Thinking...

Oh my HECK... it does NOT feel good to have an entire tray of already-frozen ice cubes fall out of the freezer right on top of where the incision is on my Frankenfoot.

Tinkering

Just picked a new template for my blog page. Got tired of the old one.

Frankenfoot

First off, this is what my foot looked like from about Noon on Friday until late this morning. The bandage was ginormous and wrapped all the way up around my ankle. It left a lot to the imagination about what was actually going on under there... but I wasn't allowed to peek until I went back to the doctor this morning. Like Christmas... do not open until...

So this morning I went to see my surgeon, Dr. G. I found that I was more nervous about this appointment than I had been about the surgery. OK. Maybe not MORE... but at least as much. What if the scar was huge? What if the bandage stuck to the incision and it hurt when he took it off? What if, what if, what if? Luckily I didn't have to wait to long to see the doctor once I got there, so I didn't have time to work myself up too much. :-)

He unwrapped what seemed like miles of ace bandage, tape, and gauze and revealed... FRANKENFOOT!

The incision, as you can see, IS quite large. Lots of stitches inside and outside. Turns out he found more than he bargained for when he got in there. First off, the cyst was growing toward my toes instead of toward my ankle, as he had thought. Second, it was under a tendon and pushing up on a muscle, making the muscle bulge. And lastly, as an added extra bonus, he found a bone spur under all of it, which is what likely caused the cyst in the first place. Ding, ding... we have a winner! Lucky me!

So it's a little swollen, a little bruised, a little stained with the stuff they clean the area with before surgery. In short, a little gross.

And what of all the "ink" you might be asking. Well, in pre-op, I was told to write "yes" on the ankle of the foot I was having operated on. When the doctor came in to talk to me before surgery, he initialed the top of my foot to confirm my choice of feet. I guess this is a CYA measure to ensure the doctor doesn't slice into the wrong foot. That would be bad. The smiley face... well, that was Dr. G making fun of me. He laughed at me when I took my Blackberry out to take a picture of my foot before he re-bandaged it. So he added the smiley face and told me to go ahead and take the picture.

Then he re-bandaged. Smaller and pink! Practical AND stylish. He gave me a choice of pink or green... both were the bright colors of the 80s. Perhaps I should've chosen BOTH and made my foot look like a watermelon? Anyway, this bandage stays on until next Thursday, when I got back to have at least some of the stitches removed. Still can't get it wet, which means at least another 10 days of shower aerobics and bagging and taping. And the oh-so-stylish shoe, which you can see in the picture above, is a new fixture in my life... at least for the next month or so.

And now Frankenfoot and I are back on the sofa. The sofa nest will be dismantled after today. Life resumes to mostly normal tomorrow. Back to work on Thursday. It was fun while it lasted...

Thinking...

It's pretty darn cool that I went out to lunch to two friends today wearing capri pants and flip flops. On November 9th. Yes, it's THAT warm.

Well, flip flop (singular) if you want to get technical... I suppose the surgical shoe qualifies as a sandal since it is open-toe. An extremely unattractive sandal, but a sandal nonetheless...

Survival

This morning I accomplished great things... I double-bagged and taped my foot/leg, got into the shower without killing myself, got showered, SHAVED MY LEGS (at least the parts that weren't covered in plastic and tape), AND got back out of the shower without killing myself. Quite an accomplishment, no?

Inventory

In no particular order, here are the things I have been surrounded with in my sofa nest for the weekend.

• Fleece blanket
  
• Pile of pillows
  
• Bottles of water
  
• Cans of Diet Coke
  
• Chapstick
  
• Catalogs
  
• Television remote (and DVD remote and cable remote)
  
• Notepad
  
• Bottle of Tylenol III
  
• Bottle of Motrin
  
• Dayplanner
  
• Laptop
  
• Cell phone
  
• Blackberry
  
• House phone
  
• Books (three of them)
  
• Tissues
  
• Pens
  
• Cupcakes
  
• Cookies
  
• Tootsie rolls
  
• Rice Krispie Treat
  
• Briefcase
  
• Purse
  
• Bag for trash and food wrappers

I think that about covers it. I can conquer the world from my sofa nest!!

Thinking...

Thank God for wireless Internet!

I have, for the most part, been sitting or lying on the sofa since about Noon on Friday. The "sofa nest" is well-stocked, and at a perfect viewing angle to the flat screen, but there's really nothing on TV during the day. Nothing. OK, today there was football.

So, I've caught up on the last two episodes of Grey's Anatomy, the last two episodes of Brothers & Sisters, and the last two episodes of Desperate Housewives. I've spent a lot of time on Facebook. I've done some Christmas shopping. I've read CNN.com. A lot.

I wouldn't have been able to do any of that without my laptop and my wireless Internet connection.

So, while a nice visit from my BFF yesterday made my day, and getting out of the house for a few hours today (for the first time since I came home from the surgical center) for my goddaughter's birthday party was awesome, I don't know what else I'd have been doing all weekend without the Internet!

I don't know how my dad did it all those years ago when he had back surgeries and had to be in bed for DAYS with no computer, let alone wireless Internet. Progress rocks!