Technically speaking, it's almost one in the morning and I have to be up at six to go to the hospital for the first of day in a stay which will be somewhere in the two- to four-day range. And for the surgery itself. Mustn't forget that. But I got to thinking about this blog and how I really haven't been updating it like I should be (two back-story entries down, something like eleven to go…and no mention yet of my mindset with the procedure itself imminent) and my ability to write post-surgery can be described best by the word 'questionable.' As a quick side-note, though, I have updated the technical settings of this blog to allow my mother to post updates, which I imagine (I hope) will come throughout the day.
Which is why I'm writing now.
I figure that it doesn't really matter how much sleep I get tonight. After all, they'll be sticking a needle in my arm tomorrow morning (I hate needles) and then it'll be lights out for a few hours. And then I'd assume there will be the traditional post-anesthesia nap sometime in the afternoon. Perhaps some ginger ale to drink, too. Ginger ale after surgery is always a plus.
But…it's tomorrow (well, today, technically…it's after midnight).
My surgery is actually today. Which means that yesterday was the final day of my life when I didn't know what wearing a frame was like, the final day of my life with a crooked and frame-free leg, which, if you think about it, is kind of a bigger deal than it sounds like.
So, Natcher, you're having somewhat major life-changing surgery this morning, about seven hours, in fact. How does it feel?
I don't know. When I woke up yesterday, instead of thinking, "Oh! It's Christmas! Is my stocking in my room or has it been stowed safely downstairs away from the reach of the ever-hungry golden retriever?" I thought, "I'm having surgery tomorrow and I don't know what it will be like." And then, for the first part of the day, going downstairs for a light breakfast and examining the stocking, getting in the car to go to church, sitting in the pew, cramped by several relatively large fellow church-goers, I felt sick, I was so nervous.
As mass continued, though, I did start feeling less sick—it's amazing what Christmas carols and hymns can do. And by the end, when we were leaving, my mother offered to let us light a votive candle. With a prayer for strength and for faith, I lit my candle.
The rest of the day was fairly quiet. I tried to work through some more college applications and am mostly done now (as in, six down with the final application barely started). We opened gifts (I got new scarfs, some money for my Kindle, which should be helpful for the hospital stay, and books, both in English and Latin, which makes me very happy). We tied ribbons on the dogs. We ate dinner. We watched the Muppet Christmas Carol.
Also of note: my family more or less lives on a lake. There's a path which goes all the way around that the city paves in winter. I've made it all the way around on foot something like five or six times (maybe more). Months ago, after the surgery was scheduled but well before the seasons changed and snow arrived, I informed my father we were going to walk all the way around the lake on Christmas Day, seeing as it was my last day walking and all.
So we walked all the way around the lake.
According to my mother repeating the TV weather forecasters said, this year marked the coldest Christmas in Minnesota in something like twenty years. The temperature hovered below a toasty ten degrees or so Fahrenheit. It was cold enough that my mother offered me her warmer, longer jacket to wear and our English Cocker Spaniel, who, if he finds out anybody is going on a walk, will have several heart attacks and a stroke if not taken along, wore a jacket (since he's gained some weight recently, it barely fit). His initial enthusiasm for the walk also seemed to freeze, since less than halfway through he started heading rather decisively for home.
And, yes, it was cold outside. My cheeks, which remained uncovered throughout the walk, were still pink half an hour after coming back inside. The cold easily ate through my jeans, though my feet were protected by a pair of boots. But, really, it was my last chance to go around that lake for the next six months or so. Of course I was making it all the way around.
About the boots, though… The pair I wound up wearing was extremely loose on me. I first put on a pretty tight-fitting pair. Unfortunately, the boot was rubbing up against bone growths on my ankle, which would have made it difficult for me to make it around the lake. So, at the first available bench, my father offered to see if we could switch shoes. As it turned out, the pair I was wearing fit him okay and the pair he was wearing fit me okay and, more importantly, accommodated my ankle.
What I did not account for was a three-mile, hour-plus walk in really loose boots resulting in some fairly substantial blisters on the bottom of my feet (thankfully, really just the right foot, which will be very, very, very non-weight-bearing shortly). Since blisters are apparently cause to cancel surgeries, I'm not supposed to mention this tomorrow morning.
