One Down, One To Go

So today I had my first surgery of the week, the oral procedure. To be blunt, it was a royal bitch. After the novocaine wore off, and even with the help of Percocet, I wanted to stab myself in the eye or beat myself with my crutches. Not to mention spitting up blood every ten minutes and having a mouthful of gauze all day. TMI? Sorry.

Anyway, with regard to the ankle: I wish I had a better story, but it was ice. New Year's Eve, in my friend Nick's driveway. When my parents woke up the next morning to me screaming, they made the executive decision to go the doctor. I figured at worst, a sprain. So my doc does some x-rays, and guess what? It's broken. He sends me to the ER.

I hate hospitals. Hate, hate, hate them. Not just from being there myself, which was never for a good reason, but more so for being there for someone else. Nothing good comes from it, ever.

And needless to say, the entire premise of the ER is to wait. Sign in, wait to register. Register, wait for triage. Get triaged, wait to be called in for treatment. Get into a room, wait for a doctor. In my case, I didn't even get a doctor. I got some assistant, who looked at it and looked at my x-rays, and when I told her that I had pain in my upper calf, said I needed to get another x-ray, because not only had I already broken two bones, it was possible that I broke one of them in two places. Get second x-ray. Wait for someone to look at them. Wait for results. Luckily, the assistant had been wrong, and I just had the two fractures of my tibia and fibula in the ankle. Wait for an orthopedic doctor to come look at it. Wait wait wait. I have still not been given anything for the immense pain that I've been in for the last 12 hours. Finally a nurse who wasn't even treating me comes in and asks me if I want something, thank God. The assistant comes back in and says they've called in an orthopedic doctor who specializes in ankles. Wait for him to get to the hospital. Wait for him to look at my x-rays. Finally he comes in and delivers the news: I have to have surgery, or the bones won't heal correctly. Afterwards, wait for someone to bring in the splint. He sets my ankle (OWWWW), splints it, wraps it. Set up plans for surgery. Wait for a nurse to come discharge me.

So I'm having surgery on Friday. The doctor is supposed to be the best one in the hospital for this kind of surgery, but of course my dad is skeptical. He knows some members of the board, not to mention the hospitals in Boston are some of the best in the world, and he (typically) wants only the best, so I may be getting a new surgeon. The doctor says I'll be on crutches with absolutely no weight on my ankle for 3-4 weeks. After that, I'll still be on crutches but I'll be able to put some weight on it. Luckily, I'll be at home until the last week in January, but once I get back to New York, I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to function.

It's so odd to me, to be at the age where I'm starting to think about the time in the future when I'm going to have to take care of my parents (a long way off, but even so), and suddenly, this happens and I'm back to my mom completely taking care of me like a little kid. On the one hand, it can be nice. But I'm such an independent person by nature, I hate depending on other people, and I'm one of those OCD people who would rather do everything herself than someone else because I know I'll do it right, even when it means I have to do extra work. Basically, needing to ask my mom to do EVERYTHING, from getting me a glass of water, helping me in and out of the car, get clothes out of my closet, handing me something from across the room, and other inane tasks that I never thought twice about before, is already getting old. I drew the line at helping me get dressed. A girl needs to cling to some shred of dignity.

The other irony is that I posted that survey in which I noted my surprise at not going to the hospital in 07 a few short hours before the incident. Dammit!

The part that I'm most bummed about, other than how being on crutches is going to affect my job and social life, is that I'm supposed to be running a half marathon in May. I doubt that I will be recovered enough to run anytime before March. Even then, getting back into the shape I was in before the fall is going to take a while. Doubling my endurance (right now I can do about 6 miles) in two months is going to be brutal, if not impossible.

But I'm trying to think positively. It could be worse. This time last year I would have been heading off to London, and God knows what would have happened then. It will heal, and hopefully the time will pass quickly. It happened early enough in the break that I still have a lot of time at home to be lazy. And the support and sympathy I've gotten has been almost overwhelming. Friends, extended family, even friends of my parents who I don't really know. It's touching, but I would obviously trade all of it for this never to have happened.

Not to mention I've got enough prescriptions for Percocet, Vicodin, and other narcotics to numb a herd of elephants. Thank you, modern science!

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In other news, I have officially caved: I joined Flickr. I'm debating whether or not I should upgrade to a paid membership. Has anyone done this? Is it worth it? I didn't know you were limited to a certain number of photos per month, which is kind of annoying. The link to my page is on the sidebar, so add me if you're a member!