ankle fest 2012

Time to document my grace for posterity. That broken ankle I mentioned a while ago? Yeah, it was because my black cat decided to nap on a dark step. :^(

She's fine [though she was a bit miffed at the rude awakening]...the break came about when my bare foot sent a panic signal to the brain saying "WRONG TEXTURE! NOT CARPET! IDENTITY MATCH = CAT! ABORT!! ABORT!!!" and my brain sent a lightning-quick response to my motor system, causing me to near-instantly throw myself sideways off the cat to prevent ending up with Stacey-induced flatcat [and a lifetime of guilt].

I really need to work on those landings. >.<

The ankle is doing much better. I still don't have full flexibility, but I can walk with just an ankle brace now. Doing physical therapy, pain is there, but the level is going down [except after I exercise it, which is to be expected]. All things considered, it could have been much, much worse.

So for fun, here is the blog version of the Facebook album I posted...so that in later years, I can look back at it and cringe, shake my head, and laugh at the random chance that brought it about.

May 16th, 2012 - The offending limb, awaiting attention at the Urgent Care clinic.

May 16th, 2012 - Another ankle angle. At this point, I was hoping it was just a nasty sprain [silly me, taunting the universe like that].

May 20th, 2012 - The right side of the left ankle. A tiny bruise started up...looks innocuous, doesn't it?

May 23rd, 2012 - By far the most spectacular picture of my ankle. This was a week after I broke it.

May 24th, 2012 - A week after the breakage. Swelling is going down a bit [I'd been staying off of it, thanks to the help of an amazingly patient husband]. The bruise on the shin was [and still is] annoying...there were times when that area hurt worse than the ankle. Doctor says it's likely a bone bruise that will continue to cause troubles for a while [buh].

May 24th, 2012 - Healing bruises are fascinating...it's like someone took a highlighter to my foot and leg. The bruising went up into the knuckle of the big toe, between it and the next one, and down underneath to the ball of my foot. If you're going to break a bone, might as well do it right, right?

May 26th, 2012 - The right side, showing some solidarity with the broken left side...it couldn't let it have all of the bruising fun now, could it?

June 8th, 2012 - This was *really* interesting. Three weeks after the break, I was starting to move around more, stand for longer periods of time. This meant more swelling, and some awesome swelling at that...Will and I called this my "memory foam" foot, because when you pushed lightly on it, it would dent and then come back very, very slowly. [The fluids were pushing into the tissue itself, causing the squishyness.]

Freaky.

May 26th, 2012 - The follow-up xray, six weeks after breaking it. The bone is healing, but interestingly, the break is actually bigger and wider than it originally was, due to bony resorption [the body likes to reabsorb bits of bone and calcium]. It's going to be quite a while before it's whole again.

[Those screws are from the first time I broke it, twenty-some years ago. According to the doctor, they haven't used that type of screw in a long time...the heads are so large that they caused complications. Nice thing to find out many years later... >.< ]

So there you have it...Ankle Fest 2012, in all its glory. Okay, some of its glory...I didn't document the hilarious hobbling, or the laughable awkwardness of trying to use the shower chair the first couple of weeks, or those annoying nights that the vicodin just wasn't enough to dull everything so I could sleep. This is now officially the second broken bone I've had in my life [not counting my crushed vertebra], and I would like to stop there...that's plenty. So far, my pattern seems to be twenty-ish years between ankle injuries...so come 2032, don't be surprised to see me wrapping myself in bubble wrap for safe-keeping. >.<