Some Time Later (Another Coda)

The following was originally written for Leg+Frame's sporadically updated sequel blog, Leg After Frame. My original intention for the post was rather different from what it ultimately became, and about halfway through I realized that it fit thematically quite well with Leg+Frame. I've written extensively about what it's like to have a frame, but not nearly as much about what happens after. While I won't pretend that my frame experience is in any way, shape, or form representative of how frame experiences normally go, hopefully my account has been of some help to somebody, somewhere. Likewise, I'm not going to pretend that my feelings towards the frame two years after the fact are going to be representative about how everybody feels about their frames two years later, hopefully this is helpful nonetheless.

An Introductory Word

It recently occurred to me that I have not updated this blog in just about forever ("forever" here being a rough synonym for "about nine months"), conveniently ignoring multiple events I really should have blogged about, but didn't. For instance, I mentioned that I was having another surgery, and then failed to actually follow up on that whatsoever. I also managed to ignore the frame's second anniversary, and the second anniversary of my leg officially being straightened out (which is also the second anniversary of Jurassic World's initial announcement and my acceptance into college).

So, it's time to make up for (some) lost time.

The Most Recent Procedure

I did, in fact, have surgery last summer. According to this blog, it was July 15. A few bone growths got removed (again according to this blog, three bone growths). None of them, it turned out, was cancerous. I'm trying to think of more to say but I'm not sure there is. I'm mostly positive that I was nervous heading into the hospital for the procedure, not knowing what they were going to find. And I'm mostly positive I hated every single second of being put under anesthesia, as that involves needles, which are quite possibly my least favorite things ever. I know that I spent the night in the hospital. I can remember watching Good Will Hunting after the procedure with my younger brother, who had been trying to watch the movie for years and finally saw it on a small hospital television screen in several installments of arbitrary length as I kept falling asleep. And, to be honest, that's it. It was a surgery. It happened. For the most part, I honestly just forgot about it.

At this point in my life, I've had somewhere between seven and nine surgeries, depending on how you count them (for instance, should the frame count as one surgery or two surgeries, one for putting on and one for taking off?). In my earlier years, I actively paid attention to how many surgeries I had had. Was this surgery three or surgery five? How did it stack up to the last one? Was it going to be another night in the hospital? But as the years have gone on, I've stopped paying attention. When I was younger, I allowed myself to be defined by the bone growths and the surgeries to a rather large extent. Even now, I don't want to downplay the role the bone growths and the surgeries have had in shaping who I am. It's an enormous, critical role.

And yet, I'm also much more than that. Yes, the bone growths and the surgeries are a factor and have been a factor in who I am, but I'm also a Latin/Media Studies/Economics student, a roller coaster enthusiast, box office fanatic, Jurassic Park obsessive, visual effects fan, aspiring screenwriter and filmmaker, sometimes hobbyist photographer, somebody who struggles to choose just one thing, and a whole mess of other things. Which is a nice way of saying that the surgeries just aren't as important to me anymore. Almost as soon as this last one was over and I was semi-conscious after the anesthesia, it was over and it was time to move on to the next adventure.

There are plenty of aspects of the past nine months that I can remember quite clearly. I spent three and a half weeks in Hong Kong, which is my new favorite city of all time, and I can vividly recall the skyscrapers standing in front of the mountains and the first time I took the bus from the university I stayed at to the subway station and looking out the window and seeing just a field of what were, to my Minneapolis-trained mind, skyscrapers but were actually just fairly standard apartment buildings. I took a class in digital animation over the fall semester and I can pretty easily recall more than one last night scrambling to finish a project, including the 19-hour marathon animation/editing session which brought my semester to a close. I remember watching the Jurassic World trailer ten times the day it released. There are other examples, too, but the rhetorical point stands. I don't particularly recall the surgery. Outside of the lack of cancer, it wasn't all that important.

The Frame, Later

Which brings me to the next point: I failed to write an entry for the frame's second anniversary, which surprises me. I feel like that's exactly the kind of thing which should spur me to write a blog entry, do a nice retrospective on the whole process, but I guess it slipped my mind. Which is actually the funny thing, come to think about it. The frame as a whole has kind of slipped my mind.

Many years ago, I got into the habit of wearing long pants every day because I was insecure about the way my legs boasted an odd assortment of bumps and lumps and other fun disfigurements, and because my incisions were far more visible than they are today and far less regularly shaped, and for all sorts of reasons. These days, I don't care quite as much about letting others see my legs. For one, most of the offending growths have been removed by now. For another thing, I'm proud of the scars because I think they reflect well on the fact that I had these procedures and I made it through these procedures and I believe that says something about who I am as a person and who I can be. But there's still this force of habit towards wearing long pants over shorts and anyway, I like the feel of the extra fabric. This means, however, that I hardly ever see the scars the frame has left behind. I know that they are still a sort of purplish hue. I know that my right leg is still a little bit swollen. However, I don't look at the scars or how my leg is swollen. Those facts don't bother me. It's just that I have other things to look at.

For whatever end, I have left the frame behind. To be perfectly honest, I think more frequently about skyscrapers than I do about my frame. To be fair, I think about skyscrapers a good deal more than the average person. The point still stands. Once upon a time, the frame was an enormous deal to me. I thought about it more or less every day and felt strong emotions about the experience and it was a major input in the mishmash of influences and experiences that make me. That was then. Now, I don't think about it every day. And when I do think about it, it's a general, 'Yes, this was a thing that happened to me once upon a time.'

I'm just shy of being 27 months past the frame's initial placement on my leg and just short of two years past the frame's removal from my leg. It really hasn't been that long, but at the same time, I guess it's been long enough. There was a time when my leg was transfixed with a bulky metal device worth approximately as much as a new car. It made a difference in my life, an active, persistent difference. After all, both of my legs are straight. It's just that there are so many better, more interesting, more dynamic, more personal things I can focus on than a piece of hardware I haven't seen in almost two years. But I have no lingering pain. And, personally, my scars don't bother me. I could see situations where it would be different—if I was a girl, for instance, or if I cared more about my appearance, I could see where having a lower leg dotted with reminders of metal pins might be an issue in today's image-focused society. But my scars are there and that's that. I'm not sure what else to say. Two and a bit years ago, I had an encounter with a Taylor Spatial Frame, also known as an external fixator. It was an encounter and that's that.

A Closing Word

Earlier this week, the central Virginia weather got confused and transitioned from snow and ice to the 70s and spring (the weather has since slightly course-corrected). It was honestly glorious. I simply had to be outside, soaking it in for as long as it lasted. I decided that I might as well put off doing homework and go on an expedition, take a nice walk to areas of Grounds I hadn't visited before.

I dashed into my room and changed from my jeans into a pair of shorts. After all, it was near 80˚ outside and I wasn't about to cook myself to death. On my way out of the dorm, I ran into a friend who was studying outside. We talked for a little bit.

He noticed my scars. "Did you cut yourself?" he asked, wondering if I'd taken a bad fall sometime in the past or something.

"No," I said, and I explained about this one time that I had my legs surgically straightened.

We finished our conversation and I went on my expedition and that was that.