The Foot Thing

I keep thinking I want to document The Foot Thing, from beginning to end.  I certainly mention it plenty here and everywhere.  I really can't bring myself to it. In fact, the days right after surgery are already misty (thank you, pain pills) and I'd like to keep them that way.  I do have the urge to think about it in a timeline sense.

July 3, 2010-  Jump around and jump real high at the Faith No More show, land on heel.  Heel turns jet black and hurts like dying agony for a month and a half.  It eventually faded, only to flare up during long stints on my feet, in bad shoes.

July 3, 2011 (right?)  Attend a party, consume alcohol, go on a 3 mile walk to see fireworks in very cute and very terrible for my feet sandals.  Slip.  Brush it off for the rest of the evening, till I woke up at 4 am in a cold sweat, with the weight of the blanket crushing the life out of my foot, it seemed.  Ate an oxycontin, went to the ER the next day. (turns out, in retrospect, this is when I ruptured it.)

July 3- September something.  Misdiagnosis, pain, more pain, low air boot, higher air boot, x rays, physical therapy, cortisone shots...then epiphany in the form of an MRI.  Surgery scheduled.

September something to Nov 9- Cramming as much fun and activity into my fall as I could possibly, while secretly stressing and dreading.  Lots of pain, disregarding it.  Screw pain, I have a life to live.

Nov 9- surgery to repair not only a ruptured achilles tendon, but an infected bursa, a heel spur so large it made my surgeon say "whoa!" out loud.  It was supposed to be a routine 1 hour surgery that stretched to three hours.  Into the wheelchair, and a bandage/splint.  Began sleeping on the futon downstairs.  Learned the meaning of "sponge bath".

Off the pain pills by Nov 12.

Nov 16- Hard cast and still in the chair/crutches.

5 weeks after November 9- a fall off my crutches that stretched the healing through February.  Blew the incision open, exposing the tendon.

Days after the fall- out of the hard cast into a huge bandage, thus beginning the "wound care" phase of this journey.  Out of the wheelchair full time, and hobbling a little.  Wheelchair for long stints on my feet (long, at the time, meant longer than a trip to the bathroom.)  Able to sleep back in my room upstairs, and take half-assed showers.

Christmas- walking very tentatively, in a boot, with lots of resting and a cane, still half in the chair.

January 4, tendon still right out there, exposed.  Back into surgery.  Skin graft time.  Novacane shot right into my tendon, nearly pissed my hospital johnny, and back on the pain pills for the next week straight.

January 10- go back to work.  Shaky, in the big boot and in a lot of pain, wishing I could use my crutches at work.

January 23- start physical therapy.  Ecstatic about being able to drive a little, and walk into work looking relatively normal.  Out of the boot.  Walking like a careful drunk.  Not quite limping, but sort of like I have a potato chip between my ass cheeks and trying not to break it.  This is a result of not being able to bend my foot at all.

February 6- walk around the block.  Regret it later.  Still totally psyched.

February 7- walk around Red Bank, maybe 4-6 blocks total.  REALLY regret it later.

February 8- Get a stern lesson from my therapist.  Still atrophied, still in a lot of pain.  My leg looks like the leg of an anemic five year old, with no color or muscle tone, still in spite of all my exercising.  Throughout all this, I've been religiously doing my physical therapy, since I got out of the cast.  Learn that it could be a year before I'm pain free.  Trying not to be depressed about it.

I think I figured out why I'm so antsy around this time of night.  I get bored of the internet. I lose focus to read.  I don't have the attention span to play any heavy video games.  I become fidgety.  Just now, in that state of mind, I got up and went around the living room doing my usual tank animal care.  Misting the spiders, spot checking the temps on all the tanks, watching Grim explore the outer reaches of her new huge tank. I got up and started focusing on a passion of mine, the pets. They took me right out of that buzzing futile spastic energy brain state, and made me happy for a few.

I sat right down here to write about it.  I crave my hobbies, I think. I crave doing things with my hands.  When I get in this mood, I want to paint my minis, do needlepoint, craft and create.  I'm writing because it's a good thing to do with this energy.

I really want to set up my netbook, drag out all my paints, watch some trashy TV and paint my miniatures.  Right now, and on into the night, till I'm squinting so bad my eyes water.

Now that we've set the tanks up in the living room in a definitive more permanent manner, that's my cue to take back my drawing table upstairs. Irv dragged the ancient thing up there, to use as his "office" upstairs, but he's so needy and co dependent, he can't work alone up there, he has to be near the family.  I suffer no such issues, I'm just a little apathetic (that, and I'm still not negotiating the staircase as well as I'd like).  I'm taking this moment and this energy as the incentive to clear a space to work on my handiworks.  I'm taking my drawing table space back, and moving my paints and minis up there, for permanently, so I don't have to drag everything out, eke out a space down here, and hope I am undisturbed for a small amount of time, only to bung everything back into boxes, and back under the couch till the next time.

Right now, I'll content myself with writing, and snake-gazing.  Anyone who thinks that only fuzzy companion animals can help relieve stress, have never owned a sinuous, sensuous, supple, elegant and lovely python.  My spiders, too. Watching their delicate gestures, web weaving, the gentle twitter of palps, their gravity defying acrobatics-but-slowly...maybe when I set up my space later, upstairs, I'll bring Spooky with me.  They're good listeners, too.

First, listen to the song.  Read the lyrics while you're listening.  I mean it.  The song's epic, but that's not why I'm writing about it.

Bother to do that, and you'll learn a lot about me.  This is the song I listened to every single day, for three or four years straight.  I needed it.  I'd listen to it as I was putting on makeup to go out, or in my car on my way somewhere.  Always top volume, always singing along.  Those were very good years!

Maybe it's not "me" the way you know me, but it's the "me" I want to display.  It's my armor.  It's the aura  I wish to project.  It was the transition of "jeans and teeshirts" to "leather and chains". I mentioned something to Luiz the other day, without really thinking about it too hard.  I gestured to a picture I keep on my desk of myself at 16, my little brother and my little cousin. I said "That's more like me now than when I was 18"  Meaning, that was before I took on some mantle, before I started disguising myself.  When I started dressing some "part" and cloaking myself in the trappings of...whatever it is I was going for... I felt well and truly great, going out the door, in public.  I never feared new situations. I never hesitated to walk into a crowded room.

Since I've let that fall away, I'm becoming more paralyzed in the face of society.  I hate new situations, I hate crowds, I always feel like everyone's staring at me, I feel constantly self conscious.

Taking some steps, in my life, now that I'm mobile again and this whole crippled-tendon thing is moving behind me.  Taking steps to craft myself again, regain confidence, put things in my body that make me feel good (nutrients, cock, piercings) and on my body (good make up, good clothes, tattooes) to start back down the path of having very good days, every day.

For about the past year-year and a half, I've been in a funk. I'm aware of it. I've been aware of it, and I'm taking initiative to turn it around, now.

This song makes me feel invincible, invisible, impossible, and empowered.  It's who I was, and who I always wanted to be, and who I still am.  I'm adding it to my "leaving the house" playlist.  It fills me with life beyond just life.  I feel the seeds of my divine will grow and sprout when I listen to this song. The power that lies dormant at my center expands, and fills me, radiating outward, and hopefully past my skin.

Some part of me falls asleep, once in awhile, and I don't notice it till it wakes up again.  I'm having one of those phases, where it's waking up and getting antsy again.  The creative productive forceful part of me.  The driver of the Chariot.  This is what plays in her car stereo.