hobbled my way to the car, praying for a passing heart attack to overcome me and put me out of my misery. My prayers were not answered. When I finally arrived to my car, I gratefully sat down, pushed the button to turn it on, and briefly played with using my left foot to depress the gas pedal. Since I drive a manual transmission, that was pretty much a no-go, but at least I tried. So home I drove, bad ankle on the gas and brake, going no faster than 25 mph.

The Prof had not yet left for classes, and ended up canceling his day so he could take me to the ER. Ever hear of a Maisonneuve fracture? Well, about a dozen x-rays, one ER doctor, on osteopath and one osteopathic surgeon later, I can fill you in on any details you might be interested in. In short, I broke the tip off the malleolus (bone in the ankle), have a spiral fracture of the top of the fibula, and disrupted all the connective tissue between the tibia and fibula. I’m slated for surgery a week from Tuesday, and projected healing time is three months. I will be on complete bed rest for two weeks immediately after the surgery, and the leg will be non-weight bearing for at least six weeks.

This would be so much easier if I were a horse.

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6 Comments

  1. Wow first so glad to see you here it has been a while since I saw a post from you, so so sorry to read about your injury sounds like a bad one , hopping for quick recovery however it sounds like a long one, be well my friend and please try to stay off leg.

  2. I’m still here. And still reading and glad you’ve turned the comments on! I see you found your salamander background. Configuring is a bitch. I’m not gonna lie.

    I gasped about your ankle. How hideously awful. And the severity of it? Devastating.

    Being a two time broken ankle specimen myself, I can feel the mountain of healing you are facing. It’s like Everest, but without the landfill.

    Keep us posted. But beware…. once you have your sense of humor back, I’ll be trying to make you laugh.

    But not today. Today I’ll join you. We’ll share a box of kleenex. I’m so, so sorry….. 🙁

    However, I’m glad you are back. And you can vent at will. We can take it. 🙂

  3. Here’s another comment to let you know I made it to the new site and am having the same issues with formatting. No. It’s NOT easy!

    How is it with your ankle THESE days??

    1. Had surgery on the ankle almost exactly a year ago. They tied the two bones of my lower leg together so they couldn’t pull apart again, which should permanently fix the whole “spontaneous breaking” problem I was having. I was out of work recuperating until the beginning of June, worked for three weeks, and then retired because the COVID threat in my industry was so high and I really couldn’t risk it. That gave me time to do more rehab, so my leg is back to as normal as it’s ever going to be, which is really pretty good. How is all with you?

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