I know that I'm a day late but honestly, I wasn't terribly coherent yesterday and as the evening progressed I got less so. I've never been a big fan of narcotics but in this situation vicoden became my best friend and honestly, we're still pretty chummy.

The whole ordeal went pretty smoothly. I never would have made it through the day without my friend Kris who managed to be supportive without being needy. She was also very reasonable whenever I'd venture too close to the poor poor me zone. And honestly, walking into the waiting room took a lot of the poor me right out of my stride, if you can call it that. People in wheelchairs with ominous lumps under their sweatshirts, mothers cradling tiny babies, an old woman who's face was a mess of bruises, a little girl, six or seven years old. All around me dozens of people who would have given a lot to be having foot surgery. The effect was pretty calming.

Everyone was really nice and my biggest complaint was the lack of privacy but I'm not sure that there are many hospitals left that have that option, especially for outpatient surgery. We sat in the curtained cubicle and watched the episode of Married With Children featuring Jerry Mather and we both laughed, dang it, that was a funny show.

As worried as I was, the actual surgery was a non-event. The ladies in the surgery were super nice, covering me with warm blankets and after breathing in some stinky stuff which made me feel really claustrophobic I was out, and the next thing I knew I was waking up with a very sore throat and a big giant cast on my foot. And that was it. The rest was nice even!

Since then the worst has been the pain. It hurts much much worse now than before the surgery and I've been completely knocked out of play. I'm hoping soon things will seem better, or at least before I run out of vicoden.

Positives for today.

1. My plaster cast (very old school) is a blank canvas, waiting for my and my students to express themselves and I know they will be excited to. I'll be posting artistic updates.

2. My new cover story. When anyone asks what happens I now say that I was kicking someones butt and got a little too enthusiastic. Delivered with an appropriate deadpan expression, there's a classic moment when they ponder if I might possibly not be kidding. Ah . . . good times.

I hesitate to even write an entry right now. I'm anxious as hell for obvious reason and have been fairly successfully engaging in distracting activities most of the morning. I've got about 20 minutes before I leave for the podiatrist and then, if the swelling is down enough, off to the hospital for admitting, lots of forms to fill out, and eventually unconsciousness (which I'm not thinking about). I guess worse than my fear of surgery is my fear that the swelling will not be down enough and I'll have to do this all over again in a few days. Anxiety-Supremo is a great weightloss tool but nothing I would recommend in the long term.

In an effort to not be a whiny turd about this whole affair, I've decided to try to list at least one positive thing about this whole situation everytime I post.

1. biceps/triceps are going to be ripped by the time this is over, I'm wearing a tanktop for Thanksgiving.

2. Sock life has doubled. Now that I can only wear one sock, they will last twice as long.

3. Can wear crutch/cane themed halloween costume this year.

Today is the day before my surgery. My day is filled to capacity with things I need to do before my absence. I have wildly optimistic plans to be back at work by Thursday and I intend to make good on them. Today I'll be at work from 8am until 9pm. Of those 13 hours, 3 of them are not scheduled. In those three hours I have about 8 hours of work to do. Oh well. I do better under this kind of schedule and I'm hoping it will keep my mind off of tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Ugh. I have dreaded few things less than tomorrow. The thought of being unconscious on a table surrounded by people is *shudder* kind of horrifying. One of the only thing keeping me going is the fact that my best friend will be there with me as my advocate. If there was ever anyone who wouldn't be afraid to grill doctors and nurses and point out problems it's her. That reminds me, I need to add to my list some sort of documentation that she has permission to make medical decisions for me in case of something horrible (which oddly enough, doesn't really worry me).


I just want it to be over. Completely over. Cast on foot, wheelchair, whatever but moved past the "dread" limbo and onto a 3 week wheelchair countdown. I don't like the unknown. I don't like being dependent. I don't like not being able to fix it. I don't like this at all! This is usually the part when I kick myself in the ass for being a whiny turd. Considering that there are thousands of people that never get out of their wheelchairs, that have major reconstructive surgery, months of physical therapy. I should be walking by halloween. This is a temporary situation. And for that, I am thankful.

Completely diverging from my usual topics I've recently found myself in a situation that is consuming all my mental and physical energy. In one ill fated instance I went from being a busy, multitasking, very independent biped, to a hopping, and very dependent woman.

I broke my foot. There's no fancy explanation or dramatic story. I took a wrong step going down a set of stairs and fell. So efficient was this fall that it both didn't hurt all that badly, AND managed to break my foot so thoroughly that it will require surgery (on Tuesday) to correct it.

I am now experiencing life through a totally new lens. I cannot put any weight on my left foot. This leaves me with four choices; wheelchair, crutches, hop, or crawl. Each of them work better for different situations. After Tuesday I will be primarily in a wheelchair with my foot elevated for 3 weeks. Even in these few short days I have come to look at the world around me in a different way. The amount of physical energy used to simply go to the store or even to the restroom is tripled as is my dependency on other people, which is particularly hard for me to do. I am terrified of surgery on Tuesday although I look forward to being on the road to bipedalism.

If there was ever a killing blow to my garden this is it. All my energy will be focused on this for the next month and so, I suspect much of my blog will to. That's okay. Blogs evolve, just like people do.

I don't necessarily believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that we can learn from everything that we experience. I don't know what is in store for me, but I intend to take as much from it as it is taking from me, which is a lot. I'll be posting here as I go, I hope. I certainly have a lot more time on my butt.

What to do? The little gardener is growing up so fast that she has only traces of that little baby face left. She dutifully repeated me as I declared,

Flower! = Faw-wah!
Purple! = Poopool!
Leaf! = Weaf!
Green! = Geen!
All Done = ________
Go Inside = NOOOooooo!!