The Daily Crutch

Things have been great for the leg. So great, in fact, that I have been so out-and-about that I have lost 6 lbs and haven't been sitting at my computer for as long as I used to. Which is why I hate to say it, but today is a bad day for the ol' hoof. I mean, I know why it hurts; I spent all day on it yesterday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. I did way too much walking. The good news is that if I don't overdo it, I can walk almost perfectly.

I stopped wearing the cast last week because I discovered that the pain I was getting in my back was increasing, and I was guessing it was because I was walking all lopsided. I think my back was trying to tell me, "Look, the leg is better, walk on it already! I know it's my job to carry you, but this is getting ridiculous!" I think the last week of wearing it was just as a hard, grey, bulky security blanket anyway.

I have been in PT for two weeks now and I have seen tons of improvement in my strength, flexibility and balance. I see victory over Wii Fit Ski Jumping soon within my reach! I've even been thinking it might be fun to try real skiing for the first time in decades. Maybe this will be the winter I hit the (bunny) slopes once again. Today, while I was at PT getting the massage they give to my scar to try to break it up and flatten it, one therapist said to the other, "She has a scar that's fun to play with, doesn't she?" That may have to be my Myspace page tagline from this day forward.

Because of my long day yesterday, I didn't go swimming or walk today, but tomorrow when I drop off the boy, I will take a short walk, and start the swimming on Wednesday. I'm interested to see how the leg feels while doing laps. Last time I was in the water I could not propel myself with that leg, and the jiggly feeling as I kicked was just... weird. Really weird. Stay tuned to see how I did!

The Daily Crutch

I have gone many more days without posting than I would have liked. For that, I apologize for any faithful readers I may have. It has been a weird past few days.

I had thought I was feeling sick, or maybe even depressed. I had no energy to do anything or even care about anything. Then yesterday I was taking my son to the office supply mega-store to buy school supplies for the very first time (cue pride swelling music). About five minutes into the trip I felt pain in my sternum, and I didn't feel like I could catch my breath. I felt like I had to burp but when I did it made me nauseated. Honestly, I was worried I was having a heart attack, but I didn't want to panic too quickly. This had happened to me once before and it had turned out to be severe heartburn. I bailed out of shopping after only finding about four things, and went straight home. I took a Zantac with a massive glass of milk and I laid down on my bed with some coloring books and crayons so my kid could hang out with me until my husband came home. I did feel better after a while, although I do still have the remnants of the pain in my sternum. I thought about it and I figure it all comes down to soda. I love me some Diet Mountain Dew as my morning caffeinated beverage, but on occasion it can be hard to find. This summer especially so, although I tend to think my husband just doesn't look around enough. So I have been drinking a lot of iced coffee. Last week I was able to grab about three 12-packs and had been guzzling it like crazy since about Friday. I'm sure it was all that soda ripping my stomach lining apart that caused the pain, and I suspect it was the drop in amount of caffeine between coffee and DMD that cause my listlessness. So it was scary for me for a while, but at least that ended well.

Also in the "ending well" department, it's official: My doc has cleared me for Physical Therapy. I had no idea that I actually needed a prescription for that. He wrote out what he wanted them to do for me on a prescription pad. I thought that was kind of cool. I will be calling around tomorrow and will hopefully start next week. This will not mean the end of The Daily Crutch, though. I plan to have this be for all my general updates, because I have plenty of big changes I am planning.

The biggest change: I need to lose weight. Once I can walk again I don't intend to stop, and with my boy in school five days a week I am hoping to get a lot more of that in every day. In addition to the walking, I plan to go back to swimming laps three times a week and of course, that Wii Fit game won't be able to get rid of me. Last year I found a website called SparkPeople that is all about weight loss, and it helps a lot with accountability and goal-reaching. It has groups you can join for specific interests (I belong to groups for swimmers and Wii Fitters, of course) that give you a way to not feel alone in your goals, and can set group challenges that push you farther than you may have done on your own. I even made a walking buddy last summer. She lives nearby and we met up about two or three times a week before the pain in my foot became too much to take. Between this blog and SparkPeople I hope to see some success for a change. This is my page if anyone would like to join me.

I also need to organize myself if I am going to pull off getting the boy to school at the evil hour of 8 am, then go workout for hours and still have the house not be a total disaster and my family doomed to pizza nine meals a week. Any ideas?

The Daily Crutch

Wow. I am really, truly dumb. I have been in this ridiculous Aircast now for about seven weeks and I finally just now realized how it works.

