TEARS OF A CLOWN

It occurs to me that I should blog, but there's not really anything interesting to say. My next doctor's appointment is two weeks from today, and the closer it gets, the more I'm realizing just how important it is to me for it to go well.

And for it go well, the xrays need to show that my leg is ready for the fixator to come off. If they do show that my leg is ready, then my doctor will take off the fixator and schedule a surgery to remove the pins and the screws in my leg. If they don't show that my leg is ready, I will hear something along the lines of "see you in a month," at which point I might need to shoot myself in the forehead.

Even though I've tried very hard to reason with myself about how my life right now isn't how it will always be-- that I will, someday, get the fixator off and be able to walk around and play outside like the normal kids-- depression has definitely set in. I've just gotten used to life like this, and life like this is depressing.

Perhaps a big reason for the sudden melancholy is the fact that my friend Rex has set a wedding date, November 10th. The wedding is in Northern California, and aside from the fact that I don't have any vacation time left, I will probably/hopefully be having surgery a week or so before that. So I can't go. This brings the grand total of weddings I have missed because of my leg to four. Well, one of those I wasn't actually invited to, but I'm counting it anyway.

So I'm trying to think of things to be happy about. Like that The Office and Ugly Betty start up again this week. Or that the Red Sox might actually beat the Yankees and win the division. Can you tell that my life revolves around my television?

Here's a picture of my adorable niece with her adorable face:

A LITTLE LESS FIXATOR, A LOT MORE TIME

Another doctor's appointment yesterday. He took off a small piece of my fixator, the piece that was used for the lengthening, so it was nice to see that bastard go. And he gave me the piece, so that bodes well for the will I get to keep my fixator question.

Here's the piece he took off:



He said that now my bone is effectively bearing all the weight and that the fixator isn't really doing anything anymore. And then he said "see you in a month." Um, what?

He wants to see how my leg does with the added stress, then take some xrays and decide if the fixator is ready to come off. He said if I was going crazy, I could come in for my next appointment in three weeks instead of four. So I scheduled it for three weeks.

Then I told him that I was going to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, and asked him how that would impact my pin removal surgery. He said if he had his choice, he'd rather wait until after Thanksgiving. So I might be stuck with the pins for another two months! But, if all goes well in three weeks, he'll take off the fixator, then schedule the pin removal surgery for two weeks after that.

I have to admit, though, that I've gotten pretty comfortable with the fixator. I even took the subway for the first time this morning! And I'm also terrified of re-breaking my leg, so though two more months of fixation isn't my idea of a good time, I'm okay with it.

NOTE TO SELF: KILL DOCTOR

After six weeks of sitting around and thinking positive bone growth thoughts, I finally had my doctor's visit today. It went pretty much as I thought it would. He did the load transfer thingy he had talked to me about before, which basically just consisted of him loosening two of the three bolts on the side of my fixator. All three were locked before. Now only the bottom one is locked.

Here's a not very exciting picture of the two bolts he loosened:



After he loosened them, he had me get up and stand in front of him. After I didn't fall down in pain, he told me to walk around the room a bit. He said if my leg re-broke from the increased weight bearing, I'd know it and "wouldn't be liking me very much right now". I don't like him at all to begin with, but that's beside the point.

He said he transferred over 50% of the load from the fixator onto my bone, which immediately made me paranoid about walking around and rebreaking my leg. But my doctor is very conservative, and I know he wouldn't have done it if he wasn't sure that my bone could take it.

He actually said that some doctors would remove my fixator at this point, but he likes to do the slow removal, taking off pieces of the fixator every week or so until only the pins remain. So I go back next week to have a piece of the fixator removed, and then perhaps also the week after to have more or all of it removed.

He said the whole fixator removal process should be about a month longer, which is great news. The not so great news is that he said I'd have to go back on crutches for up to 6 weeks after having the surgery to remove the pins. At almost every single doctor's appointment I've had, I've been trying to get this information out of him. He always blew me off. Now he drops this bomb on me.

I knew there would be some amount of time on crutches, but 6 weeks seems like an awful lot. And the bone stays weak for even longer than that, so it's going to probably be a year or so in total from surgery to where I'm doing anything super strenuous without fear of breakage.

So, looks like about two and half more months of sitting around waiting for my leg to heal. I'm seriously running out of ways to entertain myself. I've even started reading books and, like, watching the news. Help!

PLAYING FAVORITES

You know how parents love some of their children more than their other children? That's because some children are good, whereas some are BAD BAD BAD!

Here are my good children:



Never any pus, never any pain, never any sticking of the gauze to the wound, never any problems. These are what healthy pin sites look like.

Now on to the trouble makers:



First of all, there's Screwy. He's actually a bit of a success story. After starting out in a life of crime, he's reformed himself and turned things around. He still bleeds every now and then, so the gauze sticks to him sometimes, and he produces little crusts that I have to swab off, but all in all, he's not such a bad seed anymore.

But Toppy, he's bad news. One infection apparently wasn't enough for him. He had to go and develop another one. The first one was on the bottom side of the pin. It took a long time to stop hurting like a biatch, but it eventually did, and around that time, pus showed up on the rim of the pin site. It was so crusted on that I couldn't get it off with the cotton swabs. Until now.

Here's Toppy after I got a huge wad of pus off of him:



I think that bottom of the pin site infection has finally run its course. Which is why I was very confused last week when my pin site starting hurting like a biatch again. Turns out the top of the pin site is now infected. It stings and burns, just like the other infection did, and it's already starting to form a crust.

Here we go again. Apparently pin sites closest to joints are more likely to get infected. So I guess Toppy was just born bad.