When Life Enters the Picture

There is no excuse.  None. At all.

However I'm going to offer one up anyway.

Life.

Life is crazy busy.  You know it.  It's true for you, too.  It seems to be true for everyone these days, doesn't it?  Work.  Cooking.  Shopping.  Movies.  Dinner out.  Family visits.  Friend visits.  Cooking for said visits.  Phone calls.  Life.

Personally, my life has taken a turn further into crazy with appointments and testing out the wazoo (I can't believe wazoo is a real word!).  I won't go into all the craziness of it all, but it's there.

My last post (embarrassingly nearly a year ago) was about a month after I fell.  I had had my MRI and was doing PT.  Ahhhh, such innocent days.  After PT was unsuccessful, the doctor and I decided it was best to schedule surgery.  Eeep, surgery!

Ok, I'll back up.  I go to the surgeon for the first time and he tells me that the type(s) of injuries I sustained rarely needs surgery.  I laugh at him because I had the same injury on my other ankle years ago and wound up having surgery.  I have the surgery in early December and was told that I needed to be non-weight-bearing for 3 weeks.  For someone the size of a hippopotamus that essentially means that I have to live upstairs for those 3 weeks.  To be clear, 3 weeks/21 days after surgery is Christmas Day.  Brilliant.  Someone morbidly obese... ok, I cannot use my weak upper arms to hold up my big-fat body with crutches.  I borrowed a Knee Scooter from a friend and that was a life-saver.  It took a bit to get used to, but crutches were absolutely NOT an option, I was thankful for this.  I had a really hard time going up and down the individual steps in front of the house and wound up crawling on my knees.  It wasn't pretty.

Moving on...  ok, so, I had the surgery on a Wednesday and had a quick check-up on Monday.  All looked good.  Monday night the pain was unbearable.  The doctor had already given me Percocet and Vicodin, but when I called him at the end of the day, he prescribed Dilaudid.  Ok, taken.  But OUCH!  I was still hurting in agonizing pain.  I called him after-hours and he said there was nothing else to do; I should go to the ER.  He also mentioned that he's never had anyone go to the ER for post-op pain.  Hours later, after a lot of groaning, MrB came up and said that I really should head to the emergency room.  Off I went.  They gave me IV Dilaudid and I remember nothing after that.

Changing the bandages was a multi-step process on the outside of my ankle.  Given my size it was a difficult spot to make sure the dressings were secure, so MrB helped me - a lot!  One morning it looked as if I had popped a stitch and called the office to see if they would fix it in the office or if I needed to head to the ER (again).  They said to come, so MrB drove me over to see the partner in the practice.  The bottom line of that adventure was that I had a hematoma which burst at the incision site.  A couple of weeks later I had another follow-up with my doctor.  By that point, the area was ugly absolutely disgusting!  After removing the bandages my surgeon said that he had never seen this happen.

Have you lost count?  That's 1) injury doesn't usually require surgery, 2) never had anyone go to the ER for IV pain meds; 3) hasn't ever seen this problem.

Moving on to #4.  The wound was infected and I wound up going through four rounds of antibiotics.  The surgeon has never seen this (I've come to expect hearing those words by this point), but the wound wasn't healing after some time and he had to refer me to a wound clinic.  Yup.  Is anything ever easy?  So, off to the wound clinic I go.  The clinic treated me with some medical honey and it cleared up after 6-ish weeks.

That's enough life for this post.  But yeah, life has kept me busy since I'd last written.

The Saga Continues

Yes, more drama...

My injuries have created a difficult time.  I have been instructed by the yucky doctor that I am to begin non-weight-bearing.  What is this guy thinking?  First of all., my "900 lb" body cannot be held up by my arms (on a walker or crutches).  In addition, my other ankle and knee are also injured!  So, I am supposed to put all of my weight onto a sprained ankle and knee.  Sure.  No problem...  Well, I was WRONG.  I have to say, I have a Rollator so I was still weight-bearing on my injured leg, but attempted to at least lessen the amount of my fatness being put onto that ankle.

That was yesterday.  There were some errands the hubby and I ran.  For a normal person, it would have been fine, in fact it would have been very few stores.  For me, let's just say that I was virtually unable to put any weight on either leg by the end of the day.  I wasn't able to make it to church today and wound up in bed until 11:30am.  I think the pain wore me out and/or kept me sleeping because it was so bad.  You know, pain can be exhausting!

Hubby has been great!  He isn't letting me get up from the chair for the most part since he got home from the supermarket.  However, he can't get me to the bathroom and sure can't carry me up and down the steps.  I have a therapy appt on Tuesday and his office is on the second floor.  I'm not sure I can make it - especially when I take into account the hour's drive to get there.  Wednesday is a haircut.  Friday I have to do a ton to get ready for a party for my Father on Sunday.  Just writing it is making me tired and causing my knee and ankles to throb.

I am scheduled to see the yucky doctor in about a week and a half.  He danced around the idea that he'll order PT for me at that point (but that I'm too fragile for that right now).  I think it's best (maybe) to wait and see what the good doc says - though that isn't until 8/9.  I don't know... do I wait that long so I can see the good doc, or do I go with the yucky doc and try PT, even though I'm not entirely non-weight-bearing, so don't feel like I"m ready for that; I need to rest my ankle more since I am putting weight on it.  Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks, y'all!

