Tomorrow will mark two months of the frame being cheerfully attached to my leg. Because I haven't been x-rayed in about a month, I can't say for certain how much longer I should expect to have it on (the current estimate is somewhere between mid-May and June, once my school schedule has been taken into account). Hopefully the bones are growing back well. They'd better be.
As anybody who has ever read or seen the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets knows, regrowing bone is not the most fun of activities. Seeing as there are no magical potions I can take to make this an overnight process, it is also not particularly dramatic. I wear the frame and sit in my chair, with occasional laps, taken at a walk (running with the frame is not a recommended activity), around the ground floor of the house to break up the monotony.
I also, it seems, get sick a lot.
Normally, I'm hardly ever sick, missing perhaps a day or two per school year because of illness. In the last two months, I've spent six days in the hospital (mostly my fault, since I elected my way into this procedure), spent many days at home not quite mobile enough for academic pursuit, then spent more days at home too tired for academic pursuit, and now I have a head cold. The current hypothesis goes something along the lines of I'm regrowing bone, which takes energy, which means that I'm more susceptible to viruses, bacteria and the like.
This does not make me particularly happy.
I've gone through impressive amounts of Kleenex, evicting a stunning amount of mucus from my nose. I've coughed and, on one rather frightening occasion, almost fainted. Luckily I managed to hold onto a wall until I regained balance and continued on with my lap before realizing that I probably shouldn't be up and about, calling my parents to inform them of my predicament, and being ordered to return to the chair, where I spent the next solid chunk of time wanting to go for another lap. The only vaguely positive thing from the head cold is, since I'm supposed to be drinking lots of fluids, I get an excuse to enjoy some ginger ale.
Beyond the sickness, which, to be fair, could be more reflective of the general health of Minnesotans in winter, the frame has manifested itself in my life mostly by being a general nuisance. Two months in and I still have about zero spatial awareness regarding the Taylor Spatial Frame. I find it stunning that the house has not suffered serious damage from the many, many, many times I've clonked the frame into the woodwork. I've also learned the hard way that there are many spaces which were not designed for frames. Buses, for instance—getting down the central aisle requires a sort of shuffle as the aisle isn't wide enough for me to walk through normally with the device attached. Also, I have to take up an entire bench all on my own because the frame does not fit in the space between the seat and the back of the bench in front.
The other aggravating part of the whole frame experience is the pin sites. Now, for the most part the pin sites aren't bad. I can't really notice them and, for the most part, they don't notice me. That said, one of the piano wire pins (as opposed to the 6 mm halfpins) does not approve when my leg, say, goes from being held straight to a bent position or vice versa, which has proven to be aggravating. Isn't enough that I need to be careful what I do with the leg for fear of breaking bones?
Regardless. Despite my current sour mood (mostly brought on by the fact that I missed school today with my head cold—mercifully, I'm improving—resulting in my having tragic amounts of work to make up), I'm making progress.
Just four or so months to go. One third of the way there.
This had better be worth it.
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