It’s always something…

The surgery to lengthen my tendon was intended to reduce the unbearable fiery pain enveloping my foot, and in short order I could verify that it had worked. I couldn’t feel my leg below my knee beyond some vague feeling along my shin and a couple of toes that tickled, but the nerves inside that let me know I was in pain were in good working order. I left the hospital on Saturday morning eager to have an evening home with my children before they headed off to Idaho for a week of camping with their father, and I was relatively comfortable within a day of returning home. By Monday, I had stopped taking the pain medication on a schedule and was down to a dose in the morning and a dose in the evening.

While I was out of pain and back to work, the numbness and uncertainty around recovering all the sensation began to get me down as the week progressed. I felt myself losing my rosy viewpoint and began to worry I was sinking into a depression. I was waking up anxious and pessimistic, suffering from cold sweats and goose bumps despite the +90° heat, and felt drained of all my energy. I broke down crying on the phone with my mother Wednesday afternoon and admitted that I was tired of this and really felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. As she is so adept at doing, she lovingly kicked me in the ass with a pep talk that both scolded and lifted my spirits. “You can cry for a few minutes, but then you’ve got to get right back up and do it anyway because you don’t have a choice.” She was right, of course. The decision to start this journey was not one I could change halfway down the road. It doesn’t matter how hard this road becomes; it is the only road here.

Regardless of her advice, I continued to indulge my newly developed habit of breaking down in tears in the evening after returning home from work, and on the following morning when I woke. On Thursday afternoon, I saw Dr. Workman for my post-operative appointment expecting praise for so quickly getting back to my daily routine. She was not pleased with me. My leg was too swollen and she directed me to work from home until the following week. I texted my manager from her office and had his blessing in a matter of minutes. She offered to refill my pain medication, but I told her I was hardly taking any now and had plenty, and at the end of the appointment I made a comment about my concern at possibly beginning to suffer some depression. She looked uncomfortable and advised me to look into counseling. We left without another word about it.

I spent Friday working from home and had the swelling well under control by the time Patrick got home ready to take me out to dinner and the Timbers game that evening. I felt ill, shaky, nauseated and weak, but I dragged myself into the shower to bathe before he got home. As I sat on the bed listlessly drying my hair with a towel, he walked in and could tell I was not myself. I burst into tears again and admitted I wanted to go to sleep for a month until this was over. My muscles ached, presumably from laying around with virtually no activity for so long, and the overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness that had taken hold of me was physically palpable.

Because Patrick is wonderful, he assured me we did not have to drag ourselves to the game if I didn’t feel up to it, but I convinced him I would feel better getting out of the house and forced myself to rally. My sense of physical illness gradually increased over the next hours as we feasted on tacos at our regular pre-game dinner spot and then lined up in the waning evening heat at the ADA gate. I visibly drooped in my wheelchair as sitting upright made me feel faint. I couldn’t stop shivering and Patrick suddenly got very worried.

“You look miserable,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” I admitted. “I feel awful. I don’t know what’s wrong. I must be getting sick. My head hurts and all my muscles ache.” I was on the verge of uncontrollable tears the entire time. Patrick had brought a stash of medications with him to dole out if my foot began to swell and hurt, so he offered to give me something once we got inside and could find some water to take with them. I agreed, not really thinking it would address what was wrong, but I didn’t want to force him to take me home when he sacrifices so much already every day all day long for me. We made it into the game and nabbed our new favorite seats- ADA seating behind the goal line with an unobstructed view. I remained silent and pensive, and he remained worried, until he urged me to talk to him about what was wrong once he’d found some water for me. He doled out some medication and I stared at it in the palm of my hand as an idea struck me.

Without taking the pills, I turned to my iPhone to google “Opiate withdrawal symptoms” and realized in a matter of seconds what was going on. In the week and a half or so that I had been taking such a high dose of medication around the clock- every three hours- my body had developed a chemical dependency that it now had to withdraw from when I suddenly stopped taking them. The symptoms were everything I had been experiencing over the past few days since I had drastically reduced my meds: nausea, cold sweats, goose bumps, fatigue, malaise and depression, severe anxiety, muscle aches, headache…

“My god, Patrick, I’m going through withdrawals,” I said.

