Um...so, hey.
Some of y'all might actually remember me. It's been almost five friggin months since I've posted at all. Sheesh.
What's been up? A lot, plus not much. One main thing is, I had orthopedic surgery 4 weeks ago today. Serious reconstruction shit, with screws and plates and all that. I've had ever worsening pain for quite a long time, and finally hit the point where the idea of living with it was much worse than the idea of surgery. I talked to a surgeon who was well recommended, went home with the idea that I would still put it off and try steroid injections, and about 2 days later decided: 1) I'm not getting any younger, 2) it's not getting any better, 3) I have good insurance, 4) I have friends who are schoolteachers. So I set it up for this summer.
Speaking of teachers,
autobadgirl came out for 2 1/2 weeks to get me through the first part of my recuperation, and she was stellar. Great cooking, great care-taking, fantastic company. I was so lucky she could come and did without hesitation. She came out a couple of days early so we could cram summer into the days before I'd get laid up, and we went to the House on the Rock together, something we'd talked about for YEARS. What a horrible place for bad feet, but oh well! After, we watched "Stranger Things," which we both loved, and both political conventions, which generated a lot of conversation.
So back to the surgery thing....I can't put any weight on my foot for 7 weeks total, then start back very slowly. What the doc did was fuse two joints in my left foot, so they have to be pretty much undisturbed for the bone to grow and fuse. So I'm getting around mostly by wheelchair, a bit by knee scooter (I was planning the whole summer for the knee scooter, until a physical therapist advised me to start off with the chair, which was a good idea. I still started on it way sooner than I probably should have, and was seriously exhausted by the one trip we did with me using it.)--so the most basic daily tasks are fucking exhausting, and I'm not getting much done at all. Actually, I haven't even binge-watched anything since Autobadgirl left, and I have only read one book. So much for my thought that "It'll be just like a vacation, but with pain!" Though it was a Mary Roach book, which is very vacation-like for me. I read her last book on a trip to visit the fam last summer.
When I was googling everything about the surgery, I happened on a resource that led me to figuring out exactly what caused my lifelong problems with my feet. I clicked on a link mentioning Amniotic Band Syndrome, a very rare birth defect where fibers detach from the amniotic sac and get tangled up in various baby parts during gestation. It can affect pretty much any area, and can cause limbs to self-amputate, or it can wrap fibers around the neck, so it occurred to me that I'm generally pretty lucky.
I had several major operations for this as a kid, including a joint fusion in both feet when I was very small. Over the years, that fusion has deteriorated and turned the ankle and mid-foot into a slow-motion train wreck. I was sure my doc knew what he was doing from the start when he told me his goal would be not to create a foot that was regular-people normal, but one that was normal for me, that my brain would recognize and feel comfortable with my gait. I've seen the before/after x-rays and the difference is huge. When he finished my operation he came out to tell Badgirl and one of my local friends that he was very happy with the result, and that I should get a lot of pain relief. Yay!
Then sometime, I'm thinking maybe next year, I do the other foot.
My local tribe here has also been wonderful to help out with meals and rides and husbands with toolboxes. They also welcomed Badgirl as one of our family, and we gave her a birthday party. I am blessed with all my friends!
Other developments of late: while Badgirl was here, we had a VERY close lightning strike that scared the piss out of us (the smoke detector went flying across the kitchen)--it was during Donald Trump's convention speech, which I am taking as a warning from above. It killed my central air, which took a week to get fixed during a hellacious hot spell, so she and I did a lot of swanning about the house as the temp climbed to 85 degrees inside.
Also, I subscribed to Hello Fresh, one of the meal kit services, and while Badgirl was here she did the cooking (spectacular!), and since she left I have managed to make the meals myself (though in twice the stated prep time). Very good recipes, with some ingredients that repeat but are made in a variety of ways. The recipe cards actually give you ideas about how to cook things in new ways on your own, too. No measuring, so less clean up. The vegetables are pretty fresh (though a couple of times not beautiful) and the meat has been very high quality. The cost isn't really worse than buying groceries, and there's less waste. So it hasn't been just frozen dinners--I've been eating very well, even on days without a delivery from a friend.
The kitties are good. Sam lives downstairs, so after Badgirl left I've just been having my cat sitter come in every morning. She feeds them and cleans the boxes, and lets Sam upstairs after securing Dr. Ralph, so we spend time together. Sam was VERY alarmed when I came home from the hospital, and took a long time to get over it, but he's warmed up since then. Ralph has been my sweet little nurse cat, curling up in my lap multiple times a day.
This is the most I've written in WEEKS. I do feel like that's coming back, though. This week I read all of "Out of Silence" to date, and have written about a sentence today, but that encourages me. I'll leave the mega report here for now, but HI, EVERYONE!!