But still. I made it around the lake.
Considering the probable state of my mobility tomorrow, that's something.
Showing posts with label anticipation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anticipation. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Friday, December 21, 2012
Almost a Triumphant Return
Well…it's been a while since I last posted (more than two weeks). Which is clearly a bit of a problem. As far as excuses, I don't really have any. An overwhelming amount of schoolwork is the closest I can come, but to be honest, I should have had time. I just had a lot to say, which seemed overwhelming, and I badly wanted to have a long amount of uninterrupted time to just write.
I'm on break now (including today, five whole days which don't involve a surgery). So, time.
First off, I have less than a week to go until 6:30 AM on December 26, when I have to be at Gillette Children's Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota to begin a two-to-four day stay. The procedure starts at 8:00 AM and will last in the two to two-and-a-half hour range. I will be in the recovery room for about an hour. In other words, by noon I should be comfortably in the hospital room. Part of me wants to look at the upcoming stay as a vacation (I mean, it's a bed outside of home, which is clearly the main component of being on vacation) and most of me just says, "Natcher. You're undergoing a relatively serious surgery. This isn't a vacation."
Regardless of whether my upcoming experience is or is not a vacation, I've come to the conclusion that it is legitimately happening (though I still can't really conceptualize the experience as a whole). This is for two reasons. Reason number one is I am now sworn off of Motrin and Aleve, my two preferred pain medicines, in anticipation of anesthesia. The second reason is this:
My personal system for acknowledging the legitimacy of upcoming dates is that if the day is on or before the expiration dates of the milk cartons at school, it's real. Which is to say, my surgery has been a very real thing for the past week or so. After all, I had the pre-op appointment today and there's a packet of things I should know before surgery sitting on the kitchen table.
Of course, the pre-op was with my pediatrician, not my surgeon. And, of course, the packet of information contains such helpful tidbits as when I can no longer have breast milk or baby formula and not the more helpful bits, such as what pin site cleaning actually feels like and how overly large the sweatpants I'll be in for the next six months will really be and will I actually be able to walk in six months. But still.
This is happening.
There was a time last week where we almost pushed the surgery date back until spring. On Monday (the tenth), I was riding home from school with my father. We hit a patch of ice and started to slide. The car ahead of us was stopping but, because of the ice, we couldn't, and as we were about to hit we turned and the front of my father's car went beneath the bumper of a large green parked truck. We were both thrown forward slightly. I absorbed all the impact (not that much impact, really) through a large bone growth on my right leg which looks like a second kneecap. I still have the bruise.
The front of my father's car looked like this after the incident:
Now, I normally love snow. And ice (ice makes fun sounds when you crack it). But the honest truth of the matter is, a lot of stuff was going on and what if we got into an accident on the way home from the hospital and how would I get into the house and wouldn't it be easier if we just did this in March or April when there is no snow or ice on the ground…
The honest truth of the matter is that there is great legitimacy in those arguments. However, it took me long enough to become convinced that this surgery makes sense for me to undergo. I'm not going to risk convincing myself out of the procedure. I'm aware this experience won't be a pleasant one.
I still think it's necessary.
I'm on break now (including today, five whole days which don't involve a surgery). So, time.
First off, I have less than a week to go until 6:30 AM on December 26, when I have to be at Gillette Children's Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota to begin a two-to-four day stay. The procedure starts at 8:00 AM and will last in the two to two-and-a-half hour range. I will be in the recovery room for about an hour. In other words, by noon I should be comfortably in the hospital room. Part of me wants to look at the upcoming stay as a vacation (I mean, it's a bed outside of home, which is clearly the main component of being on vacation) and most of me just says, "Natcher. You're undergoing a relatively serious surgery. This isn't a vacation."
