Not A Blog™

Until I logged on to post this week’s update, I had no idea that I forgot to post last week’s. I had written one; it only got sent out to my friends and family. Between the busyness of the holidays and everything else that’s been going on, it apparently just slipped my mind. Due to this oversight, I’ve put both updates in this single post. Interestingly enough, they compliment each other in a way I never intended…

Week 31

Compared to the previous few months of convalescence, I feel as if I’m suddenly rocketing forward on the path to recovery. The most difficult thing during the time period between my two surgeries is that it consisted mostly of waiting. When you’ve been told the bones take six two eight weeks to heal, and the tendons, a full three months, you just start counting down the weeks, trying to get that check in the box.

Now that I’ve started walking (and all that entails), I feel like I’ve made more progress in the past three weeks than in the past three months. This isn’t strictly true; it depends how one defines progress, of course. But being able to actively participate in my own recovery and seeing almost daily progress gives the impression that things are flying along.

This morning I had a reassessment with the physical therapy people. The doctor’s measurements indicated I’m still short on dorsiflexion (pulling the foot upwards) by about five degrees (which causes me to limp) but that it should stretch out fairly quickly—and in fact that I’m already doing very well. The only truly bad news is that I have very little lateral movement to the outside. He said I’m about eight degrees short in that direction, and it’s unlikely to ever improve beyond that, because of that four inch plate on my distal fibula which starts right at the base of the lateral malleolus (that little knob on that sticks out on the outside of your ankles).

Despite these issues, the physical therapist did say I’m doing extremely well for a three week post-op. He said it’s quite obvious I’ve been working religiously on my own time, that I’m ahead of schedule as far as both range of motion and strength are concerned, and that I should not have any trouble progressing to a normal walk, and ultimately to a run. My case manager said it looks like I’m very much on track to get out of here by February.

(Right now I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. There are no hurricanes, no power outages, no floods. I’m not being ordered to travel unaided, nobody expects me to climb stairs on crutches every day, and the duty drivers here are the friendliest people around the place! The medical staff actually knows why I’m there when I show up and what to do with me. Things are going well. Almost… too well. I’m starting to wonder what massively terrible event is just around the corner. Then again, maybe now is a good time to buy that lottery ticket.)

The best thing of all: I am cleared to continue to 100% weight bearing starting on Wednesday. That means—for the first time in over four months—no crutches. True, I still have a way to go, but walking is one of the largest milestones, if not *the* largest milestone, in this entire process. It separates disability from normality.

I never would have guessed, not in a million years (well, maybe a million. Let’s say a thousand), that the thing I would most be looking forward to, for Christmas in 2008, is the ability to walk again. When you’re in shape and healthy, not being able to walk simply isn’t something that crosses your mind. The timing of my recovery is serendipitous enough that it almost seems like the sort of glurge you’d find in one of those feel-good, motivational movies. If it were written as fiction, it would be panned as ham-handed sentimentalism. And yet here I am, taking the holidays in stride. (Pun obviously, shamelessly intended.)

Week 32

You will no doubt remember my previous update, where I mentioned that things were going well. Well, much like I predicted, that blissful, tragedy-free existence has come to an end. Christmas went smoothly enough. I had a very nice time, particularly considering that as recently as August, I hadn’t expected to be home for Christmas.

No, the big news is, once again, car trouble. The hassle this time around is that my car broke down on the way back down to med hold, a full hour north of where I needed to be. I almost hate to bring this up in light of how well things have been going. After all, a broken car is nothing compared to a broken leg—although in a certain sense it is—and the leg is doing fine. It’s starting to seem like endless drama and I can’t help but think that few people would be interested in my car breaking down, of all things, if it weren’t considered in the context of the rest of this deployment.

More than anything else that could happen to me, I think the break-down goes to show just how much I am ready to leave this place. There is nothing particularly surprising about it happening, considering the age and milage of the vehicle and the amount I’ve been driving it (6,000 miles in two months). It’s just an enormous hassle, magnified by the fact that it happened in the middle of nowhere, and nowhere near where I am. It’s the sort of thing that, if it happened at home, I’d shrug it off and get it taken care of without undue worry. Being down here, though, means continually banging my head against the wall, whether because of the distances involved, or the fact that it took me pretty much all day to get ahold of someone to work on it and go up to drop off the keys. I am in the process of having it taken care of, though, and should find out the extent of the damage by the next update.

Because we’re between two long holidays and I haven’t started physical therapy yet, I don’t really have anything else to add. In fact, if it weren’t for my car breaking down, I’d have probably only have a paragraph’s worth of information for you. I’ve been continuing to stretch and I’ve seen some real improvement in flexibility just on my own. My leg is feeling solid. Saturday marked another small milestone, when I found myself standing on my leg without favoring it, or even thinking about it. Previously I’ve always been acutely aware of when I use the leg. Now, every once in a while, I’ll stand or step before realizing I’m putting weight on it. That’s pretty cool.

Due to the New Year’s holiday, I’m not expecting to have my car fixed until next week. Even so, I hope to have some sort of more positive news for you in the next update. The nice thing about being at this point in the healing process is that even though something like a break-down is terrible, it’s not nearly as bad as other things I’ve had to deal with. That kind of puts things in perspective.

-Ted

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