“Of course,” he agreed. “Makes perfect sense.”

I took the pills he had given me and kept reading, suddenly ravenous for more information and how to get through it. I read numerous forums where individuals extolled the virtues of “quitting cold turkey” versus “weaning”, recommendations for various detox secrets, and the inevitable advice to seek assistance from a medical professional. Time ticked by as I read and soon I realized the symptoms had almost entirely abated- about 40 minutes after I had taken my medication. By the time the game started, I felt more like myself. As I do whenever anything important happens to me, I texted my mother, who also happens to be a seasoned ER nurse and my own personal webmd resource. She advised me to take a smaller dose of the medications I had been taking and reduce the dose by a quarter each day or so, in small increments, but fairly quickly.

The next day we developed a schedule for my medication again. I wasn’t taking a high enough dose to completely eliminate all of the withdrawal symptoms, but the symptoms would ease each time I took something. I noticed that I could go about eight hours before I began to really feel miserable, which meant mornings were dreadful if I slept late at all. That weekend was hell as the headache manifested itself in every bone in my face and nothing could make it stop. I was terrified of taking anymore of the pain medication than we had agreed, which meant toughing it out when my foot swelled at the end of the day. The depression would come in waves that swelled over me and pushed me to the edge of complete despair until Patrick would force me to take something and the darkness would gently ebb away.

Patrick stocked the house with supplies as though I had the flu; I was too nauseous to bring myself to drink much water, so he bought me ginger ale and juice to try to keep me hydrated, and soup to entice me to eat. My mother suggested seeing my doctor about a medication for the anxiety, but I hated the idea of taking yet another drug when I was already enduring such an ordeal. I compromised by taking over-the-counter unisom- a fairly benign antihistamine commonly used as a sleep-aid- to calm myself in the evening and help me sleep. I took to lounging in the tub for hours at a time to ease the unrelenting muscle aches, something I had not yet done with my frame for fear of infection. I kept my foot out of the water the first time I tried it, but it was difficult to relax while I held my leg aloft the whole time. I researched how to turn it into a bleach bath- an idea my doctor had already approved- and took to adding a quarter cup of bleach and epsom salt to my bubble bath which enabled me to soak my frame in the water. According to my research, days 3-5 are supposed to be the most difficult part of the detox period, and I reasoned I had technically begun to detox around Monday when I suddenly ramped down my dosage. The entire ordeal could last a couple of weeks, but by the middle of the second week I was feeling significantly better.

My weaning process took about three weeks total before I was no longer taking anything regularly. As I was feeling better, I was also more mobile, which meant more swelling and pain from all the activity by the end of the day. After many discussions surrounding my fear of going through this all over again, Patrick convinced me to take small doses of pain medication when I need it, and ONLY when I need it without a regular schedule to avoid developing a dependency again. I had learned a valuable lesson- addiction is real and the risks have to be taken seriously. I suddenly understood the necessity for strict guidelines around prescribing these dangerous medications, and I wanted to warn everyone I knew how easily and quickly they can become a problem. I wanted to talk about it openly as I realized how common my own situation must be and how many people must be dealing with it silently. So many of those struggling with chronic pain are in this difficult position, but I felt sharply the stigma surrounding the topic in my own disappointment in myself, as though I somehow had any control over how my body reacted to a medication I needed to survive my medical ordeal. If I was judging myself so harshly, I wondered how others were judging me as well.

There is so much in life that we don’t see coming. Even if we cannot be better prepared for the unforeseeable, we can at least be compassionate and have empathy for each other as we all stumble and struggle through our own unique trials. I’m wiser now for this experience, and will know how to avoid repeating the same mistakes, but I’m sure to make new mistakes in my next ridiculous life fiasco. The only thing I can really do is love myself regardless, as much as I would love any other flawed and struggling human being doing their best to survive.

It’s always something, after all.

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One More Surgery

The only thing left to do now is heal.

It’s been over a month since my last post. I haven’t been able to write, either mentally or physically. Too much has occurred in the last month for a single post, so I will likely have to break this into pieces, but I think my head has cleared enough to finally put it all down.