Regardless of whether my upcoming experience is or is not a vacation, I've come to the conclusion that it is legitimately happening (though I still can't really conceptualize the experience as a whole). This is for two reasons. Reason number one is I am now sworn off of Motrin and Aleve, my two preferred pain medicines, in anticipation of anesthesia. The second reason is this:
 |
| Note the expiration date (this carton of milk obtained and consumed on Dec. 14, I believe) |
Of course, the pre-op was with my pediatrician, not my surgeon. And, of course, the packet of information contains such helpful tidbits as when I can no longer have breast milk or baby formula and not the more helpful bits, such as what pin site cleaning actually feels like and how overly large the sweatpants I'll be in for the next six months will really be and will I actually be able to walk in six months. But still.
This is happening.
There was a time last week where we almost pushed the surgery date back until spring. On Monday (the tenth), I was riding home from school with my father. We hit a patch of ice and started to slide. The car ahead of us was stopping but, because of the ice, we couldn't, and as we were about to hit we turned and the front of my father's car went beneath the bumper of a large green parked truck. We were both thrown forward slightly. I absorbed all the impact (not that much impact, really) through a large bone growth on my right leg which looks like a second kneecap. I still have the bruise.
The front of my father's car looked like this after the incident:
 |
| Slightly worse than the truck, which literally got off without a scratch |
The honest truth of the matter is that there is great legitimacy in those arguments. However, it took me long enough to become convinced that this surgery makes sense for me to undergo. I'm not going to risk convincing myself out of the procedure. I'm aware this experience won't be a pleasant one.
I still think it's necessary.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Frames on Television
One of the myriad advantages non-school nights have over school nights is the ability to stay up longer (coupled with the lack of work which needs to be done and the knowledge that you can wake up considerably later the next morning, they're wonderful). I don't do anything particularly extreme to take advantage of my Fridays and Saturdays. Ignore homework, watch a couple episodes of television, relax in my big black leather corner chair under a heavy coating of blanket.
Well, last night I watched the local news with my parents (after experiencing the spectacular final half of the 1936 production Dracula's Daughter—gotta love the 1930s). And during the news, they listed some of the stories Nightline would be covering that night.
One story was about a women who endured a controversial series of surgeries to grow 14 inches.
I took that to mean one of two things: 1) hormone modifications or 2) external fixators.
As I think I've mentioned before, external fixators can be used to help badly broken bones heal by holding them in place with the pins. They can also be used to straighten limbs and to lengthen limbs, as I'll be doing (straightening the leg plus gaining a half-inch to even the two legs out).
The story was about a woman, Tiffanie DiDonato, who used external fixators to grow fourteen inches. At age eight, she had her legs extended by four inches and also had frames to lengthen her arms. According to Nightline, four inches is the recommended maximum amount of limb extension to be gained from one round of frames. But at age fifteen, she had another set of frames placed on her legs, extending the legs by a further ten inches. Which is a lot. Then she wrote a memoir, which I'm thinking of reading after my frames are on.
Now, the way Nightline chooses to describe external fixators is "extremely painful, risky and controversial" (without, for some reason I cannot fathom, mentioning the words "external fixator" or "frame" once in the story). This is in the context of limb lengthening, granted, but still. First off, I was unaware of there being any controversy over the frames. My best guess as to why I would be unaware of this supposed controversy is because frames, as medical devices, are really not all that well-known. Furthermore, all of the people they talk to in the program are dwarfs who had limb extensions a long time ago—since DiDonato is 32 now, that means she had her final frame placed 17 years ago, in 1995. Medicine, like all sciences, has made some serious advancements since then. When I was told about the frames, I was told that this was a very low-risk procedure, though it would be notably uncomfortable, the frame would probably be infected at some point, and so on. Which is to say, I question Nightline's conclusions about the riskiness of the procedure. Then again, I'm not having my leg lengthened by all that much, so we'll see. However, my bones will be broken and forced to regrow in the way the surgeons want, so perhaps my situation is vaguely similar to hers? Not as extreme, but shades of similarity.