There are four little hoses that you can fill with air to support the leg, one for each side. Or so I thought. The front of the cast comes off so the hose on that goes obviously enough to the front inflatable tube. When you inflate the remaining three and look inside you see 3 gray tubes that line the back and sides. I thought each of these inflated separately. Here is my first major error: I kept thinking the back inflates under my foot, so when I felt pain in my heel I would pump it up. Nope. Why did I think that? I have no idea. I guess the padding the doc put in there has now compressed and it no longer feels cushy, whereas before it felt so soft I assumed it was air? Maybe. Anyway, sometimes after pumping up the back I would find that my leg was being pushed forward, and my toes were dragging on the ground. So I would take my little deflater pump and try to suck the air out of the side tubes, but no air would come out. The pump would even stay collapsed after I squeezed it, like it was attached to a vacuum, and yet I could see the air pockets were still inflated. I couldn't even fit my hand and arm in there, and yet it wouldn't deflate. Well, it turns out the gray inflatable area was one big U-shaped piece and was filled and unfilled with the back hose. Then, there were 2 little green air bags under the gray that I couldn't see. Those were the ones that went to the side tubes. They were already empty, so the deflater couldn't suck anything out of them no matter how much I tried. I needed to deflate through the back tube to deflate all the gray area.

I'm such a dope, and I'm sure none of that made sense. When Blogger lets me upload a photo again I will post pictures of the inside of my cast.

In the meantime I am still on hold. Ten weeks after my surgery I still have an incision that isn't quite healed. It does look much better, however, and everything inside feels fantastic. It can get tight and sometimes does something my doc told me was "wound contraction" which is disquieting. Up until last week I was ok with everything but now I am getting impatient. Sigh.

The Daily Crutch

I am getting very excited because my incision is almost all healed up. Every day I see it changing for the better. Unfortunately due to my doctor being on "summer hours" I can't see him again until the end of the month and therefore won't be able to start physical therapy until August. I feel like I'm ready to start walking, and occasionally find excuses to go to the kitchen and just "forget" to put the aircast on. It feels good in the ankle area for the most part, as long as I don't overdo it, like make more than 4 or 5 trips throughout the day. More than that and it feels like I'm tugging on the incision. One new thing I have found is that every once in a while I take a step that feels odd in my heel area, almost wobbly, but not painful. I finally remembered that the doc told me that while he was in there he took out a heel spur. I had no idea how much of a difference that would make.

My son had some fun this past week playing with my aircast. I pumped it up so it would stay on his little leg and figured he would be tired of it pretty quick, but despite a fall after every other step, literally, he still wanted to keep it on. I also had my husband take a picture of my calves to show me, and now the whole blessed world, exactly how much muscle tone I have left in that leg. In related news, I weighed myself today and I've lost 2 lbs. Gee, I wonder where if will be most noticeable?

The Daily Crutch

On Wednesday I had my second plaster cast removed. The infection from the last time is gone but the incision is still not quite healed. So, yet again, we wait to start physical therapy. The doc says not to worry because the important thing is that I keep the tendon flexible, or else the lengthening will have been for naught, and I can do those exercises on my own. The PT is for getting strength back, and we can catch up in that way at any time. So for now my orders are more elevating, less walking and more Aircast. But the good news is that he cleared me for driving. Hooray, I thought! Yeah, as it turns out, not so much.

Bright and early on Thursday morning I said to Cameron, "Where do you want to go today? We are footloose and fancy free and mobile again." We decided we would start off heading to the vet because my cat had run out of her pills and had gone quite a few days without them. Then, since we were out in that area we would stop by a favorite farm-stand type store, and then finish the day off by stopping at our neighborhood spray park. Driving was going to require that I take off the Aircast. I brought along a clog to slip on because it wouldn't rub against my incision and that worked out well. The problem, it turns out, was that aforementioned "strength." Pulling out of the driveway wasn't too bad, it certainly felt different, and I admit to being a tad nervous. But I made my way down the street and up the ramp and onto the highway. This is when I discovered that pressing down on the accelerator with an atrophied leg can be a bit problematic. I couldn't get the car up over 45 mph. Other cars are whizzing by me, blowing horns, giving me That Look as they passed. That was scary, but I shifted my position on my seat and skooched a little closer and was able to get up to about 55 so I wasn't a total danger to myself and others. I merged onto the Mass Pike, which is a toll road, but I have the Fast Lane pass so I get over all the way to the right, not only to let faster cars get by but to get into the dedicated lane for the pass.

Now, to back up a little you should know that I was driving my '97 Ford Escort. This was the car that we unregistered and put in our garage when my son was born to save a little money. A few months ago we re-registered it and have been driving it instead of our other car because the Escort is only 4 cylinders and thus uses a little less gas. Plus, to my son it is "new" and he thinks it's a real treat to take the "green car." For some reason the Escort has lost it's little velcro tabs that hold the Fast Lane transponder on the windshield, so when we drive through a toll we need to dig out the transponder and hold it up behind the rear-view mirror in order for the whole transaction to go through. Oh, and driving through the Fast Lane without having a transponder results in a pretty hefty fine.

