The Corrected Frame

Today has been, so far, a fairly uneventful day (translation: I have spent my day relaxing on the couch while Sunny the couch-loving golden retriever snores away on the couch next to me). Which is to say, there really isn't much new for me to report.

However, as promised, I now have a picture of the frame as it currently exists on my leg with only three days of strut adjustments left to go. I don't really want to re-post the original frame picture here for the umpteenth time, but for a point of reference as far as where my leg started this process, the picture's in my last post. I think.

Anyhow, I present to you the (almost) corrected frame:

Note how close to parallel those two rings are…

Completely unrelated but also of note: last night marked some minor milestones in my recovery process. Milestone number one was that my mother moved back upstairs to her normal bed after spending the past two weeks in the hospital or on a couch more or less right next to my current room in case I need help in the middle of the night.

Milestone number two was that I was able to fend for myself against the cat last night.

Some quick background: my family has five dogs and two cats. Of the dogs, only Sunny has figured out how to open doors. I think both cats have figured out the trick. Sadly, neither cat is a welcome presence in the room while I'm trying to fall asleep, especially our male cat, Asad (better known as El Snugglo because he really, truly hates being snuggled. With a passion). When Snuggs opens the door and marches into the room, he can be counted on to prance all over you, to screech and carry on, to make a general nuisance of himself.

Last night, Snuggs came into my room.

I was not amused. For a few seconds, I had a quandary: should I call my mother and alert her to the situation, disrupting her first night of sleeping in her own bed in weeks? should I let the door remain ajar, allowing the cats to wander in and out at will, knowing full well it would make my night much harder and probably entail my waking up at 6:30 with the dogs? or should I get up on my own, use the walker to march the door once Snuggs was out of the room, shut the door and return to bed?

I went with the final option. I got up, used the walker, shut the door. Then I returned to bed and slept peacefully the rest of the night.

To be fair, I'm still not incredibly stable with the walker. While the frame isn't super heavy (it weighs about two pounds), it's still enough to knock me slightly off-balance. I also can't go very far in the walker without needing to sit down and rest. But at least the walker offers a good deal more independence than the wheelchair, including the ability to lock the cat out of my room for the night.

Another advantage the walker has over the wheelchair: it handles rugs far better than the wheelchair. Also: a walker is far less tempting to brothers with limited attention spans to play with than, say, a wheelchair.