What's been up? A lot, plus not much. One main thing is, I had orthopedic surgery 4 weeks ago today. Serious reconstruction shit, with screws and plates and all that. I've had ever worsening pain for quite a long time, and finally hit the point where the idea of living with it was much worse than the idea of surgery. I talked to a surgeon who was well recommended, went home with the idea that I would still put it off and try steroid injections, and about 2 days later decided: 1) I'm not getting any younger, 2) it's not getting any better, 3) I have good insurance, 4) I have friends who are schoolteachers. So I set it up for this summer.
Speaking of teachers,
autobadgirl came out for 2 1/2 weeks to get me through the first part of my recuperation, and she was stellar. Great cooking, great care-taking, fantastic company. I was so lucky she could come and did without hesitation. She came out a couple of days early so we could cram summer into the days before I'd get laid up, and we went to the House on the Rock together, something we'd talked about for YEARS. What a horrible place for bad feet, but oh well! After, we watched "Stranger Things," which we both loved, and both political conventions, which generated a lot of conversation.
So back to the surgery thing....I can't put any weight on my foot for 7 weeks total, then start back very slowly. What the doc did was fuse two joints in my left foot, so they have to be pretty much undisturbed for the bone to grow and fuse. So I'm getting around mostly by wheelchair, a bit by knee scooter (I was planning the whole summer for the knee scooter, until a physical therapist advised me to start off with the chair, which was a good idea. I still started on it way sooner than I probably should have, and was seriously exhausted by the one trip we did with me using it.)--so the most basic daily tasks are fucking exhausting, and I'm not getting much done at all. Actually, I haven't even binge-watched anything since Autobadgirl left, and I have only read one book. So much for my thought that "It'll be just like a vacation, but with pain!" Though it was a Mary Roach book, which is very vacation-like for me. I read her last book on a trip to visit the fam last summer.
When I was googling everything about the surgery, I happened on a resource that led me to figuring out exactly what caused my lifelong problems with my feet. I clicked on a link mentioning Amniotic Band Syndrome, a very rare birth defect where fibers detach from the amniotic sac and get tangled up in various baby parts during gestation. It can affect pretty much any area, and can cause limbs to self-amputate, or it can wrap fibers around the neck, so it occurred to me that I'm generally pretty lucky.
I had several major operations for this as a kid, including a joint fusion in both feet when I was very small. Over the years, that fusion has deteriorated and turned the ankle and mid-foot into a slow-motion train wreck. I was sure my doc knew what he was doing from the start when he told me his goal would be not to create a foot that was regular-people normal, but one that was normal for me, that my brain would recognize and feel comfortable with my gait. I've seen the before/after x-rays and the difference is huge. When he finished my operation he came out to tell Badgirl and one of my local friends that he was very happy with the result, and that I should get a lot of pain relief. Yay!
Then sometime, I'm thinking maybe next year, I do the other foot.
My local tribe here has also been wonderful to help out with meals and rides and husbands with toolboxes. They also welcomed Badgirl as one of our family, and we gave her a birthday party. I am blessed with all my friends!
Other developments of late: while Badgirl was here, we had a VERY close lightning strike that scared the piss out of us (the smoke detector went flying across the kitchen)--it was during Donald Trump's convention speech, which I am taking as a warning from above. It killed my central air, which took a week to get fixed during a hellacious hot spell, so she and I did a lot of swanning about the house as the temp climbed to 85 degrees inside.
Also, I subscribed to Hello Fresh, one of the meal kit services, and while Badgirl was here she did the cooking (spectacular!), and since she left I have managed to make the meals myself (though in twice the stated prep time). Very good recipes, with some ingredients that repeat but are made in a variety of ways. The recipe cards actually give you ideas about how to cook things in new ways on your own, too. No measuring, so less clean up. The vegetables are pretty fresh (though a couple of times not beautiful) and the meat has been very high quality. The cost isn't really worse than buying groceries, and there's less waste. So it hasn't been just frozen dinners--I've been eating very well, even on days without a delivery from a friend.
The kitties are good. Sam lives downstairs, so after Badgirl left I've just been having my cat sitter come in every morning. She feeds them and cleans the boxes, and lets Sam upstairs after securing Dr. Ralph, so we spend time together. Sam was VERY alarmed when I came home from the hospital, and took a long time to get over it, but he's warmed up since then. Ralph has been my sweet little nurse cat, curling up in my lap multiple times a day.
This is the most I've written in WEEKS. I do feel like that's coming back, though. This week I read all of "Out of Silence" to date, and have written about a sentence today, but that encourages me. I'll leave the mega report here for now, but HI, EVERYONE!!