∗ ∗ ∗

Nearly five weeks ago, I visited my surgeon following the last day of strut turns, excited to be done and eager for her praise at my Wolverine-like healing powers and unflagging resilience. She looked at my foot, still a little crooked and not quite flat, and broke the tragic news that I would need a new prescription to continue to move the heel down. I was devastated when she handed me the print-out at the end of my visit- 12 more days. Still, I was managing the pain well, even putting tentative weight on my foot, and told myself a few more days would just make sure it was perfect.

That was a Thursday, and within two days the sky fell.

In order to flatten my foot, the ankle movement required the top of my foot to lift and the rear of my foot to lower; the slow and steady incremental movements each day were designed to gradually move the bone into position while simultaneously stretching out the tendons and soft tissues which have not moved for a decade and a half. By Friday, my achilles tendon was tired of this and had washed its hands of me. My heel swelled to three times its size, trapping the nerve that runs near it, and spurring suddenly overwhelming pain that burned and stabbed in ever-increasing waves. By Sunday, I hadn’t slept in days and had turned to writhing around screaming as my primary coping mechanism. I learned what happens when pain reaches a level beyond what any human can bear- you don’t die or even faint, you just keep feeling more pain, more than you think your body is able to feel, until… well, there is no until… you can just always feel more.

Patrick drove me to the emergency room once he’d managed to coax me into rolling out of the fetal position to make it down the stairs. It was a twenty minute drive, a thirty minute wait once we arrived, and another twenty minutes to see the doctor once we’d been given a room, so whatever good the pain meds were doing had completely disappeared by the time I saw anyone. Luckily it doesn’t even occur to anyone you might be faking it when you roll in with a giant pin cushion for a foot. (I’m always surprised at how much shock seasoned medical professionals display when they see this thing.) It took five minutes for the iv dilaudid they gave me to dull the intensity of the pain to a bearable ache. Fearing the pain had suddenly intensified due to infection (my arch nemesis), the doctor ordered a full blood workup and a fancy x-ray from a mobile machine that wheeled right into my room. We reached my surgeon as well after some frantic texting and she gave me the day off of more strut changes, so we went home generally satisfied that the pain would abate and we’d done our due diligence to ensure it was nothing more serious.

Monday I was back to turning struts, and Monday night I was back to not sleeping as I held my leg in the air unwilling to rest it even on a pillow for the pain it caused. I called the surgeon Tuesday morning, utterly exhausted and unable to cope with more pain, and she urged me to come in to the office

A cartoonists rendition of an Achilles tendon lengthening stolen from another site that will likely sue me for this. — **A cartoonist’s rendition of an Achilles tendon lengthening stolen from another site that will likely sue me for this.**

where they would fit me in around their schedule somehow. Once there, she reviewed the blood work results and assured there was no real sign of infection, and that the pain was simply the achilles refusing to stretch any further. We decided the only option was to lengthen to tendon or I’d never be able to lower the heel further.

To lengthen the Achilles tendon, three incisions are made up the back of the heel. The tendon is partially severed on one side, then the opposing side a few centimeters up, and then the first side again a few centimeters further up. The surgeon then pulls down on the heel to stretch the tendon out and the remaining tendon between the severed sections gives way and twist sideways to add enough length to allow movement again. As we did not need my ankle to move in the future, Dr. Workman considered severing the tendon completely, but she decided against this simply because my ankle would appear deformed afterward, which would obviously ruin my promising future as a middle-aged cellulite model.

I already had an early morning appointment scheduled for the coming Thursday, less than two days away, so she directed me to meet her at the surgery center instead and plan to stay the night. I begged her in tears not to make me turn the struts again until after the surgery and though she hesitated for fear my bones would condense before we’d finished the repositioning, she finally relented with pity clearly written on her face. Though still in tremendous pain, I went home relieved that we had a plan to make this stop.

Tuesday night was another night of agony and no sleep, and around 9am Patrick made the executive decision to take me back to the emergency room, presumably because he was tired of listening to me wail. This meant canceling work for the both of us that day- a big deal as Patrick doesn’t get sick time- but I don’t recall feeling guilt for more than a few moments as I couldn’t focus on anything but the fire surrounding my foot. Relief came in the same fashion as before- iv dilaudid. As we prepared to head back home, they gave me one more dose for the road in the hopes I’d make it back to my oral pain medications in time before the iv wore off. My surgeon texted as we were leaving the hospital and directed me to head straight to her hospital to be admitted; her plan was to start me on iv meds to get out me out of pain until the surgery the following morning, but I convinced her to let me go home and see how I fared.

