It's really a toss-up which was worse: the lengthening pain, or the Vicodin withdrawal. The lengthening lasted about four weeks. The Vicodin withdrawal lasted a month and a half. I certainly couldn't have gotten through the lengthening without the Vicodin, but it seems like a terrible trade-off. My advice to anyone undergoing a long stint with pain is to take as little pain medication as possible, and watch out for that tolerance point. That's when you know you're in trouble.
Also, I've been off of the crutches for over a week now. The progress of this week has been rather remarkable. I started out the week off the crutches, but still walking very awkwardly and tentatively, and trying to limit my walking as much as possible. Now my walk is almost normal looking, and I find myself getting up to get things that in the past I would have either asked someone to get me or just lived without.
And after almost two weeks of increased antibiotics, my pin site infection has cleared up, and now I know that any pain I experience around my pin sites is the beginnings of an infection. It took me a week to realize that I had one because I thought the pain I was having was dry skin pain, not infection pain, and in that time the infection got worse. So hopefully, knowing what I know now, I won't get an infection this bad again.
So now my only concerns are taking care of my pin sites, walking as much as possible, building up my strength and trying to get back to my normal life. Last night was the first time in two months that I've left the apartment for a reason other than a doctor's appointment or to go to work. We went to Heather and Jessie's housewarming party, taking a cab both ways and only staying for a couple of hours, but just sitting in a chair in their backyard wiped me out.
But it felt good to do something normal again, and with the pace of my progress lately, I'm hoping for more social outings in the coming weeks. It's going to be a slow road back to a normal life, but at least now it's starting to feel like I've finally begun that journey.
Oh, and one of my new co-workers told me last week that Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of Weezer, had leg lengthening surgery! Here's a picture of the freak like me:
And here's what his Wikipedia page has to say about it:
Cuomo was born with his left leg 44 mm (1 3/4 in) shorter than his right leg. After the success of The Blue Album, Cuomo underwent a procedure to correct the condition. This involved the surgical breaking of the bone in his leg, followed by several months of wearing a steel brace which required self-administered "stretching" of the leg 4 times daily; Cuomo likened the ordeal to "crucifying (his) leg". An x-ray of the leg is part of the album art for "The Good Life" single, and the experience inspired him to write the song. Cuomo can be seen wearing the brace on an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, which can be found on their DVD "Video Capture Device".
2 comments:
Congratulations on all fronts. I know how liberating that moment is when you realize you're actually getting back to normal. :-)
i'm going to email you the party pictures very soon. then i think you should add one to your page and entitle it "allison's first social outing with frank."
a first date.
Post a Comment