Gratitude

Sorry to be going on and on about the ankle, folks, but since it’s been so hard to get around, there’s not a lot I can “do.”

Maybe it’s the lengthening days, or that the weather’s warmed up so dramatically, and all that damned ice melted, but I’m surprisingly not in the sour or depressed mood I would have expected with this second round of having a foot in a cast.

But more than that, I chalk it up to the knowledge that this situation isn’t anywhere near as problematic as when I had that Jones fracture, which by definition means “takes an eternity to heal.” Nope, once it was clear this wasn’t any kind of messy ankle-bones fracture, or a horrific tendon injury, the prognosis has been comfortingly “routine.”

Lord, here it is, not even a week after the surgery to fix the lower portion of my fibula with a mending plate, and except for some incision ouchiness and the fact I’m effectively casted up, I feel like I could walk around on the damn thing.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, I’m extremely gratified to discover that my hard-won talents for getting around on crutches hadn’t disappeared. Perhaps this is one good thing about posttraumatic stress—having lived through a trauma once before, you realize you can handle it again: I know this scene; I don’t like it at all, but I know I can do it.

Indeed, three years ago after three months in crutches, when I was crying about the hopelessness of my situation, someone much more knowledgeable about human nature than I suggested that someday in the future, I would be completely recovered, and that I may even be grateful that I had gone through this difficult time. I didn’t laugh at that suggestion (outright), but I couldn’t take it very seriously, either.

But perhaps I’m starting to see the truth of her statement.

There is another gift I’ve received from these experiences, too. This gift takes the form of the many friends and family who have offered supportive and comforting words, Facebook notes, phone calls, and food. During the time of the surgery, my Facebook peeps offered a steady stream of stuff like “we’re thinking of you” and “stupid ice! I sure hope you recover quickly!”

Within only a few minutes of my mentioning my injury on Facebook, my sister-in-law had told my brother of it, and he was on the phone to me immediately. What a nice thing, huh?

I’ve already told you my folks brought over pumpkin bread on Valentine’s Day; they also spent the day after the surgery with me (wow, that must have been boring), so that Sue could go to Columbia for work. They bought some groceries for us, and fed me lunch. My uncle and aunt, on Valentine’s Day, brought a rose and candy, a container of the best split pea soup I’ve ever had (outside of Grandma’s), and (hooray!) some much-needed bran muffins.

And then, too, soon after the surgery, we got a call from Sue’s family up in Ohio—the whole Berlin Heights gang, her mom and dad, and her sister’s whole family. They had positioned their speaker phone in the center of the room, and we all had a great chat. Yes, it was Sue’s dad’s birthday, but they stressed that they were calling to find out about me. I was genuinely touched by this.

And then there’s Sue, who was going, “Oh, no, not again!” as much as I was. You couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful or attentive partner in the world. I won’t bother to list the hundreds of ways she has patiently helped me this past week, ranging from “can you come outside and help pick me up off the sidewalk” to “can you bring me my [book-coffee-mountain of pillows-icepack-briefcase-telephone-lotion-etc.-etc.]” to doing all the chores, to being The One to sit waiting for me at the hospital, to drive me home, and help me up the steps.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I’ve been thinking of this injury as a way of gaining people’s attention and sympathy—not at all! Instead, all this support has given me an opportunity to be reminded that there are so many people in my life who love me. This accident has put all my loved ones in the spotlight; it’s reminded me how brightly my true treasures shine, and for that gift of awareness, I feel the most gratitude.

Sunday the Thirteenth

Usually, the "thirteenth" of anything is supposed to be bad luck, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic today. It's been a very slow morning. (And why not? my foot is best kept up in the air, higher than my heart, so there's not much to do besides read. Thank God for Jane Austen.)

I've been posting little updates on the foot situation on the Op Op Facebook page, so those of you who have "friended" the Op Op on Facebook already know what's been going on. But here's the summary.

Monday morning (Feb. 7th) I slipped on the ice on our sidewalk and broke my left fibula (the bone just above my ankle, on the outside of my leg). In the ER, they kept asking me "how I fell," and for the life of me, I couldn't tell them. However, upon reflection, I think I have it figured out, working backward from my first clear memory after falling (it happened so fast, and my immediate reaction was to roll over onto my other side).

It was just a small patch of ice--only a few feet wide. My feet slid sideways toward the right, and my left foot must have gripped the good concrete as soon as it ran out of ice to slide on, so that my left foot got turned too much toward the left, with my weight coming down on it.