The second part of the story to comment on is its depiction of the pain associated with the frames. They talk about the pain as being "excruciating," near-indescribable. Anguish, in other words. While watching the story, my mother asked me several times if I was okay, if I wanted to turn it off. Each time I said I was fine. And I was. The first time I ever heard about external fixators, I read that pin cleaning, a necessity considering the high risk of infection, felt like having your leg having a bath in burning kerosene (once again, see the final section of Stephen King's On Writing). This knowledge presented a considerable hurdle for me to get over before electing to undergo this surgery. Clearly, I weighed the benefits and risks and pain and decided to go through with it. Hearing another story about how painful frames are has not changed my mind in the slightest. First off, try as I might, I can never remember the actual feeling of pain. I can remember sights and sounds and the aftertaste of anesthesia, but never pain (though perhaps that's the considerable amount of Tylenol-3 I've taken post-op talking). In short, maybe it'll hurt. But there will be medicine to fight the pain and the comfort in knowing that I won't remember the pain. The other thing is, if I'm scared of the pain…well, I don't want to be that person who risks decades of movement over a short period of pain.
Furthermore, the story talks about one way DiDonato dealt with pain and discomfort: keeping a journal. Every time I've tried to keep a journal in the past, it hasn't worked out so well. After a couple days of really intense journal-writing, I'd abruptly lose motivation for no reason at all. But there's a reason I started this blog.
Also kind of amusing: Nightline remarking that frames have a "lifetime of consequences." Well, yes. Then again, just about every surgery ever has a lifetime of consequences, though those consequences are often not as pronounced. That phrase, "lifetime of consequences," just sounds so negative, doesn't it? Because, you know what, that lifetime of consequences is exactly why I'm doing the surgery. Yes, maybe there will be complications, maybe everything won't go 100% perfectly, maybe (definitely) I'll gain a new set of lifelong scars (though, to be fair, they showed DiDonato's scars and those scars had faded away to a comforting level). But, as I've said before, according to my surgeon, the risks are minimal. And yet I still anticipate experiencing a lifetime of consequences, consequences like being able to run and move and be active and not worry about getting arthritis and needing a knee replacement when I'm thirty or forty and not being constricted to an office chair in fear that I'll beat up my leg and just not being limited. Rising above the myriad rules I have to follow (no running no stressful jumping watch out for wall sits don't step or stand on your leg funny or your ankle's going to twist).
Those are the consequences I anticipate.
I'm not particularly excited about wearing the frames. I've tried conceptualizing what it will feel like but can't. I'm fairly certain it won't be much fun. Then again, this was never about fun. This was never about now. It's about the totality of my life, the totality of the experience I want to get in my time on Earth. It's about rising above my limitations. And maybe, just maybe, getting to run.
Well, last night I watched the local news with my parents (after experiencing the spectacular final half of the 1936 production Dracula's Daughter—gotta love the 1930s). And during the news, they listed some of the stories Nightline would be covering that night.
One story was about a women who endured a controversial series of surgeries to grow 14 inches.
I took that to mean one of two things: 1) hormone modifications or 2) external fixators.
As I think I've mentioned before, external fixators can be used to help badly broken bones heal by holding them in place with the pins. They can also be used to straighten limbs and to lengthen limbs, as I'll be doing (straightening the leg plus gaining a half-inch to even the two legs out).
The story was about a woman, Tiffanie DiDonato, who used external fixators to grow fourteen inches. At age eight, she had her legs extended by four inches and also had frames to lengthen her arms. According to Nightline, four inches is the recommended maximum amount of limb extension to be gained from one round of frames. But at age fifteen, she had another set of frames placed on her legs, extending the legs by a further ten inches. Which is a lot. Then she wrote a memoir, which I'm thinking of reading after my frames are on.
Now, the way Nightline chooses to describe external fixators is "extremely painful, risky and controversial" (without, for some reason I cannot fathom, mentioning the words "external fixator" or "frame" once in the story). This is in the context of limb lengthening, granted, but still. First off, I was unaware of there being any controversy over the frames. My best guess as to why I would be unaware of this supposed controversy is because frames, as medical devices, are really not all that well-known. Furthermore, all of the people they talk to in the program are dwarfs who had limb extensions a long time ago—since DiDonato is 32 now, that means she had her final frame placed 17 years ago, in 1995. Medicine, like all sciences, has made some serious advancements since then. When I was told about the frames, I was told that this was a very low-risk procedure, though it would be notably uncomfortable, the frame would probably be infected at some point, and so on. Which is to say, I question Nightline's conclusions about the riskiness of the procedure. Then again, I'm not having my leg lengthened by all that much, so we'll see. However, my bones will be broken and forced to regrow in the way the surgeons want, so perhaps my situation is vaguely similar to hers? Not as extreme, but shades of similarity.
