Own your Objective…

Well, where I left off on my background story was getting my surgery scheduled. The interesting thing about that was we had plans to go tubing down the river that weekend. So when the doc gave me instructions about surgery on Monday and sent my on my way home I knew my wife and I had to talk about something..

On the way home my wife and I determine that I’m either going to sit home and be miserable or go camping and be miserable. Either way, I was going to be miserable. I guess that made my choice easy, we went camping.

So Friday night we head to the campground and my wife gets everything set up. Lucky for me she’s really good at that sort of stuff because I was absolutely no help at all. On a side note it was nice not getting yelled at setting up the tent. Once camp was set up we headed over to hang out with everyone else and sit by the fire.

After quite a long night of my friends drinking (I wasn’t because of meds), talking, and joking around by the fire it began to sprinkle. No big deal. Just time to head to the tent and back at it in the morning. I wish it was that simple.

It slowly changed over from a sprinkle to a steady rain. Our tents good so I knew it wouldn’t leak unless it turned into a violent down pour. Lucky for me, it never did. Now, not knowing anyone that had this injury I really didn’t know what to expect. It was only my second day with it so it was all new to me.

Well, I tried to go to sleep like normal. Figured the rain would help me because it usually does. Unfortunately not tonight. I began to get an ache that I would describe to be something like arthritis. It started out in the back of my heel and worked itself around my ankle. Then it turned to just a constant ache and pain. If that wasn’t enough I started to get a cramp in my calf. That’s right, a cramp in the calf of the leg that I injured. Now, normally for me to get rid of a cramp I have to stretch it or massage it. As you know, I couldn’t stretch it. My Achilles was torn. So I message away at my calf. It takes about 15 minutes but I finally get it to go away. You can’t even understand my relief at this point. So off to dream land I go.

I wake up in the morning, get some breakfast the wife cooked, and then proceed to go lay back down. No need for me to get up. They were all getting ready to go tubing. Seeing as I wasn’t going there was no need for me to get up. Pretty much the rest of the day passes with the normal pain.

Finally everyone gets back from tubing. Let me clarify that, not everyone went , just most everyone, so I did have some help around camp. Good thing too, because I needed it. See, we had our dogs so they needed to be taken somewhere to potty. Sure wasn’t going to be me doing it. I wasn’t very good on my crutches and I wasn’t going to add dogs to the mix. That would have turned out bad. The next thing I know we’re all sitting around the fire talking again. We’re all having a great time like the night before. Like the night before, it begins to rain again. Oh no! Not again!

At this point I know what happened the night before was going to happen again. It’s my luck. I just have to learn to live with it. That’s about all I can do. As the night progresses it’s the same aches, same pains, and same cramp. This time it goes away a little quicker. I guess that’s a positive. Sure wasn’t looking forward to it happening again that’s for sure. Good thing it was our last day there and time to pack up and head home. I couldn’t wait to get to my house, and lay in my own bed.

Monday finally came, it’s surgery day. I was nervous, but I sure was ready to get started on my recovery. I knew it was a long process so the sooner the better. Just wasn’t looking forward to the crutches, boot, and PT. Good thing for me my wife works with all these people about to take care of me. She’s a scrub tech. I think that made it a lot easier on me. I knew I had the best doc, the best scrub other than her, the best anesthesiologist, and so on. My room was full of who she picked. The best of the best. Plus the doc was supposed to take some pics for me while he was in there. Bonus treatment.

Next thing I know I’m waking up in recovery. Seemed like I was gone just a couple minutes. Guess it was a little longer than that. That’s OK. I didn’t know any different. By now I’m finally getting my bearings as to where I am, what’s going on, and so forth when my wife comes in. She tells me the surgery went great and its all repaired. Then let me know the doc would be in soon.

After a couple minutes the doc shows up. He tells me the surgery went better than expected and then proceeds to tell me that my ankle was the worst he’s ever seen. That it was torn up really bad and that he had to use some bone anchors for the paroneal tendon. Guess you have to expect that when the top of your foot hits your shin. Can‘t possibly be a good thing. He then finishes by telling me to take it easy, gave me instructions on what to do, and told me to schedule an appointment in two weeks. All I knew right then and there was two weeks is going to seem like forever in that boot. Sure was hoping it would fly by.

That’s where I was over a month ago. I’ll post up more here in a couple days.

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