Can you guess what happened next? I'll bet you can! First I forgot I was supposed to hold the transponder up until I was just about under the point where it gets read, then I almost got rear-ended when I slammed on the brakes and started fumbling for it. Somehow I realized I was already past the point of no return and had to keep moving before I caused an accident, but the thoughts started flying through my head about how I had just ran the toll, and that our account doesn't even have the new license plate number listed. I was already pretty stressed out about the odd feelings in my right foot and after this happened I pretty much lost it. I started crying. Meanwhile my son, the chatterbox, is in the back.
"Mommy, when are we gonna get there where is the vet why does 'Pencer need pills does Jake need pills too when are we gonna get there." Then he noticed I was crying. "Mommy why are you crying why are we gonna get a ticket is the p'liceman gonna pull us over where is the p'lice car why will it come in the mail where is the p'liceman how does he know where we live." I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't focus on the road between my overwrought thoughts of breaking this news to my husband and Cam's voice.
"Cameron, PLEASE stop it, I need to CONCENTRATE. You need to be QUIET!"
Silence.
Silence.
Silence.
Then, from the back I hear the tiniest voice say, "Maybe we should just turn around."

That was so perfect that I actually laughed out loud. He sounded like he had grown 30 years in those moments. He also sounded concerned for his crazy old mother. I felt terrible and apologized to my boy, and we continued on to the vet because we really did need those pills, but we scratched the other plans, and went straight home, turned on the a/c and treated ourselves to massive amounts of ice cream and Tom and Jerry cartoons. And when I told my husband he actually laughed at me. Any other time I'd be mad at being the butt of the joke but this time it was completely welcome.

All in all, the driving was not a good idea. I won't be doing that again for a while. I am going to keep up my home exercises for another week and then try again in on the 21st, when I need to take the cat back to the vet. I believe I will take the back roads this time. You know, just in case.

The Daily Crutch

Yesterday was my 5 week visit with my doctor. It was supposed to be the day I got out of the air cast and began physical therapy. Well, unfortunately that's not what happened. Last Thursday was the last day for the wonderful woman who was taking care of me. Friday was the day my husband brought my 4 year old son to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway to see the NASCAR practice. Saturday my husband ran around doing errands and Sunday he spent all day at the track. Also on Sunday two friends were coming over to hang out and watch the race with me, and on Monday my father was coming up to see me for a few days.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, because of my visitors, and because I was on my own for so many days I started cleaning and cooking as if there was nothing wrong with me. And of course, the crutches just got in the way so I didn't use them. Because of all that activity, I opened up the incision. It is also infected. Even though this is five weeks post surgery I really am not surprised. When I went in after 10 days to get the stitches out they weren't ready to be removed and we had to wait an additional week. The problem is that I had the exact same surgery when I was 2 years old, and the doctor cut right alongside the old scar. So I have healthy tissue attempting to heal together with old scar tissue. So I think these kinds of complications should be expected. Obviously I exacerbated the problem, because I didn't have to make lunch on Sunday, or clean the living room; my friends would have understood. And if I had been more patient I'm sure my son could have done the majority of cleaning in his room.

The doctor decided I needed antibiotics, of course, and we both decided I needed a new plaster cast. If I had stayed in the aircast I'm sure I would have made it worse. I'm a fiddler. I can't leave things alone. If I am to heal, apparently, I need to keep myself away from myself. Now I have the equivalent to one of those cones they put on a dogs head to keep them from chewing their stitches. So now I promise I will be a good girl. Yes I will!

On a semi-related note, while looking for images for this post, I put the word "crutches" into the Photobucket search window. I learned that there really is a spelling gap in the nation's education system because what I got in the results were a lot of "crotches."

The Daily Crutch

I thought I'd throw out a quick explanation and then give the occasional update. I started this blog because not only have I wanted to for some time, but because at the moment I am laid up post-surgery. My achille's tendon was repaired and it takes a long time to get back on one's feet, or in this case foot, after such an operation.

This week I am walking around more but probably shouldn't since I think I might be stretching the incision. I have been getting a world of help from a great lady named Bridie. She has been a God send, especially for my four year old, Cameron. I can live with sitting back and watching daily courtroom reality shows while surfing the net and healing, but my son has been bored to tears. To counteract that, Bridie gets him outside as often as the weather allows. Today they went on an adventure. My son loves motor vehicles of all kinds, and trains in particular. So Bridie took him on the bus to the subway station, then transferred to a trolley. ("That was my first street bus I ever been on!" -Cameron) They got off somewhere (you'd think I would have paid better attention to their schedule) and had ice cream, chased pigeons, got back on board the trolley and made their way home. Doesn't sound like much to us, but he came home full of that enviable 4-year old exuberance and told the story of their day in breathless spurts of sentences that ended up having to be translated by Bridie. I am so glad they had fun.