The second part of the story to comment on is its depiction of the pain associated with the frames. They talk about the pain as being "excruciating," near-indescribable. Anguish, in other words. While watching the story, my mother asked me several times if I was okay, if I wanted to turn it off. Each time I said I was fine. And I was. The first time I ever heard about external fixators, I read that pin cleaning, a necessity considering the high risk of infection, felt like having your leg having a bath in burning kerosene (once again, see the final section of Stephen King's On Writing). This knowledge presented a considerable hurdle for me to get over before electing to undergo this surgery. Clearly, I weighed the benefits and risks and pain and decided to go through with it. Hearing another story about how painful frames are has not changed my mind in the slightest. First off, try as I might, I can never remember the actual feeling of pain. I can remember sights and sounds and the aftertaste of anesthesia, but never pain (though perhaps that's the considerable amount of Tylenol-3 I've taken post-op talking). In short, maybe it'll hurt. But there will be medicine to fight the pain and the comfort in knowing that I won't remember the pain. The other thing is, if I'm scared of the pain…well, I don't want to be that person who risks decades of movement over a short period of pain.
Furthermore, the story talks about one way DiDonato dealt with pain and discomfort: keeping a journal. Every time I've tried to keep a journal in the past, it hasn't worked out so well. After a couple days of really intense journal-writing, I'd abruptly lose motivation for no reason at all. But there's a reason I started this blog.
Also kind of amusing: Nightline remarking that frames have a "lifetime of consequences." Well, yes. Then again, just about every surgery ever has a lifetime of consequences, though those consequences are often not as pronounced. That phrase, "lifetime of consequences," just sounds so negative, doesn't it? Because, you know what, that lifetime of consequences is exactly why I'm doing the surgery. Yes, maybe there will be complications, maybe everything won't go 100% perfectly, maybe (definitely) I'll gain a new set of lifelong scars (though, to be fair, they showed DiDonato's scars and those scars had faded away to a comforting level). But, as I've said before, according to my surgeon, the risks are minimal. And yet I still anticipate experiencing a lifetime of consequences, consequences like being able to run and move and be active and not worry about getting arthritis and needing a knee replacement when I'm thirty or forty and not being constricted to an office chair in fear that I'll beat up my leg and just not being limited. Rising above the myriad rules I have to follow (no running no stressful jumping watch out for wall sits don't step or stand on your leg funny or your ankle's going to twist).
Those are the consequences I anticipate.
I'm not particularly excited about wearing the frames. I've tried conceptualizing what it will feel like but can't. I'm fairly certain it won't be much fun. Then again, this was never about fun. This was never about now. It's about the totality of my life, the totality of the experience I want to get in my time on Earth. It's about rising above my limitations. And maybe, just maybe, getting to run.
Monday, November 26, 2012
One Month Remaining
One month from today, I will have major, life-altering orthopedic surgery involving a stay at the hospital lasting multiple days, a stint in the wheelchair, months of struggling with stairs and perhaps the world's least attractive medical device. I feel really quite calm about it, much more so than I did a month ago. Then, I felt like the entire world was piling up and I was trapped beneath a massive wave, an accumulation of detritus and objectives and future stressors.
But now?
Now I'm sitting on my bed in loose-fitting jeans and a comfortable t-shirt. My legs are crossed in front of me. I'm breathing easily. Outside, temperatures have plunged into the realm of uncomfortable (even when one is armed with warm jackets and scarves). But inside four solid walls, I'm really quite comfortable, thank you very much.
Perhaps this calmness is because said procedure will provide a cure to one of my current afflictions. My right ankle currently exists in a perpetual state of twistedness. Most of this twistedness seems to come from my leaping around on stairs like a lunatic. Yesterday, however, I was standing on the stairs. I was not moving. And…the ankle twisted. I'm fairly certain that the geometry of the leg leads to problems with the ankle (the interior of my right shoe is built up to help keep the foot happy). With my friend the frame, the geometry of the leg will be fixed. Hence, no more ankle twisting.