I slept very little that night, which was fine as we had to be up and on the road to the hospital by 4:30 for check-in by 5:30. I had taken my last dose

**Three tiny incisions along the Achilles closed with dissolving sutures.**

of pain medication at around 3am and didn’t bother to bring any more with me as I reasoned I’d be out cold by 7 anyway. The pre-surgical prep went quickly, but I was in severe pain by the time a trio of anesthesiologists came in to announce that they would be performing a nerve block. I couldn’t hold my leg still as it shook on its own, so they held me down as one doctor ran the ultrasound over my thigh and another injected the medication directly into a pair of nerves along my inner and outer thigh. The second injection stung sharply and a nurse caught my hand mid-air as I inadvertently swatted at the needle as though I was a toddler getting my first shot.

Instantly the pain was gone. I invited the anesthesiologist who wielded the needle to move in with us. I described in enticing detail the lovely pine wood bunkbed he could share with Georgia and promised to buy him whatever toys he wanted. The rest is fuzzy as the iv meds took over. I vaguely recall greeting Dr. Workman in the operating room and asking everyone if they felt well-rested and ready to rock. The anesthesiologist came in and I professed my undying love for him. I only know this because Dr. Workman told me all about it many hours later.

After some confusion in recovery about whether or not I was to stay the night, I was wheeled into a double room with an elderly roommate who assured me she was just about to leave and then stayed most of the day. My leg was numb, I was well-drugged, and the nurse handed me a menu with directions to order whatever I wanted as much as I wanted. I felt the kind of happiness I imagine those last floating survivors of the sunken Titanic felt when that little boat of rescuers finally paddled up. I was awash in joy and I ordered a five course meal with four desserts. I was gorging myself on chocolate pudding when Dr. Workman came in with her assistant, commenting under her breath that she’d forgotten to put me on a calorie-restricted diet. Her assistant held a sheet of paper with a new

prescription on it, a prescription to turn the six struts multiple times over two weeks. Rather than hand the prescription over to me, however, Dr. Workman had him read each strut turn aloud and she systematically turned each one in ordered increments, going around and around my ankle, until the entire two weeks of repositioning was completed in fifteen minutes. I ate my pudding the whole time, thankful for my numb limb. When she had finished, my foot was flat. It was done. All I had left to do was heal.

I spent two nights in the hospital instead of one because the nerve block that wears off in 8 to 24 hours just didn’t. I never got all the feeling back, but I did start feeling pain again the morning after my surgery. Thankfully this was simply the initial swelling and surgical pain that follows any procedure; by the next morning I was off of the iv medication and back to oral meds at reasonable doses. I could wiggle one toe and had some feeling in the top of my foot, though the rest of my foot was numb. Good enough. They sent me home.

The only thing left to do now is heal.

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One Month Down

This past week marked one month since my surgery; on Thursday I visited my doctor for a regularly scheduled appointment to check my progress and change out another strut.

I was nervous this time as I know how painful a strut change can be now. In addition to that, we would have four kids with us so that immediately following my appointment we could be taking Matthew to practice. Nothing evokes sympathy from passersby like a frightened woman in a wheelchair surrounded by unruly children. As it happened, the kids were fantastic and, as far as I know, sat patiently in the waiting area throughout the entire appointment. Right now, most of the kids are at an age when my approval and love really means a lot to them, so they tend to try to at least maintain a facade of good behavior and argue over things like who gets to hold my hand as I’m wheeled around or who is going to bring me my pillow. The 13-year old is a different story; he knows everything, nothing impresses him, and nothing is more important than what he wants or needs. As much as I want to believe I could never have been this way at 13, I have to wonder.

They waved ferociously at me as I disappeared around the corner to the x-ray department. My doctor’s office has an odd system of communication which relies on cards with fruit symbols. I haven’t cracked the code yet, or even ascertained its usefulness, but I know that when you go to get an x-

ray you are handed a yellow card with a banana on it and when you are done, the banana goes in a tray on the wall with a banana on it. I’m a little worried about the medical system in general if this is what they are using in lieu of email notifications, but I’m trying to stay optimistic.

