New life for a while

Above is an Xray of my hip. The break is the horizontal yellow line, the new bone growth is the vertical yellow line.

Yes, I'm a dork, took pictures of my Xrays and MRI. Dr. Brown humored me and drew the lines on the Xray above for a second time just so I could take a picture of it!

I saw my awesome Ortho yesterday. Prognosis for a full recovery is excellent. Getting to the full recovery...ridiculously slow. 6 weeks on 2 crutches! For right now, no weight on the right leg, no swimming, no cycling with the bad leg (I CAN sit on the trainer and spin with the good leg, bad leg on stool), I can lift upper body. Anything that hurts, I can't do.

POSITIVES of this experience:

• Sleeping more
• Reading more, finished first two Twilight books
• Bubble baths
• I'm decorating my crutches and will post pictures when I get more flair. I just watched Office Space and realized I need 15 pieces of flair. I've got 3, I'm working on the other 12
• I will catch up on my emails
• I can be lazy!!!
• Between the MRI and the Xrays, I get to see some really cool views of my insides

NEGATIVES of this experience:

• I've never had to take my pants off for so many people, it gets old after a while
• My armpits hurt from the crutches
• Six weeks on crutches!
• I can't put ANY weight on my right leg
• I'm tired!

This experience is certainly an opportunity for me to learn a lot. It's an interesting experience to go from being able to do nearly anything I want to do physically to spilling coffee all over the floor trying to get it to the opposite counter. I'm wearing a backpack everywhere since I can't carry much in my hands. At the stores, I've had to ride around in the electric cart. Because I'm so spastic, I knocked over a dog treat display in KMart. Kind of funny but a little embarrassing.

Mentally, this is a very sobering experience. My entire view of myself, my interests and my day to day life have to be changed radically. I'm going to try to set some new goals for 2010 and I will post them here.

Quote

Things are only impossible until they're not.

- Jean-Luc Picard

On going chronicle of injury

A whole new world, parking in a reserved spot as close to the front door as possible

Loaded with Ibuprofen, unknowingly broken and working a couple of weeks ago

So, yesterday's post was truncated by AT&T. It's probably best that I didn't post my hysteria for the world to read.

Here's what happened. I had a one hour drive to Jackson, Wyoming's St. John's hospital. During this ride, I discovered that driving that long of a distance with a femoral neck fracture is uncomfortable. I got to the hospital at 8 am as scheduled. Talked to the radiologist tech and radiologist. They decided the nuclear bone scan (relief!!) was unnecessary after some back and forth among several people, most importantly the radiologist at the hospital and my orthopedic doc (who has not seen me yet but knows what's going on). Very importantly as well, the orthopedic doc called me and explained everything. My MRI was accessed by the radiologist in Jackson and it was confirmed, I have a classic compression stress fracture of the neck of the femur. He immediately told me NOT TO PUT WEIGHT ON MY LEG, AT ALL, FOR ANY REASON.

Mentally, after receiving the confirmation of the diagnosis, I went into a little bit of a tail spin. Pretty much everything I do involves moving around and doing, work, hobbies, . What's a girl to do when she gets bummed? Go shopping! Bought a nice light backpack to haul things around, spray paint for my ugly crutches and some beauty supplies (if I don't feel too well, I might as well try to look a little better).

Crutches before on left after on right!! Yahoo!

I'm exhausted. My eyes look like someone has punched me. It's hard to rest so much. It's hard to do not much. It's super hard to wobble around on crutches, especially on ice. My upper body is sore! Luckily this crutch thing makes it hard for me to go to the kitchen and eat, it's a lot of trouble and effort for some food. It will definitely keep me from eating too much and getting fat.

Tomorrow is my appointment with Dr. Brown the ortho. I am waiting until I talk to him before I make any plans or set any goals. I read that even water running with a flotation device is prohibited because the muscles pull on the fracture. I would guess that spinning on a bike with no tension is out too. We'll see! I have no idea what I can expect out of the next month.

On the good side, not walking on my right leg for 3 days has decreased the pain from about a 7 to a .5 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Thanks for all of the well wishes and kind words. I really appreciate it, eventually, I will respond to emails and FB comments. I've got a lot of time to kill.

Happy 2010!