Perhaps this calmness is because I just received hopeful tidings regarding life immediately post-frame. One of my friends' mother recently broke her leg, shattering her tibia and fibula (from what I understand) and had a frame put on. On Monday, the frame was taken off. Apparently life immediately post-frame is somewhat straightforward to adjust to. This bodes well.
Or perhaps this calmness is simply because I just spent five days lounging around the house, trying to chill out. It's telling that my major accomplishment over Thanksgiving was finishing The Stand (1400 pages later and, despite the book very clearly ending, I've spent enough time reading it that I'm not fully convinced I actually turned the last page). Which is to say, I'm rested now.
There are still unknowns ahead. The pre-op appointment has yet to be scheduled. Despite doing my best to read up on how it feels to have your leg impaled by a Taylor Spatial Frame, I'm not really prepared for such an occurrence. I struggle with the idea of being unable to walk.
But…again, I'm calm.
Will the experience be interesting? Undoubtedly. But I should also survive, fairly easily, to tell the tale. And, in the end, my leg will be straighter.
And, hopefully, my ankle will have escaped its current state of perpetual twistedness.
But now?
Now I'm sitting on my bed in loose-fitting jeans and a comfortable t-shirt. My legs are crossed in front of me. I'm breathing easily. Outside, temperatures have plunged into the realm of uncomfortable (even when one is armed with warm jackets and scarves). But inside four solid walls, I'm really quite comfortable, thank you very much.
Perhaps this calmness is because said procedure will provide a cure to one of my current afflictions. My right ankle currently exists in a perpetual state of twistedness. Most of this twistedness seems to come from my leaping around on stairs like a lunatic. Yesterday, however, I was standing on the stairs. I was not moving. And…the ankle twisted. I'm fairly certain that the geometry of the leg leads to problems with the ankle (the interior of my right shoe is built up to help keep the foot happy). With my friend the frame, the geometry of the leg will be fixed. Hence, no more ankle twisting.
Perhaps this calmness is because I just received hopeful tidings regarding life immediately post-frame. One of my friends' mother recently broke her leg, shattering her tibia and fibula (from what I understand) and had a frame put on. On Monday, the frame was taken off. Apparently life immediately post-frame is somewhat straightforward to adjust to. This bodes well.
Or perhaps this calmness is simply because I just spent five days lounging around the house, trying to chill out. It's telling that my major accomplishment over Thanksgiving was finishing The Stand (1400 pages later and, despite the book very clearly ending, I've spent enough time reading it that I'm not fully convinced I actually turned the last page). Which is to say, I'm rested now.
There are still unknowns ahead. The pre-op appointment has yet to be scheduled. Despite doing my best to read up on how it feels to have your leg impaled by a Taylor Spatial Frame, I'm not really prepared for such an occurrence. I struggle with the idea of being unable to walk.
But…again, I'm calm.
Will the experience be interesting? Undoubtedly. But I should also survive, fairly easily, to tell the tale. And, in the end, my leg will be straighter.
And, hopefully, my ankle will have escaped its current state of perpetual twistedness.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Regarding Breaks
It seems at this point my existence is becoming a long trudge of schoolwork (homework and tests and the like) punctuated by brief breaks. Probably a bit of an exaggeration, but still…it is wonderful to be off of school, even if only for half a week, even with the knowledge that my next break, in about a month, will probably not be super restful, though I will be receiving anesthesia (and probably some pain-controlling narcotics, too) and will therefore be sleeping a ton.
But for now, a no-strings-attached five-day break.
I saw in the paper today that 43.6 million Americans will be traveling today, whether by plane (I imagine what the lines would be like at airports and feel glad that I'm not going that route) or by car (plus: no lines at airports, minus: traffic, second minus: cars are considerably more boring than planes). I'm not traveling at all. My family has decided to take it somewhat easy. After all, winter break will not be relaxing, at least for me. Might as well take what we can get. So we'll be doing Thanksgiving dinner, watching movies, reading. Taking a breath.
