Friday, October 5, 2012

Second Hand Troubles in a First World

Today was supposed to be my first day back at work. Actually, to properly phrase that proposition I need to rearrange the preposition and other parts of the sentence to read today I hoped would be my first day back at work.

I fractured my ankle in the middle of May-though from my lamentations you'd have assumed I had gotten my foot caught in a bear trap and the trap has remained attached to the limb. I am a whiner and a damn good if I say so myself (because no one else will).

For a lot of different reasons to include that God hates me (not a scientific notion but a personal favorite), it never healed and actually got worse. I bore you as you're read this all before. Two Fridays ago I went in for same day surgery to clip the end of a bone that hadn't reattached and repair damaged tendons (of which there were, I found out yesterday, quite a few). It was not pretty as you well know.


I was supposed to be immobile until I saw the doctor yesterday morning. In the meantime, I got as close as I ever get to doing what I'm told. I was almost immobile-in that I went from walking close to 20,000 steps a day to walking on some days less than 200. A medal would have been nice. I'd have also not been opposed to a small parade but that would have involved marching and here I was struggling to be good.

In my mind and heart, yesterday morning we'd remove all of the packing materials above, exclaim in unison 'oh what a perfectly healed ankle surgery!' and released me back into the wild. Nope. Didn't happen and harshed my buzz tenfold (at least)

Bearing in mind all the horrible things in the world that they are, my unhappiness at my health catastrophe is very much a First World Problem. I think that's one of the reasons I'm so annoyed at myself for not shaking it off and moving on. I had to call my boss and tell him I'd be out an additional two weeks (I thought I heard the sounds of revelry in the background and then later in the evening saw fireworks in the sky above my job) and then, because I'm a one-man health care boom, I had to call three other doctors and reschedule appointments because I was slated to see them in the next two weeks and I'm not allowed to drive much less move.

And as you can see in the picture, it's not like I can cheat and work around the prosthesis.


As it is I'm glad we got extra tissues the last time my wife had gone to the market because I'm going through them a handful at a time as I weep over my enormous misfortune.I know better than to hope for sympathy as I'm aware of where within the dictionary I might find it. I've taken to wearing swim trunks because I'm crying so profusely I may well drown in this river of tears I'm creating.
-bill kenny

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