X-rays are extremely annoying with a Taylor Spatial Frame; the tech is invariably confused, and has to ask what he’s looking at and which part the doctor cares about. He then proceeds to bend my leg in the most awkward positions. Usually this entails dislocating my knee cap and balancing the enormous rectangular metal frame around my foot on a single corner and holding perfectly still while my atrophied muscles scream from the abuse.

Back in the waiting area, I attracted the attention of a couple of nurses with my homemade frame cover. I’ve been walking around with different colored frame covers for a few weeks now, but this is the first real notice anyone has paid. It takes a very specific audience to appreciate the ingenuity and skill required to design and sew a cover for an external fixator and I enjoyed being lavished with praise. Even my doctor complimented me on it when she came in. Dr. Workman was supposed to be taking vacation for a couple of weeks, but as I am now her most favorite patient, she made a special trip in just to see me.

Dr. Workman, who I cannot possibly call Kimberly due to my absolute reverence for her as a mystical super human, is the only doctor I have completely trusted since the onset of my illness fourteen years ago. She is younger than me if crow’s feet and hair color can be believed, and has the kind of tan and naturally lovely appearance you would expect to see on a carefree hippie. She has three children who almost attended the appointment with her, but last minute decided they’d rather go for ice cream with their father. In addition to being this likable woman who says things like “F-bomb” and laughs at even my stupidest jokes, she also happens to be the foremost authority on lower limb deformities in the region. If you are toying with the idea of trying on an external fixator for a few months, I’m happy to offer an endorsement for her as you really won’t find more capable hands.

My x-rays showed the bone growth of a natural over-achiever; rather than worrying about a non-union from bone that won’t grow, we are now worried that the bone is condensing too quickly and will make my daily strut modifications more difficult and painful. All in all, she was extremely pleased with my progress. My swelling is minimal, the pin sites are in good shape, and my foot is noticeably flatter than when we started though I still have some ways to go. The main purpose of this appointment was to change out one of the rear struts- the same difficult one from my last appointment- to a slightly longer strut to continue the expansion. I got a picture of the Claw this time, but it doesn’t elicit the same level of fear anymore as the strut change was fairly simple and painless.

Once the strut change was done, we were free to go… unless… oh, did I want to do something about that top wire that was causing me so much pain every time I moved? She gave me the option of waiting until my next appointment to remove the wire, or do it now. I elected not to wait any longer as the pain was pretty

unbearable and all waiting would accomplish is provide me adequate time to elevate my stress level. It took a moment to round up the supplies, but in no time at all she was cleaning the pin sites on either side of my leg with alcohol and I sat back, gripped the sides of the table, and tried to keep my breathing steady.

*Before photo of the top wire with inflamed and irritated tissue surrounding the pin site.*

The process for removing a wire is remarkably simple. The wires are culled on each end to hide the sharp points, so she unbent these on either side and unbolted the tiny vices holding them taut to the frame. With the wire now free and

protruding from both sides of my leg by about four inches or so, she snipped the end of the wire on the far side of my leg as close to the skin as she could get without nicking me. Gripping the remaining end of the wire with pliers, she gently wriggled the wire back and forth as she pulled until I could feel the end break free from the bone and it whipped out of the remaining tissues like a lawn mower cord. There was very little blood, the holes which had seemed enormous closed up almost instantly, and thanks to the pain medication I took before my appointment, there was relatively little pain beyond a sharp twinge at the end.

*After photo of the pin site immediately following wire removal.*

I asked Patrick to film the entire thing, and he did his very best, but he was more startled than I was when the wire flew out and his sudden jolting camera work shows it. I showed the video to the kids on the way home and for once I was able to impress that stubborn 13 year old. Maybe next time I’ll make him watch in person.

You too can watch the video below…

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Halfway There

I won’t lie- it’s getting harder now. In the beginning, only two or three of the struts would change in a day, but now that the ankle is fully separated, the upward rotation has begun and the strut changes are more difficult. Here comes the pain.

My “prescription” is a 29 day plan with daily modifications to each of the six struts on my Taylor Spatial Frame, trackable with an iPhone app that sends me reminders throughout the day and allows my surgeon to monitor my progress. Yesterday was day 15 of 29, which means I’m over halfway to a flat foot.