After I landed (and yes, I heard a "crunch" in my ankle concurrent with the onset of pain), I rolled over onto my right side and stuck my hurt left leg into the air. The foot was bent too far to the left (though I wasn't consciously bending it). (Gross.) I reached down and moved it back into position (another "crunch"). (A few days later, the orthopedic surgeon told me I'd done a pretty good job of setting it.) (I wasn't quite aware that that's what I was doing. Now, I'm kinda proud of myself.)

Here comes the advertisement for cell phones: Mine was in my back pocket. I called Sue, who was just inside the house, and she came out, helped me into my car, near where I fell, and drove us to the Emergency Room.

Pain medication; X-rays; diagnosis (fractured fibula); splinting; an orthopedic surgeon recommended.

The ER doc said he didn't think it very likely that I'd need surgery; it seemed in good position; he guessed only 4-6 weeks in a cast.

So it was a surprise on Wednesday when the orthopedic surgeon told me he strongly recommended surgery--a cast, he said, wouldn't be able to hold it stationary enough for it to heal properly.

And so it was all set up right away; surgery on Thursday morning, preoperative interview and testing at the hospital that very afternoon.

Boom, boom, boom.

Thursday, naturally, was mostly a blur. For all the amazing things that surgeons can do to help us to heal better, perhaps the most remarkable miracles are performed by the anaesthesiologists and narcotic pain medicines, that they can drill on bones and you be up and about within a few hours, without screaming.

Like the last time I had orthopedic surgery, I had a nerve block, but this time, it absolutely worked. (I won't go into the fascinating/gruesome details, which reminded me of the eighteenth-century neuro-electrical experiments that inspired Mary Shelley to write her novel Frankenstein.) It made my lower leg and foot completely numb--indeed, paralyzed--for over twenty-four hours. No pain medicine needed all that time. It was noon the next day when I discovered I could move my toes a little, and three when I started to feel the incision. Pretty awesome, huh?

I won't put a link into my blog, but if you Google on "Youtube fibula fracture," you can find an animated video that shows, I think, pretty much what they did to me; it's basically a contoured mending plate with two or three screws into the sound bone on either side of the fracture.

[Addendum: I didn't know it until some weeks after I wrote this post that he also put a longer screw through the bottom of my fibula and into the tibia, in order to hold in place the ligament that goes between then, which had torn when I broke the fibula.]

After the surgery, the doctor told Sue it went very well and that I have good strong bones. I was amazed to read the postsurgery instruction sheet where the doctor had checked "weight bearing as tolerated"--wow!


[Addendum: That was a total mistake on someone's part; I wasn't supposed to be weight-bearing at that point at all! Good thing I didn't put any weight on it until I'd double-checked about this point!]

You have to understand: I don't have much experience with broken bones, casts, and what-not, and my one experience with it was nightmarish. No one in my immediately family ever had fractures; my brother and I both made it through childhood and adolescence without any broken bones. I never saw what was involved in keeping the cast dry, bathing, getting around, learning how to use crutches, and so on.

So in October 2007, when I broke my foot, my had no hint of what was involved, what to expect, how to do things. It was rude.

And what made it even ruder was the nature of that infirmity--the Jones fracture is notorious for slow healing, and my hopes and expectations for regaining use of my foot were constantly jerked out of my grasp: "No, it's not healed yet; let's see you in another month." So I got pretty dang good at using crutches.

We had to modify our house. We moved furniture. We outfitted the clawfoot tub, using plastic hose and packing tape, for use as a handicap "shower." I learned how to go up and down steps without falling and eventually did it with confidence. I learned that, given a wide, clear, dry sidewalk, my crutching could easily outpace the non-crutching friends I was walking with. I developed respectible callouses on the heels of both palms.

So now, all that stuff is coming back to me. Having been "through this" before, it's not nearly so traumatic. Even when I was lying on the sidewalk, thinking, "oh, shit, my ankle or something's broken," my disbelief was mixed with a sense of resignation instead of a wild, frantic fear of the unknown.

The "been there, done that" aspect has helped tremendously.

The hardest part, all along, has been my fear of what "my" insurance company won't do for me, or will do to me, in response to these claims. They don't like it when you have claims. Now that I've had a big claim, it's certain that I will have to shop for a new insurance company when this one's year is up. (If you don't think there's anything wrong with the health insurance industry, I can say with confidence that you are not having to purchase your policy as an individual.) Indeed, I was crying in the ER, and the nurses assumed it was because of the pain--but instead I was thinking of my deductible. And there's no pill for that. (If there was, my insurance wouldn't cover it, and I probably couldn't afford it.)

