where there's a will....

ok, so....day 17....oh my but the days are passing quickly since the wreck....so much so that i have to count out on my fingers just how many days have passed...and counting in days is getting as ridiculous as new parents who persist in describing the age of an infant in days rather than weeks...or months...the recap of the wreck has condensed from a 7 minute narrative to a one-liner...so back to the 17 days.....i have been wearing a limited combination of clothing based solely on the fact that the items were in the wash basket in the basement at the time of the accident....and though they have been rewashed several times....by day 16 i had grown a bit tired of the repetition...so yesterday i backed myself up the stairs on my bottom and then backed myself across the bedroom carpet to my dresser.....getting back to the steps with a handful of clothing is not as easy as it sounds.....had i thought to bring a shopping bag of some sort from the computer room closet the task would have been easier...ah well....my stack of clothing options is taller and i know that i can manage to get upstairs should there be something else i need.....which brings me to the second milestone of day 16...the bathtub....i had taken three showers in 16 days, filling in with washcloth/sink bathing in between.....sitting on a stool in a small shower stall with a hand-held shower nozzle is not much better than balancing by a sink with a washcloth....and so last evening i decided that i would figure out how to get in and out of the whirlpool tub.....and so i managed not only a lovely bubble bath with liberal use of a sugar-based body scrub.....i did so with a nice glass of white....ahhhhhhh....the spell was broken well after i had dried off and dressed....by my spouse asking me just what was all the gunk left in the tub......16 days of dead skin sticking to sugar scrub granules i suppose......i slept through the night for the first time in....let's see....17 days.......

Day 15

ok, so....day 15 of my unfortunate series of events finds me low on enthusiam and wallowing in self-pity....and not for the obvious reasons...our cat, Phillida Erskine Brown aka Kitty, our sweet 14+ year old sickly blind cat who had been living out her days mostly on our front porch due to her continence issues....failed to show up for breakfast wednesday morning....even a blind cat knows where to be when breakfast should be served....and to know when she thinks it is time to eat....we were occassionally awakened on those cool spring mornings by her caterwalling cries of hunger drifting up through our open window from the deck.....i must mention here that when i took her food out to the back deck to appease her, i would occassionally find her atop the deck railing....i would caterwall too if i suddenly found myself blind atop the deck railing....no clue how she managed to get herself up there...but i digress.....she was MIA for her breakfast and has not been seen since Tuesday at supper for certain. My spouse has gone out looking for her on several occassions as has our daughter...every able-bodied c-dub has looked....last night when the rains came i was horrified at the realization that the (probably) dead cat was out there in the storm, her body unfound and that i was unable to put her remains at rest from my chair....contact was made with the humane society in case she had been picked up...no such luck...in my heart i know that her time had come...she was often unable to keep down food, and the hair she plucked out as she groomed did not grow back...she looked quite mangey, but given that she was quick to come over for a cuddle and still purred loudly when she was held....we had decided not to put her down...not quite yet...not when she still seemed to enjoy the life she had left....

day 10

ok, so...ten days into my unfortunate series of events......i go back for my thrid orthopedic appointment tomorrow morning....will hopefully trade plaster cast for a removable boot that will allow for a shower....have been washing hair in the sink but this method is far from thorough and i spend my days feeling this side of greasy-granny funk......have had several folks bring food and/or nibbles but only one person has been thoughful enough to stay a bit with me and chat....so nice to enjoy pleasant conversation about more than what one has done with one's day.....as for what i do with my days, it is to sit in this very computer chair, hour after hour, scanning print photos from albums...i have finished three, including our wedding album and two that included babyhoods......ah......trying to crop out the unnecessary and select only the best ones is a trial....as i think every photo of my children is precious.....i am listening to Fallen Angel...the newest by Daniel Silva.....i am on my second listen as i wanted to make sure i caught all of the finer points before i move on to another book.....i have managed to get the wheelchair out to the porch twice....both times in the mornings to enjoy the weather, the hummingbirds, my coffee and the newspapers...getting the chair out is not the hard part.....it is getting back inside without having to lift up onto my good foot and thrust the chair forward over the sill.....that is the problem......but i learn a little more about solving this problem each time....at some point i will venture up the drive to get the mail....at some point i will get out the crutches as well and make my way to my terrace, but not before i figure out how to take coffee with me....backpack and a thermos perhaps....the chair is too wide for my walkway and possibly the walkway leans a bit down hill....the drought and heat pretty much killed off most of what there was to see in the garden anyway......so that brings me to my reward fior a morning spent scanning.....netflix.....movies, documentaries, reruns of cozy british television shops....and eventually somebody comes home and asks me what i have done with my day....

