a recovery in progress

ok, so....successfully worked 5 days, except for the time spent at the medical followup for xray and consultation. Given permission to put limited weight on my broken ankle, while wearing a boot and using crutches. Gave out by Wednesday afternoon and went back to the wheelchair for respite. Being disabled is not nearly as effortless as it looks. By Saturday feeling up for lunch out with grandma with the eldest's girlfriend driving. Stopped at the aldi store on the way home, where i managed to cover the entire store on crutches. Another outing that evening....to see Alison Krauss and Union Station at the Norton Center....crutched in and out of there as well....even up a few steps...marvelous concert.....but so exhausted from the long day and went straight to bed....up early today to get ready for church breakfast in honor of sunday school teachers....was mostly hoping for a potato breakfast casserole woth ham or sausage....close but not quite...maybe next year.....managed to get near to out usual spot in the balcony before i just gave out and had to sit down and stay down......heavy sigh.....

playlists

ok, so...i am in countdown mode....in the final hours before i go back to work...in a wheelchair and/or crutches....after a 5-week confinement at home......i am still working out strategy: backpack rather than purse or tote, clothing that requires no ironing, lunch today that should afford leftovers for my lunch tomorrow...i have run through the audio book downloads on this pc so i am listening to playlists i do not recall making....the current is called kathy's misc indie rock and includes sufjan stevens, animal collective, ben kamen, the chapin sisters, neko case and death cab for cutie....i am down to the boxes of photos having finished up the last album yesterday. I have actually sorted out scannable selections from the first box and the pile is relatively small when separated from random or repetitive scenery...or animals for that matter...there is a series i vaguely recall...taken by our third child when learning to use a camera....of our neighbor's dog on our deck...over and over and over....i have saved them for her rather than putting them back in the box.....i must note for posterity-sake that on a normal sunday i would be getting ready for sunday school.....but on this sixth sunday of my recovery....i am not attempting church.....i have lunch in the oven and coffee at the elbow and i am working through a stack that i pulled from albums years ago for potential inclusion in a celebratory scrapbook...18th birthday? graduation from HS...or college? no clue......i am pleased to see some of these photos as i was surprised to find the empty spaces in the albums where they would have fit sequentually....i am considering the day spent in my pajamas but we will be five for lunch and i would have to admit to being depressed when the rest of my family shows up.....depressed may not be the correct diagnosis....neither is comfortably numb.....i am not the least bit comfortable...but i digress from this my 5941th blog post.....i could download the adele album lost in the wreck because my spouse could not get it out of the cd player....the other five slots contained burned cd's but the sixth was an original adele...and it was his not mine.....i had given it to him for christmas as part of a cd/dvd concert in royal albert hall set.....alas...it is gone and i need to replace it in time to listen to it in the car i do not yet own....i will be driven to and from work for the short-term but eventually i will need a car to replace the paid-for honda accord...i am still fuming about the loss of that car...it was in great shape for its age and i have enjoyed the lack of car payment for quite some time....i resent the loss of this car almost as much as i resent the loss of these past five weeks from my active existence....while i have made the most of these weeks i cannot replace the things that i have lost in my garden because i was not able to water twice a day during the extreme heat in july......five mature boxwoods moved to make way for the greenhouse went from iffy to completely dead followed by numerous perennials in the bed visble from the guest room....and then there is the vegetable garden...i can see the shriveled tomato plants that succumbed....and the cumcumber and squash plants that survive only to have their fruits grow bitter/mealy and unpicked....no clue if anything lives on in my greenhouse as it is not visible from a wheelchair-accessable vantage point....no clue if i have seeds to plant for the fall....my mind is so very cloudy on so many planes....i cannot recall the clothes hanging in a closet i have not seen in five going on six weeks....nor whether i have boxed thank you notes on my desk upstairs....heavy sigh.....my follow-up x-ray is scheduled for wednesday...at which point i may be given the green light to put weight on my ankle and begin to learn to walk again.....and learn to drive again....and move on from this unfortanate interlude....

the beginning of the end...

ok, so i am going back to work a week from monday.....i have been released to light duty so long as i do not put weight on my foot and keep it up.....which means i must essentially go back to work in the wheel chair i borrowed from work. i have called the doctor asking for a prescription for wheelchair rental.....i will use the rented chair at home and use the other while at work....and use crutches to get between the two places....i have not used crutches in weeks so i must nowe work on the finer points of using them without falling on my face....and so i have counted up the albums left to scan.....5 of misc photos, the trip to the southwest after the adoption (known to our daughter as the photoshop trip as she swears she does not remember going and that we must had digitally added her to photos....) and a middle school trip to paris. With such excursions i have taken to scanning only the photos with my child, or with me, or exceptionally well-lighted captures of the city. when the actual albusm are done there are some storage boxes of photos that never made it into albums.....and at some point my project will connect with the digital age where i have photos already stored in files and no actual prints.....i cannot remember when i printed my last photo....how is that for pitiable.....but i digress from the going back to work angle....i will have to venture back upstairs in order to expand my wardrobe options to something approaching professional......which means that i will have to ask someone to iron a few things for me.....and figure out just who will be driving me back and forth.....this dependence on others will not last much longer...i go back to the doctor for a followup xray and to discuss weight bearing on a week from wednesday.....that will be 6 weeks after the accident.....which could mean i can begin weight bearing immediately or continue as i have been to the 8 week mark before transitioning into use of the foot/ankle. either way.....the end is in sight.

adding insult to injury

ok, so.....no clue on the number of days into this ridiculous injury.....four weeks on thursday....but i digress from the newest and cruelest twist....i slept awkwardly...on my left side/left arm....and now my left arm is in so much pain i am having a hard time typing....yeah, yeah, yeah.....i only type with two fingers (one on each hand) on a good day, but on this day the left one is letting me down....i am back to the pain meds for the arm rather than the foot...whicb continues to be a swollen swirl of faded purples and mustards....the tight skin is peeling.....yech!....the right knee is still sore from where my keys gouged into the cap.....neither the knee nor the foot hurt as much at this moment than my left arm....how fair is that?