One thing that's occurred to me several times in the past few days is that I'm truly grateful that "crutching" is a skill I have already learned. Much of the trauma of my previous fracture was caused by the handicap to my lifestyle. And so I keep thinking, "It would be a terrific idea for everyone to voluntarily spend a week or so on crutches--while they're able-bodied." Yeah: learn how to crutch forward and backward, left and right (like I've had to do on narrowly shoveled sidewalks), up and down stairs. How long can you stand on one foot at a time? Long enough to brush your teeth?

Indeed, it could be something they teach in P.E. classes--an incredibly useful skill. Not that you'd necessarily need it during your life, but hey, if you ever do, you'll be grateful you know how to get around without falling. Much better to learn it when you're feeling good, than to have to learn it when you're in pain or are loopy with pain medications. It would be more useful than knowing how to do a cartwheel, which they tried like crazy to teach me how to do.

So, here's the outlook: At the end of this month (two weeks after the surgery), I'll see the surgeon again. He'll remove the stitches and put me in a cast (I think--or maybe a walking cast?), and then I'll have another four weeks on crutches.

Thus, I'm looking forward to the end of March, when life might get close to normal again.

Sorry this has been a rambly diatribe; it's a sunny day, the first truly "warmish" day we've had for months, and I think I'm going to go to sit outside for a while.

Well, Yesterday Sucked

Allow me to serve as a reminder for you all to be careful on the ice.

Seriously. You could slip and fall, just like that!

Especially if you’re walking on concrete—I think that you fall faster on concrete than you do on grass.




Yep, this was going to be my coffee yesterday morning, but I didn’t get to drink it.

Long story short—I slipped, fell, broke the bottom part of my fibula (it amounts to an ankle wound). Fortunately, this time, it’s a simple fracture, with no healing problems anticipated. They said four to six weeks, probably, and I’ll be back on both feet.

Also fortunately, we still have the plastic cast protector (for the bath), plus various other accessibility implements, from my previous trouble, and it’s been relatively easy remembering how to “do things.”




Also, I seem not to have lost my memory of how to get around on crutches (although my strength and callouses for crutching have eroded in the past few years). I’m not sure I’m good to do steps again, yet.

Meanwhile, since this time the break is in my left foot, my crutching and gettin’ around feels all backwards—it feels like driving in Great Britain.

So just remember—watch where you step, and be very careful wherever there could be a patch of ice.



UPDATE: "Simple fracture," my *ss. Read the next post to learn about my surgery! *Sigh.*

Favorite Time of Year

Just a small update on where I am right now. It's October 13, and three years ago I broke my foot. It was a beautiful sunny day, a lot like today (only it was warmer, I remember), and I was cutting the grass.

I was thinking I might cut the grass today--mainly to "process" some of the leaves that have been coming down from the ash tree--but nahh. I'll avoid the mower for a few more days yet. Let the leaves fall.

It's funny how something traumatic, like busting your foot, can revisit you emotionally on the anniversaries. I guess it has something to do with the way the atmosphere can be similar to when the traumatic event happened--the slant of the sun, the clarity of the sky, the increasing dryness of things.

A lot comes to mind in mid-October, memories. Memories of concert seasons beginning, and the thrill of performance; playing my trumpet. Oh there are a lot of little anniversaries in October; people I've met; lying together in the sun; chewing persimmons and spitting out seeds. Leaves like stained glass. Timeless times.

Someone suggested yesterday that I write in my blog about my dead friend Pam, but somehow this strangely public-private place isn't right, and my words just aren't strong enough, or good enough.

She was the writer, the poet.

But I will say that October was her favorite time of year, and it's always been my favorite, too.

There is that.

October 13, 2009: Evening Musings

Hi, friends. I wrote this two nights ago and I wasn’t sure I wanted to post it. But you know how moody weather can make you reflective, how a change of seasons can bring the past to mind. So here we go . . .

This is the kind of day that forces you to think. It’s overcast and cold. It’s been raining or sprinkling since mid-morning, and the cars that rush by make slick sounds on the wet pavement. The kitties are curled up wherever a lamp shines its warm light on a suitable sleeping place. And I’ve made sure those lamps are on.