a tale of woe

ok, so....I am in to day 3 of my broken ankle......i have managed to use the walker to get to the kitchen and make coffee, and figured out that the computor desk chair makes for an adequate wheelchair substitute......cannot use walker while carrying a cup of coffee.....i am sitting at the pc for the first time since thursday morning....mostly out of necessity....it is the only one of the available electronic toys that has it all.....neither the iphone nor the ipad have access to this blog.....i paid for access to the new york times for only my phone and the pc and not the ipad....you get the picture.....thankfully the pc has a wireless keyboard.....i am currently sleeping in our downstairs guest room AKA our retirement room.....and after two nights there i have identified numerous issues that will come into play should we ever have to reside in that room fulltime....like the fact that one cannot actually see much through the bay window when laying (lying?) in bed....the drapes cover much of the view.....and the bed cannot be shoved up against the wall...or one of us will have to crawl over the other to get out....on the upside...there may be room for a queen-sized bed...an upgrade for us.....we use an antique bed that fits in the best spot fore a bed in our upstairs room and it is a double....clothing is problematic......i prefer pajama bottoms and a v-neck white tshirt....but as i cannot get them over the cast i am forced into nightgowns that i never wear because they are mighty uncomfortable to sleep in despite their stylish looks.....thankfully, the two nightgown/robe sets that i own hang in back of the bedroom door and have escaped numerous clothing purges over the years....i am already trying to figure out what i can possibly wear to my MRI appointment on Monday...the capris that i wore to the orthopedic appt had to be carefully split open at the inseam for me to get them over the case......who knew that a cast would be so big?......the good news is that on my last goodwill donation frenzy i discarded clothing that i could not fit into.....which will hopefully spare me the indignity of having my spouse present me with an outfit he has chosen, only for me to admit that i was saving it until i lost a few pounds....losing a few pounds i quite likely...another upside to this incident....my appetite is diminished....and the next point i want to make must be done so delicately.....suffice it to say that i have spoiled my family with interesting food for so long that they have no idea how to come up with much beyond pasta and sauce....they make pasta and sauce every thursday while i teach at eku-danville.....every thursday....and i do not mind because i generally grab a junior rb from arby's to tide me over....and i rarely partake of their pasta and sauce....we have had one pasta and sauce meal (on day 1) and i started in early coaching my daughter on the supper menu i had in mind before so that pasta and sauce could be avoided....and so we had grilled marinated chicken, and box mac and cheese, and cucumber salad, which i actually finished from my coach command post because the person who sliced up the cucumbers and onions declined to be responsilbe for the vinegar and salt phase....we also had pickled beets because that jar is so easy to open....at some point i will not be able to recall what is still in the fridge and i may have to make meal charts and grocery lists to go along....that is if i want to eat well during this ordeal...if we do pasta and sauce for six weeks i may be able to fit into all of those clothes i just gave to the goodwill....now is a good time to bring up pain...i have been sitting at the pc for awhile now, and though my leg is propped up on the walker, it is not elevated and it is starting to throb...like it has its own pulse....i have taken my pain pill for this time slot, and it has kicked in, so far as kicking in goes.....there was a point yesterday afternoon...after the cast had been put on and it was starting to 'cure' as the tech told me it would.....my foot felt like red hot pokers were stabbing into it and the pain pill had not helped after an hour, and so i took another one despite the lable directions.....and still the pain did not ease up...and i started in crying....and my daughter who was sitting in the room (we are doing a long-version LOTR marathon) got so upset she called my spouse at work to tell him that i was crying....but he was busy and when he called back i was a bit abrupt with him who decided against filling the entire pain med prescription because surely i was tough enough not to need all of those pills.....yes- i delivered my first baby completely unmedicated...but i was motivated to spare my baby of those drugs.....and i knew that eventually the baby would be born and the pain would stop.....i have no experience with brolen bones and i have no idea when this agonizing pain will settle into nothing more than background twinges.....the wreck itself has already become a blur...i can recall checking out the green light at the intersection and then looking ahead to see if traffic was backed up by a train....one is always cautious at this interection because of the frequent trains that come through town.....traffic is often backed up as far as my office from especially long trains....and the next thing i knew i was braking to avoid a huge cream colored suv and then there was impact....like hitting a brick wall....and i can recall leaning to the right with my face down in case the windshield shattered......and in one fluid motion i turned off my car, took out my keys, grabbed my purse and got out....becuase there was smoke and flames coming out of my ignition and i was certain that my car was going to blow up ( i watch far too much tv)....it was then that i discovered that i my left ankle was bunged up....and i had to ask people who had stopped to help to get me away from the car...the three Samaritans who let me sit in their car had witnessed the suv pull out in front of me to make a left turn....and i was grateful for their help as much as for their confirmation that the wreck was not my fault.....i have never had a wreck....not in 40 years of driving and i did not want my first one to be my fault.....speaking of 40 years.....i was in europe 40 years ago this summer.....on a three week driving trip with my parents and brother.....my dad broke his leg while photographing a falls in switzerlad.....when i graduate from the walker i will be using his crutches....i can still see myself in the pharmacy in Thun where i was trying to help my mother understand that they only had one crutch and that we would have to go elsewhere for another one.....when we got to Paris, my cousin Nancy (who was a translator at the Australian Embassy) offered to let me stay with her for the rest of the summer....I declined because i was signed up to take driver's ed when i got home.....i chose driving over Paris because i was 16 and had not yet fallen in love with Paris.....ah well.....i really need to wrap up this post, and prop up my leg....it has been nice to record this episode for posterity while it is still relatively fresh...and hopefully i can figure out how to blog from the ipad....heaven knows i will have plenty of time on my hands for such things...the doctor said something about 6 to 8 weeks....yikes!