HOME SWEET JESUS MY LEG IS BROKEN

I've finally shaken off my drug haze, so I'm going to attempt to get this surgery rundown posted before I pass out again.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:00 am on Wednesday morning. The lobby was already full of people having surgery that day. After being herded into the surgery waiting room and tagged with our hospital bracelets, we sat with our loved ones and waited until they called us back four at a time into another surgery waiting room.

In this new surgery room was a row of comfy chairs, each with a sign above it reading the name of a doctor. I looked around for my doctor's sign. It wasn't in the main room, but instead in this smaller, brightly colored room. Oh yeah, I remembered. My doctor operates mostly on children.

So in the pediatrics waiting room I sat, watching Barney and Sesame Street, with a bratty four year old girl who was having some sort of arm surgery and a sweet Hispanic seven month old girl who was wearing a body cast. When they took the baby away for her surgery, her young, non-English speaking mother cried quietly to herself as she left the room, which made me cry. Any self-pity I was feeling evaporated in that moment.

Kelly was allowed back to hang out with me around 7:30 a.m. Here's me sitting in my surgery garb waiting for my doctor to arrive:



My doctor arrived around 8:00 a.m. and talked with us about the surgery. Kelly liked him immediately, and any unease I was feeling about the surgery disappeared upon seeing him. The man just knows what he's doing. He autographed my right leg with a "G", the first letter of his last name, which I thought was cooler than writing a giant "NO" on my left leg.

Here's my leg before he mangled it:



Around 8:45 a.m., they took me back to the operating room, which looked like some sort of supply closet. I climbed onto the operating table as I watched some doctor-type guy I had never met sort through what looked like props from the movie Hostel. The anesthesiologist put in my I.V., told me she was going to start giving me some saline, and the next thing I remember, I was in the recovery room.

My doctor and Kelly were standing over me, and apparently I was smiling, because everyone kept saying "Oh look, she's smiling." I was in and out of it in the recovery room and my leg really hurt, which I was rather surprised about. I kept asking for more morphine, which they injected into my I.V. Once I got my maximum allowed amount of morphine, they transfered me to my hospital room. Which, surprise, was on the pediatrics floor. A lobster with my name on it marked the door to my room.

Once in my hospital room, they gave me a shot of Demerol in my arm, which was a thousand times more effective than the morphine. I had a roommate for about ten minutes, some woman in her thirties named Dawn, which I only remember because the phone kept ringing the rest of the time I was the hospital with people asking for her. Dawn is a popular girl, apparently.

I was pretty comfortable in my hospital room, with my leg wrapped up and all the way at the end of my body where I couldn't really see it.

Here's a picture of it all wrapped up:



I could somewhat see the contraption that hid underneath the white gauze, but I kept it out of my mind. My more immediate problem was the bathroom problem. I won't go into too much detail, but the bedpan situation was definitely the worst part of my hospital stay, and I had my freaking leg broken!

Also, nurses are an interesting bunch. Some are incredibly nice, kind, understanding and giving. Some apparently hate humankind. Night nurses appear to uniformly fall into the latter group. Kelly had to go home at 9 p.m., overstaying her visiting hours by an hour. So I was left with the night nurses, who aside from coming into your room the minute you've managed to fall asleep to take your temperature or blood pressure, seem to think nothing else really warrants a trip to your room.

And I kept throwing up. The pain medication made me nauseous, and I hadn't been able to eat anything except for ice chips. I slept very little that first night.

Visiting hours didn't begin until 11 a.m. the next morning, but Kelly sneaked in around 7 a.m. She's stealth like that. For some reason, nurses who won't listen to a patient will listen to a family member, and Kelly was able to get someone to get me out of bed and into the bathroom. I will never take the simple act of being able to use a bathroom for granted again.

My doctor arrived a little while later and unwrapped my bandage. And there it was, the external fixator, in all its glory:



Jesus. I'm not going to lie. It was much bigger than I thought it was going to be.

My doctor grabbed my external fixator and shook it. I was too shocked to say anything, but he asked me, "did that hurt?" and I had to admit that it really didn't. Apparently, the fixator holds the bone in place so that the break doesn't really hurt. And you can walk on it. He told me that he wanted me out of bed and in the shower and walking around. He'd be back later to discuss my discharge, which might be later that day but probably the next day.

The nurse who helped me shower was one of nicest people I've ever met. First she took off the sponges that surround the pins of my external fixator, and for the first time I got to see the pins going directly into my leg.

Because I would not want to deprive you, gentle readers, of this wonderful sight, here's a picture:



And here's a close-up:



Once the nurse got me in the shower room, she and Kelly proceeded to hose me down like some sort of elephant in the circus. Water can run freely over the pin sites, and the other incisions on my leg were sealed with plastic, so I could get those wet, too.

Then the physical therapist came and brought me my new best friends, my crutches. She told me there's nothing stopping me from putting weight on my leg. Nothing except pain, that is. But because of the fixator, I can't do any damage to the bone by walking on it. She taught me how to walk with the crutches and took me to some stairs to practice going up and down. Down was easy. Up was impossible. We decided that when I went home, I'd be going up the stairs on my butt.

I was finally starting to feel better. I was able to eat some dry cereal and I was off the Demerol and on Tylenol with codeine. I relaxed in my room while waiting for my doctor to visit and discuss with me my discharge plans.

But then the evil nurse of the north came in and told me I was going home right then. It was too upsetting and ridiculous of an episode to relay entirely, but basically, the nurse got some random resident to discharge me without talking to my doctor. When I protested, saying that I felt too weak to get up my stairs, having only had some dry cereal to eat in two days, she berated me with statements like, "What, do you plan on staying a whole month?" Thankfully, my doctor showed up just then, bitched out both the nurse and the resident, and I was allowed to stay until the next morning.

That night was much better. Kelly tried to sneak an overnight stay, but we got busted around 9:30 p.m. and she had to leave. But I slept most of the night, and she came back around 7:00 a.m. the next morning, this time with my cousin Rick, who had taken the red eye in the night.

He was tired, so here he is sleeping with Lamar Bear, waiting for me to be discharged:



The discharge was relatively easy and I was wheeled out of the hospital. Getting a cab was a little difficult. Most of them don't want to stop for someone on crutches. We begged the cab driver to take the drive easy, and he actually did, so it was mostly painless.

Getting up the stairs was very difficult. I was exhausted halfway up the first set of stairs. Thankfully Rick and Kelly were there to pick me up at the end of each set of stairs. Once inside the apartment, I crashed on the couch, took two Tylenol with codeine, and passed out. Several hours later, I woke up and felt much better.

I slept well on the couch last night, and now I feel pretty good. It's still pretty messed up to look at my leg. It doesn't really seem real. But the pain is okay, the crutches are getting easier, and I think the toughest stuff is behind me.

A home nurse is supposed to come later today. I'm going to try to wash my hair. My first appointment with my doctor is on Monday, and he wants to start the lengthening then. Though the thought of getting down and up those stairs scares me, as does the lengthening, I'm excited to get this going. The sooner it starts, the sooner it's over.

Thanks so much to everyone who called or emailed while I was in the hospital. I really appreciated all the love and well wishes.

Days until removal of the fixator: approximately 80