Whenever I’m confronted with the first days of a new season, it makes me particularly reflective, and images of similar days flash into my head. For example, for some reason I’ve been thinking about trudging around downtown Columbia today; I guess I’ve done that on many other days when it’s rainy and cold like this.

I’ve felt pretty low-key today, too, since I’m suffering from a stubborn head cold that’s really got me down. Taking lots of cold medicine makes me feel rather dreamy and fuzzy, and the synapses are floating from one idea to another.

I realize that I have a lot of “anniversaries” this month, most of which don’t bear mentioning, but the fact that there are so many makes me think this is a somehow charmed month, or that there’s some kind of special “energy” that comes into my life in the peak of autumn that leads me to perform actions, make connections, fumble into situations that turn out to be significant.

Today, especially, I am remembering this day in 2007. Instead of being cold and damp, it was rather warm and dry, sunny, and I was mowing the grass. I got around to the terraces in front. While pushing the mower in my usual few steep up-and-down swaths to get as close to our front steps as possible, my right foot turned outward and I felt something go “clunk” in its outer edge.

And I was unable to put any weight on it, except on just the heel. If I tried to bend my toes or to walk on it, it hurt so much it made me laugh. Yeah, but it wasn’t funny. I figured I had sprained it pretty good.

I’ll try to make a very long story short. The next night at the emergency room, I found out that I had a Jones fracture, which is a break in the fifth metatarsal right in a particular zone that has terribly inefficient blood circulation. Which means that healing will likely occur terribly slowly.




(The fracture, by the way, is named for a British orthopedic surgeon, Robert Jones, who was the first to describe this particular kind of fracture. His 1902 article in the Annals of Surgery is rather interesting, in that Jones himself had suffered this fracture, and he describes in quaint Victorian language how it happened, and what it felt like.)

So, they casted me in the emergency room and told me I’d have to be completely off of it for at least four to six weeks. To start with. This was in the middle of October.

And by the end of November, no healing had occurred. In fact, the fracture had gotten a little worse (that’s the X-ray above). (And yes, I’d been following all the instructions.) . . . So the orthopedic surgeon recommended surgery (now that it was a bona fide “delayed union” and insurance would most likely pay for it), and in early December he fixed the bone with what looks for all the world like a deck screw. It’s like two and a half inches long. (I will spare you that X-ray!)

. . . And even then, it took for-ever to heal. I was out of the cast in mid January, but then I was in a clunky “moon boot” for months, gradually weaning myself off of crutches and eventually into a shoe with a stiff carbon plate to keep my foot from flexing. It was May before I could actually wear “normal” shoes and walk “normally” again.

And even now, I wear special orthotic insoles; I tend to favor the foot out of habit, I limp slightly when my feet get tired, and I still get a little freaked out when I mow that front terrace.

But I’m so glad it’s in the past, and that except for some weird scars on the edge of my foot, I’m back to all my usual activities.




. . . Like dangling my feet in Stephens Lake on a fine hot day this summer. It really felt great to do that. I don’t take such things for granted anymore.

I guess I’m writing this in part to commemorate that event and assert some perspective on it, as well as to put something “out there” on the Internet that amounts to a personal description of what I went through.

God knows as I went through my “compulsory orthopedic surgery seminar,” I did a ton of Web searches on “Jones fracture,” “fifth metatarsal fracture,” and so on. I found a lot of scientific abstracts, many with little relevance to my specific case, and a bunch of generalized articles (primers; they all said the same thing). But I found very few first-person accounts of what it was like.

So if you stumble upon this page because you’ve just been told you have a Jones fracture, just go ahead and resign yourself to be on crutches for what could indeed be a good long while. And yeah, it will eventually get better. And feel free to leave a comment if you want to contact me. I’m full of stories about it.

What Can Happen in the Woods

I haven’t said too much about myself here in this blog, because I’m not sure how “safe” it is to do so. Or sensible. I mean, if I write about my broken foot, will fetishists read my words for reasons I don’t intend? . . . But then I can’t live my life in a box, and neither can I avoid writing about myself. And anyway, why hide it? It’s no huge secret that I recently lost my job through downsizing, after having held the position since 1995. The experience shook me up.

Before the trauma of job loss, I had a long recovery from a broken right foot. (Google “Jones fracture” if you want an idea of what I went through.) There was no driving or walking for about five months. That experience did a lot more than shake me up; it got me off balance, figuratively and literally.

When you feel like the floor has dropped out from beneath you, when your footing is unsure both metaphorically and literally, you desperately look for things that make you feel grounded again.