We All Do It

Yes, we do... and I, for one, don't enjoy it!  It's painful, it makes me feel stupid, and I've done it enough for a lifetime.

My guess is you all think I'm talking about sex, or that I've lured you into reading this hoping it's about sex, but it's not.  It's about falling.  Indeed, the simple act of falling.  Being fat alters one's ability to maintain a good center of balance.  While I've had weight issues almost my entire life, I'm most embarrassed about it at this moment.  It's the fattest I've ever been.  It's the most at risk I've been for injury (and I've had a LOT of injuries in the past; it wasn't a big deal for me to enter my High School on crutches... nobody took a second look).

I was at a baseball game two weekends ago.  No, I'm not a huge fan, but it was a birthday gift from my parents to my husband.  Anyway, I have a handicapped permit due to my arthritis and disk disease so of course we parked in those spots.  I noticed that the only ramp I saw served probably a dozen parking spaces.  I was in the middle of making a comment to my husband about it (and how the curb in front of the many handicapped spaces should really be ramped) and the next thing I know I'm on the ground.  I'm yelling "ouch. ouch."  Now I go up steps every day at home and I successfully navigate ramps all the time at a variety of stores but this one had to get me... it had to win.

As I try to get up, I hear someone yelling at me to stay where I was.  It turned out to be a security guard.  As I hear her, I see ballpark paramedics coming towards me.  The next thing I know my parents, along with her pastor (also a PA) and bunches of professionals have surrounded me.  Fortunately I was far enough away from the actual park that my fall didn't cause a huge hullabaloo.

It takes two medics to heave me up onto the curb (you know, the one which should be a ramp).  "What hurts?  Are you okay?  Do you need an ambulance?"  The barrage of questions continued for a bit.  "I don't think anything's broken."  I'd have to agree, I can move all of my extremities and there are no bones sticking out from under my skin.  My right shin was pretty cut up and my left ankle hurt (later my right ankle took over as the pain-ridden appendage, so was the one to get medical attention).  As for the ambulance - how silly would it be to take the ambulance to a hospital I don't even like?!?

The medics squished (and I mean Squished - with a capital "S") me into a wheelchair and we took the elevator up to the box my Mom's church had gotten.  The next thing was to pry me out of the chair - an adventure all of its own.  They iced my abrasions and my right ankle and I spent the entire game in our air-conditioned box.  As time went on, I noticed my right ankle causing me more pain, but I didn't think it was worth hunting down the paramedics.

Oh, did I mention they did an incident report?  I mean, I guess they had to, but it all seemed so over the top.  I fell.  So what?  Yeah, and I had to sign a "refusal of treatment" form.  My father was there to make sure I wasn't signing my life away.

That was Saturday.  Sunday comes along and I'm barely able to walk, with my left ankle swollen as if there was a baseball under the skin.  I try to get up and nearly fall to the ground.  My lower half has been beaten up, or so it felt.  I decided that after church I needed to have x-rays done.  Off to OUR ER we go.  The x-rays were negative, but both ankles and my right knee were sprained.  Since my left ankle and right knee were the worst, I was given an air cast and immobilizer, respectively.  They gave me an ace bandage for my other ankle.  And off I went.

Fast forward to over a week later; Tuesday.  I see a new doctor who gives the most attention to my worst injury, giving me a (huge, ugly) boot for my left ankle and ignored the rest of my injuries.  He wanted to do an MRI and PT (with PT first), but I let him know the severity of my pain, so he ordered the MRI.  Oh, did I mention that he wants me to see some friends of his at a local family practice to test me for diabetes.  Yeah, more joys of being fat.  Yes it runs in my family.  Evidently given those two facts I must have fallen because my lower extremities were numb.  No, they are far from numb - they hurt like the dickens!  I've not done anything about the diabetes.  I just got out of 3 weeks in the hospital and am certain their bloodwork included a sugar level!  Remember, I'm fat and it runs in my family.  Everyone assumes, yet somehow I've managed to avoid the beast.

So, the MRI was Friday and I await the results.  I haven't scheduled a follow-up with this guy.  I did NOT like him.  He didn't listen to me and a medical student spent the most time with me.  He was in and out and spoke so fast I couldn't follow.  I was overwhelmed and didn't even have time to process what he had to say enough to tell him that even Vicodin wasn't helping the pain, so I said it to the student, who ordered an anti-inflammatory (yeah, Aleve didn't work either).  Just so there is no confusion, I don't mind having med students in with me, but when he spends three times the amount of time with me than the doctor himself, I have a problem.  I'm paying to see the doctor!  Anyway, I had ligament surgery on my other ankle several years back and loved that doctor.  I sent the MRI results to him, but unfortunately his first available appt isn't until early August.  Ugh.

To sum up: being fat leaves one vulnerable to falling; being out of shape makes the likelihood of injury greater.  If one is fat, s/he is bound to have diabetes so we'll just chalk this up to that and essentially ignore the pain of said fat person.  Actually, I wonder if often my ailments are assumed to be fat-related.  I KNOW losing weight will improve a lot of my pain issues, but in the meantime, I'm still in PAIN!  I rambled about that in another post, so I'll let you go back and read that one - haha.

And I leave you with a word of gratitude for making your way through this incongruous post - in which the topic was far from your initial suspicions.  Once again, I say that I will try to post more often - and hopefully with shorter posts and good news of any sort!  :)