I won’t lie- it’s getting harder now. In the beginning, only two or three of the struts would change in a day, and in only 1 mm increments. Now that the ankle is fully separated, the upward rotation has begun and the strut changes are more difficult. Each of the struts move every day now, and most in 2 or 3 mm increments. The dials are more difficult to turn and the pain is reminiscent of a vice slowly crushing my bones.

This pain kicked in to high gear at my last appointment, just three days ago. Two of the struts on the backside of the frame, the side which is expanding, were too small to expand further and had to be changed out. As the entire frame is a complex engineered matrix of tension and compression members, one cannot be removed without imminent collapse of the remaining struts unless first placing some sort of support to hold the frame in place. In the past, the doctor would thread long bolts through the metal rings around my foot and leg to hold them stable, but my doctor brought out a new device invented by one of her colleagues during her fellowship. She called it “the Claw”. Small clamps bit down on the frame rings and she tightened the device to stabilize the frame. She started with strut number 5, and I leaned on my side and chatted with her as she worked, reading from a list of questions I’d been compiling for her. We addressed odd items such as whether or not such a thing as a bleach bath was advisable or if this was some crazy alternative treatment akin to putting a knife under one’s bed to cut the pain. (Knives under beds don’t work, just FYI. I highly recommend narcotics instead.) She was fine with a short bleach bath to disinfect the pins and we moved on to the efficacy of muscle massagers as she finished up strut 5 and began to work on strut 4.

I was facing the wall when I felt the frame begin to collapse, and with it my ankle. Patrick claims it was nearly imperceptible, but as strut 4 was pulled from the rings, I felt a crushing pain that stole my breath and forced a wash of tears through my tightly closed lids. I stared at the wall in silence. The doctor was becoming frustrated as the new strut was refusing to fit into place no matter how much movement in the frame she elicited. She left the room to find a different strut and I rolled to my stomach, buried my face in the pillow, and sobbed. Patrick hurriedly offered me more pain meds from the ready stash he had prepared before we left the house, but I couldn’t bring myself to move enough to reach out and take them. “I can’t

*The angle between foot and foreleg is gradually beginning to decrease with greater strut movement.*

move,” I gritted through clenched teeth, and the doctor rushed back in with the new strut. I was kicking myself for not having the presence of mind to take more pain medication before coming in, but I really wanted to have a sober conversation with her this time.

She struggled through another long period of tugging and yanking on a frame that took turns stretching and crushing my freshly healing ankle bone. “I hope I don’t offend you if I drop an F-bomb,” she finally said, and our laughter helped to ease both the tension in the room and the pain in my leg just enough to allow her to get the strut in place. A few minutes more and the horrible claw device was gone. I could sit up, but the throbbing and visible swelling in the tortured limb was just beginning.

Just prior to this exercise, I had discussed my desire to reduce my pain meds to something weaker and hopefully less addictive. I take Tramadol during the day which is an effective pain medication that doesn’t interfere with cognitive abilities and has a very low risk for addiction, but at night I need something stronger for sleep. She agreed to prescribe hydrocodone to replace the heavy dilaudid I had been taking, but as Patrick wheeled me toward the pharmacy after our appointment, I began to doubt my wisdom in the timing of this change. I was reducing my ability to battle pain at the same time I was increasing a number of activities which would increase it: larger daily strut movements, at least two more strut changes like this one to come in the next two weeks, and the next day- Wednesday- I would physically return to work which meant an hour or so of driving in traffic each way and a few hours on crutches.

Patrick assured me it would be fine and we would just call the office if it wasn’t. Patrick is very different from me in the way he handles problems. I worry about every potential situation before it can happen so that I have the answer to each problem already solved and at the ready. He does not worry and instead points out the futility in such an endeavor to actually change what’s going to happen, promising to cross each bridge when he gets there. There are merits to both methods, but I am noticing that Patrick has far fewer wrinkles and gray hair than I do.