And one of the things that has helped me recuperate from the last few years of struggling has been “getting out in nature.” I was reminded of the connection this month when I read Jeanette Winterson’s column, in which she writes,

I think that the really bad time of my depression was when I could not find that happiness in simple things. I devised a ritual to help myself through it, and to re-make the connection with the natural physical world that gets lost in depression.

What I did was to sit outside, quietly, raining or not, and concentrate completely on a leaf or a flower or a stone, feeling it, looking at it, putting it to my face, sometimes in my mouth, until I recognised it again, as both separate from and part of me. At my worst I just lay in the rain, or sometimes even the snow, until I could feel something not in my own head.

I am not sure this would work for everyone, but I know that finding the way out of the dark labyrinth has to happen in connection, in relation, and can’t happen in the head alone—where the monsters are.

Reading this, I was reminded of how I felt the first time I hobbled into the woods after being on crutches so long. It was April 2, 2008, and I had just experienced a peak of frustration in my healing process: Six months after my fracture, I was still wearing an Aircast for most of my so-called walking, the doctor was gradually moving me into a stiff-soled shoe, I was finally driving again, but the X-rays still showed abysmally slow healing of the bone.

Emotionally I had hit the wall; I had lost faith in my body’s ability to recover and the doctors’ ability to heal. I had been helpless and cooped up all winter. It was spring, yet the docs hadn’t been able to see any improvement for months. And if anything, my foot was hurting more and more, the more I used it. I hope you never have to know what this feels like, physically or emotionally.

Anyway, on April 2 a year ago, in the midst of all this, I went AWOL at lunch and drove myself to Gans Creek Wild Area, where I encourage you not to go, because the place is overused and trampled and that breaks my heart. Because it is my favorite place to go hiking myself. And by myself.

Something in me was throwing a tantrum that day. So I decided I would take my “inner brat” for a walk. I worried about my foot: “Is this really okay?” But an inner rebel answered: “Who’s telling me no? Who’s giving me any direction in this process at all? It hurts almost as much to walk in the Aircast as it does to walk in this shoe.”

I struck a deal with my internal voices: “I will go slowly and steadily and carefully. As soon as I get any sign of being tired I’ll turn back. I have plenty of time. No one cares where I am right now. It’s all right. Let’s go walking.”

It was an incredibly sunny day, and I felt like a prisoner on his first day back in freedom. I immediately started feeling better, on that well-loved path, hearing the birds singing, the chorus frogs clicking at a nearby farm pond . . . the smell of the cedars, which all seemed intensely alive and green. Tiny, brave, tender blades of grass poking up like bristles in the middle of the trail, where I was trampling them with my lumbering limp.

I decided I was getting tired of limping, so I stopped for a minute, lined up both my feet, carefully distributing my weight evenly on them both, and then resumed walking, slowly, focusing on trying to move smoothly and without limping. “Naturally,” the way I vaguely remembered being able to do.

It was very hard, but not for the reason I had thought: It was hard because limping had become a habit, born of favoring my hurt foot out of fear.

I only got as far as what is called “Shooting Star Bluff” on the maps (sadly, the shooting stars are almost all eroded from the little glade area by now); and I reclined on a big rock, stared up at the intensely bright blue sky, watched a turkey vulture or two glide around up there, closed my eyes, and began to weep tears of homecoming and relief.

On that day I became my own health advisor. That hour in the woods brought me all kinds of revelations; about the toxicity of being around computers too much; my need to be alone on a regular basis, preferably in the woods; the quality of nature that enables me to hear my internal voices (the wise ones) clearly.

I have realized that—contrary to my constant experiences in home, work, and yard, contrary to my internal struggles, my emotions, doubts, and endless confusions—in nature, there is nothing that needs my attention; everything is exactly where it should be (not counting trash or graffiti or stuff like that). Nothing needs “doing” out there. There is no “to-do list” on the trail.

If sticks and fallen leaves clutter the ground in vast disarray, it’s all perfect just as it is. If the detritus of rotting heartwood spills messily from an opening of a thick, senescent tree, that’s okay; in fact, it’s part of natural perfection. I don’t need to do a damn thing. If pretty ferns grow from the base of this rock but not from that similar rock over there, it’s not inconsistent, it’s just a sweet surprise. The woods remove me from my stressed-out, anxious, overwhelmed, day-to-day reality, and I need it.

. . . I’m really looking forward to hiking tomorrow.