on the cusp

the thing about going back to work is putting foot up.  foot needs to be up all the time.  foot feels weird when foot is not up.  not a good weird--like me. a bad weird.  jasyub, who says it is perfectly normal that foot turns purple almost the instant that i lower it to the ground, also says i will need to put it up for about a year.  he says the purple syndrome is all part of swelling.  then he told me to put lubriderm on flaky purple foot.

you would not believe the level of flakiness.  let's talk about foot forever. okay! like the whole bottom of foot was flake city.  foot truly is molting.  i felt slightly flake shamed by jasoobi. so i did 2 things.  i looked up why feet flake after surgery and it turns out it is completely normal and all part of the healing process.  then i texted evelyn and asked her if she had time to come over and give foot a scrubbing. evelyn is the kind of friend that doesn't bat an eye at scrubbing your foot or unclogging your toilet.  

she came on thursday and she did an amazing job.  she got so much stuff off without even hurting foot.  she just kept going and going and suddenly i was like, wow, foot looks like a whole new foot! (foot is a whole new foot btw). once she was done foot was sparkling and fresh with way less dried blood and scabs and flakes.  wowwowwow footie, smug fella, brand spanking new! foot beamed back at me and consented to some portraits.

so that was a big happening.  on the second day of participating in 'the big chill' at pathways some funny things happened.  well one funny thing.  that was the smokiest day and super hot. colin picked me up at 3:15 the day before and i wanted to water some plants before so i timed myself accordingly.  so i watered the plants and was seated on my chair at the top of the stairs, just about to go down the stairs when i got a text from colin saying he would pick me up at 3:30.  uh. i was outside much to early but i wasn't about to go back in.  so i sat and sweat for a while. after a while i decided it was time to make my way down the stairs.  now, i go down the stairs on my bum.  and how i get my bum down to the steps is i sit on a chair facing the stairs and i put my trusty yoga block on the floor on the left side of the chair.  then i do this twist off of the chair and dropping my right knee (of my surgical leg) on to the block and my other knee comes down, can fold in and i can flop over on to my bum.  can you picture it?  well if you can picture that, i hope you can picture this.  so i went to do the same maneuver that i've done a lot of times now. and my right knee did land on the yoga block.  however my left thigh could not let go of the chair!  i was hooked on to it and my thigh was NOT letting go.  i wiggled the chair, tilted it, no. i was stuck on it.  so i had to get back up on and try again, this time hopping off a little so as not to be attached to a chair for life.  it must have looked very weird to anyone walking by in the park.

so it was fun to be back at work.  but it was hard because foot did not get adequate raising.  like i sat with foot on a pillow resting on scoot the entire time, but while that is better than being on the floor, it isn't up higher than my hip and after a while it feels weird and uncomfy.  it was good for me to see that i'm not quite ready to come back.  not ready physically but totally ready mentally. 

this weekend heather and i got it into our heads to make cold sesame noodle bowls.  yumi brought me that for one of my rs meals after 2nd surgery.  it's a bowl of noods, with julienned cukes, carrots and tamago on it as well as shredded chicken.  then you pour this sesame sauce on it and you slurp it and feel happy.  so that's what we did.  that's what we were excited about this weekend.  i julienned the cukes and shredded the carrot and chicken and sliced the cherry toms while heather cooked the noods and made the sauce. we forgot to make the tamago (japanese omelette) but whatever.  we slurped it up triumphantly.  

heather was hangry when we started prepping.  "this is all the soy sauce you have?!" she said with a hint of 'i'm going to lose it soon' in her voice.  but luckily for us all she found more in my high cupboard, along with 4 jars of fish sauce.  i hoped a little snack would keeps the hangries at bay so i was like "have a snack!  here eat some alldressed chips." evelyen bought me a costco sized back of alldressed chips and it has taken me weeks to whittle it down.  "i don't like stale chips..." she said morosely but she tried one and was instantly more chipper when she realized they weren't stale.  haha.  if all the world problems could be solved so easily.

later in the afternoon we had our last coconut mango sticky rice feast.  this is the last season our ladies are doing it and next week is their last week.  we will miss our cocomango. heather and i are very different in how we eat our cocomango.  i dump all the sauces on mine and eat it in attack mode.  she prefers a more subtle saucing and only occasionally daintily dips her bite into a sauce.

i've been anxious about the 75% weight bearing and i've been praying that i'll get a handle on it and somehow be ready for the 100% weight bearing which starts tomorrow.  sometime after heather left it was like i turned a corner.  and i just got it.  and how to do it.  i mean i was doing it but it wasn't as hard.  i could do it with more ease and confidence somehow.  and that's why i had the courage to crutch out onto the porch without scoot.  it was dusk and the air was so much cooler than in my house and i sat on a chair a while, only clad in my garments, hoping the people in the park wouldn't really notice me.  izzy came out with me.  and we sat in companionable silence.  she looked at me and i gave her squeezie love eyes and she did not reciprocate.  lol.  we went in when mosquitos started to appear. going up and over the lip of the door was harder than going down and over but i managed it.  and i felt good.

speaking of izzy heather witnessed the peculiar thing she does often when i'm hobbling from room to room on the crutches.  she sees it as her responsibility to guide me.  maybe she's doing something else.  she will often trot over and mewing like she is giving me instructions, she goes in and out between my feet until i reach my destination.  this is pretty cute but also i almost lost my balance once and other times i have to wait to take a step because she is waiting patiently in the exact spot my foot would go. sometimes i have to nudge her forward with a crutch. maybe she thinks i'm learning to walk.  in a way i am.

another thing heather witnessed was the faces i make when i get a sudden pain after having crutch walked from one place to another.  i call the pains aftershocks.  they are complaints my foot is making after the 'earthquake' of me walking that it experienced.  they don't last long.  they just complain and then go.

tomorrow is the start of 100% weight bearing.  i'm on the cusp of big things.  i'm reaching for the door to freedom.

the before pics of foot.  i didn't take a pic of the extreme flakiness underneath but you can see a little of it in these.

and afters!

from this view foot looks like a club though.  obviously there is still swelling. it takes six mo to a year for the swelling to go away.  so.  it's ok to be club.

me and karim.  on the 2nd day we ordered afghan food.  i got lamb chops and they were so so so tasty.

the cold noodle bowl. i know you can't see the noodles.  it was hard to stir because it was so full.  plus the sauce had  A LOT of sesame seeds in it as you can see.

me waiting for colin in the weird smoky light.