*Swelling in foot increasing the likelihood I will be mistaken for Miss Piggy on the street.*

I took a hydrocodone on the drive home from the doctor’s office. An hour later I demanded something else as my head was fuzzy, but the pain was just as sharp and bone-jarring as if I’d taken nothing. That night was the hardest one since I’d left the hospital and Patrick jumped up multiple times to fetch me more pain meds when the schedule would allow. My Achilles tendon was on fire, my foot looked like a muppet appendage, and every muscle in my foot and leg took turns spasming and jerking on the offended ankle.

By morning, the pain and swelling had calmed down enough that I felt confident I would be able to drive to work for my first day back without passing out from the pain. I am obviously not allowed to drive while taking pain medication (laws and what-not), so I spent the morning working from home and elevating my foot until the very last possible moment. To be to work by noon, I have to leave the house at 10:30, which meant I had to call in to two of my meetings on the road to attend over the phone while driving with a swollen leg using my left foot. Patrick was terrified I was going to kill myself or someone else, so I just told him not to worry and we’d cross that bridge when we got there. He tucked me into the driver’s seat and gave me a very serious lecture in his most serious voice and then kissed me like we’d never see each other again.

The left foot accelerator pedal we had installed took some getting used to. I did mistake it for the brake more than once on the drive, but I drove slowly, put both hands on the wheel like a student driver, and forced myself not to let my mind wander. I survived. I pissed off a motorcyclist as I very slowly weaved my way up Germantown Road, clenching my teeth around every sharp turn, but aside from an angry shaken fist as he finally passed me at the top of the hill, I arrived at work unscathed and having caused no bodily harm or property damage along my trek.

It was a relief to be back at work and into the swing of things again. I was coaxed into showing my foot to the attendees in my first meeting of the day, but after that everyone else just commented on my lovely foot covering and said it was nice to see my face again. Hard to believe since my face hasn’t seen the sun in weeks, but nice to hear anyway. Shortly after my second meeting of the day, I was gifted with a key to my very own golf cart, mine for as long as I am on crutches and unable to board the shuttle that runs between campus buildings. I took my work buddy, Jarrod, for a spin around campus as he showed me the ropes of how to get around behind the buildings, where to park, and for God’s sake to follow actual traffic laws and not roll through the stop signs Marie!

By the end of the day, I was exhausted from all the crutching and my leg was begging me to lay down. I informed my leg we still had an hour and a half commute home and it began to shout in the form of angry muscle spasms that jerked on the frame and squeezed my ankle. This poor ankle. It’s been through so much. When this is all over, I’m going to treat it to a few days lounging in the sun on a beach. No walking, no frame, nobody trying to make it change when it doesn’t want to. Just some margaritas and the sound of mother’s screaming at their children in the distance. Heaven.

I called my doctor the next day. I informed the office I would be at work until 5 and would then swing by to pick up a prescription for something better than what I had just received if they would be so kind as to write a different prescription. The nurse was sympathetic and assured me she would see what she could do. At 4:59, they called me back to say they had made it happen and my new prescription would be waiting for me at the nearest pharmacy. After another day of driving and crutching after another night of agony and limited sleep, it took all my mental coaching abilities to convince myself to extend my commute with a detour to the pharmacy. I knew, however, that if I didn’t do it now, I would run out of what remained of the dilaudid in a day and I would spend the weekend in abject misery.

I parked as close to the pharmacy as I could, but once I made it up the pharmacist’s window, I was informed they were out of the medication. Not to worry though! All I had to do was take this hard copy signed prescription down the block to the neighboring building where there was a smaller pharmacy that had it in stock. I crutched a block in the heat, clinging to the prescription with two fingers and begging my arms to go faster. I waited nearly an hour for this next pharmacy to fill the prescription, and then crutched back holding the bag of medication with my curled fingertips. I stopped twice to catch my breath and willed the car to roll closer to no avail. By now every muscle in my lower leg and thigh were cramping up, but I made it to the car, threw my crutches in the backseat while I balanced on one leg, and collapsed on the driver’s seat.

I texted Patrick to let me him know I was on my way so he could start worrying and I relayed my little sob story to him. He responded with adequate sympathy and I felt foolish. “No, I”m okay, nobody tried to shoot at me or eat me. I’ve got to stop complaining so much.”

His instant reply? “Nah, it’s you.”

Find somebody who gets you; it’s so much better than trying to change.

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