Which has been nice. Today, for instance, I woke up, read, cleaned myself up, went outside to sword-fight with my brothers, read some more. Well, technically it's a bout between pool noodles and foam swords, but still. It's nice being able to run around, especially seeing as the weather's quite lovely. To be fair, I wasn't paying much mind to the weather—foam swords have hard plastic cores, so I spent a solid amount of energy defending myself. Also apparently spent a fair amount of energy on getting my jacket covered in bits of leaves…I swear the thing is a magnet for general detritus (which then gets tracked into my room for the cat to eat).
As far as other updates go, I've now managed to get the contacts in with relative ease. Actually, I'm wearing them as I type this. They really are miraculous little things…I keep reaching up to play with the frames of my glasses, only to remember that I'm seeing quite well without needing annoying heavy cumbersome frames which support lenses that too frequently get dusty or fogged up from heat or humidity.
In other, unrelated news, I appear to be nearing the end of Stephen King's The Stand. I tried starting the book four years ago at the recommendation of an English teacher, only to be foiled by an edition with beyond-miniscule font (this despite the story playing out over 1100 pages). While at the bookstore recently, I spotted an edition with larger pages and readable font (over 1400 pages). During my last break, in October, I started the book on a plane. I kind of thought I'd still be trudging through its bulk while in the hospital with my leg skewered by a brand-new Taylor Spatial Frame. Apparently not. I still have 400 pages to go, but I'll have moved onto new and exciting stories come December.
Really, though, I'm just enjoying the ability to move around. To freely navigate the house, to play, to get up from my reading chair to raid the tortilla chips. And I'm finding it kind of hard to imagine life unable to walk, to roam. I know I've done it before, but, honestly, it's been years since I was in a wheelchair, and not in this house.
Should be interesting.
But for now, a no-strings-attached five-day break.
I saw in the paper today that 43.6 million Americans will be traveling today, whether by plane (I imagine what the lines would be like at airports and feel glad that I'm not going that route) or by car (plus: no lines at airports, minus: traffic, second minus: cars are considerably more boring than planes). I'm not traveling at all. My family has decided to take it somewhat easy. After all, winter break will not be relaxing, at least for me. Might as well take what we can get. So we'll be doing Thanksgiving dinner, watching movies, reading. Taking a breath.
Which has been nice. Today, for instance, I woke up, read, cleaned myself up, went outside to sword-fight with my brothers, read some more. Well, technically it's a bout between pool noodles and foam swords, but still. It's nice being able to run around, especially seeing as the weather's quite lovely. To be fair, I wasn't paying much mind to the weather—foam swords have hard plastic cores, so I spent a solid amount of energy defending myself. Also apparently spent a fair amount of energy on getting my jacket covered in bits of leaves…I swear the thing is a magnet for general detritus (which then gets tracked into my room for the cat to eat).
As far as other updates go, I've now managed to get the contacts in with relative ease. Actually, I'm wearing them as I type this. They really are miraculous little things…I keep reaching up to play with the frames of my glasses, only to remember that I'm seeing quite well without needing annoying heavy cumbersome frames which support lenses that too frequently get dusty or fogged up from heat or humidity.
In other, unrelated news, I appear to be nearing the end of Stephen King's The Stand. I tried starting the book four years ago at the recommendation of an English teacher, only to be foiled by an edition with beyond-miniscule font (this despite the story playing out over 1100 pages). While at the bookstore recently, I spotted an edition with larger pages and readable font (over 1400 pages). During my last break, in October, I started the book on a plane. I kind of thought I'd still be trudging through its bulk while in the hospital with my leg skewered by a brand-new Taylor Spatial Frame. Apparently not. I still have 400 pages to go, but I'll have moved onto new and exciting stories come December.
Really, though, I'm just enjoying the ability to move around. To freely navigate the house, to play, to get up from my reading chair to raid the tortilla chips. And I'm finding it kind of hard to imagine life unable to walk, to roam. I know I've done it before, but, honestly, it's been years since I was in a wheelchair, and not in this house.
Should be interesting.
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