My Cross To Bear

Okay, I have promised this picture for the longest time, and finally its here. It is not the greatest quality but h#ll, here it is. 5 weeks or so post op. I know it looks more like a wrist but no, it is my leg. I have not really had any new developments other than the fact that I have reached the 25 pound weightloss mark. I have started going back to the gym full time as well. Hopefully I can get to 200 pounds before Thanksgiving so I can fit my clothes again. Well its late and I will be up super late watching the circus finalee, also know as the Presidential Election. I have been argueing non-stoped with crazy people about htier choice and thier fears of te other canidate. I will not turn this into a political blog, but lets just say I will be glad when its over. We shall speak tomorrow.

   Wow another beautiful day in paradise. You know, I don’t know if any of you ever pictured your life as being a movie sometime, but on my long distance journey from my car to my office building, I got to thinking what my life would look like if the cameras were roiling at that very moment. And for those of you who are reading this and wondering…..no I do not do any kind of recreational drugs!! lol I have no idea why this thought popped in my head, but it was there and I could not shake it. I bet that at this point in time, if my life was a movie, it would probably be directed by Spike Lee. If you have ever seen a Spike Lee movie and paid attention to the scenes where either one person or two people are walking and talking you would know what I mean. In these scenes the camera looks almost as if the person walking is holding the camera in their hands and pointing it up toward themselves. During these scenes, the people are usually “acting” like they are walking, so they over exaggerate the smallest motions to sale you on the fact that they are “walking,” kind of like scenes where people act like they are driving so they constantly adjust the steering wheel even though the scenery behind them stays straight.  And with this crazy CAM boot on, my up and down bounce is heavily exaggerated.

       With Halloween being around the corner I think I may be able to use this thing to my advantage and make some extra money to cover the medical bills. I happened to be up late Friday night and while walking to my bedroom, I could not help but pay attention to the pronounced THUD sound I would make every other step, so to me it sounded like some huge one legged creature traveling across a dark room. So perhaps I will rent my bad appendage out to a local haunted house and just spend my day walking back and forth in a dark hall for sound effects. If I get board, I can throw the crutches on for an added effect. Then I will sound like a huge one legged creature walking across a dark room….in a walker…okay, not scary, but I’m still working on it.

      I am not sure how many people may be familiar with the Wizard of Ox movie, where a guy gets caught pulling levers and speaking into a microphone connected to a giant robot that all the people in the land fear and see as a god. But when he gets caught his quotes this now often used phrase, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” Well, I thought of this after taking note of some peculiar activity I have been noticing as of late. I have noticed that as I walk back and forth from one area to another, people cannot help but look at the CAM boot. Okay, it’s not what most would consider “normal” unless you work in an orthopedics office, I get that. But it’s the way people go about looking. Some people may calmly look down and back up in a circular motion, as if their head was on some sort of over greased swivel. Others, mostly women, will look down at the boot and when I look at them, they sheepishly look away as if they were ashamed because they were staring or something and it gets pretty awkward. If you can’t picture that picture this; imagine you are in a gym on a treadmill, never mind you ATR right now, FOCUS. As you walk on this treadmill you see a petite sheepish little woman approaching this weird looking guy with chili pepper red spandex shorts on, with an awkward bulge in the front walking toward her. Now imagine that as she approaches him, she first glances at his mullet and then cannot help but notice the crazy colored shorts. But just as she begins to look away, she notices the bulge and does a double take before she even realized she was doing it. Now imagine her looking up at this guys face and noticing he had been looking at her face the whole time. Okay, so you may say, wow, what’s so uncomfortable about that?  Take a moment and imagine her having to ride an elevator with him. loll

    I swear this is what it is like every day. I always catch somebody looking (at my CAM boot. lol ), and now I think it’s funny to catch them looking! Speaking of getting caught looking, I am sure that everyone reading this has noticed that it is not a good idea to look back at the cute girl or guy that just passed you by like you used to before the crutches. That episode usually ends up in you getting your crutches all crooked and making a bunch of noise, almost falling and most likely getting caught looking. Nuff said. NEXT.  By the way, this did not happen to me but a fellow crutch bound fellow at my job. I was there to witness the whole thing and I did not stop laughing for a good 20 minutes.

     Now, I am probably to hardest person to offend by way of calling me a name of telling an off color joke, but I have noticed something. A lot of the people that know me call me names like handicap, crip, cripple, hop along, big FOOT, Boot legger, and many other names. But it got me to wondering what actually makes this okay? I mean, is it okay because it’s just a temporary condition therefore it is socially acceptable to call me that? I wonder if, God forbid, something worse happened to me and I had some short term brain damage, if these same people would say stuff like, “Hey, what’s up retard!” So perhaps it is just because it is a temporary situation that makes it okay, I can accept that. But I wonder if the people who say it know why it is socially acceptable. To test this theory I have started a new ……study, if you will. The people under me who are calling me Handyman, or Cripple, etc, I have started calling them employed. I am wondering who the first person will be that gets the clue! This would be a joke of course.

     Hey one more thing before I go, have you ever met someone who is really open, maybe a little bit too open in their conversation? I tend to attract a lot of those people. I guess that could be because I am one of…those people, duhhh. So I was speaking with this young lady my first day back to the job, and I was complaining about not being able to go to the gym, and losing weight and so on. Well in order to make me feel better she started describing all the different excursuses I could do while sitting down that would not put any pressure on my leg. So she started going on and on, and I mean literally she is one of those people who can talk to you so long they make you feel as if you can literally fall asleep standing up while listening to them. I tend to attract a lot of those people because, aw hell, I’m one of them. Anyway, as she was telling me about sit-ups, and curls and blah blah blah, not realizing that I used to be a trainer, I heard her throw in an exercise that I know I had heard before and could not remember what it was, but I was afraid to ask any questions that would have forced her to talk any more than she already was. Literally, I was concentrating as hard as I could to see if I could make my phone ring so I could excuse myself from the conversation, but any way, the exercise she said was a Kegel exercise. At the time it echoed in my head and all of her other words became, “wank wah wahh wa wank,” and all I could think of was, where I have heard that. So after she left I looked it up. Wow, when I googled it and found out what a Kegel exercise was, all I could think about was WTF? You don’t recommend exercises like that to people you barely know, what an odd bird she was. Long story short, after doing those exercises for 3 weeks now, the results have been GREAT! lol

Have a great day

Hello all. I apologize for the long break. I have just gotten fully back into the swing of things at work and I have been playing catch up and filling in for co-worker that is on vacation, but, I am here and writing now. I am supposed to have more pictures up now showing my war wounds, but there has been one thing stopping me from doing that, batteries. I swear every time I got to the store I forget to get them. I can leave the house specifically to get batteries and come back home with $150 worth of groceries and not a single battery! It feels great to be able to kind of hobble around without my crutches; well at least it DID feel better.

    I just recently had my check up appointment on Thursday and I got some good news, and some bad news. The good news is that the doctor says I seem to be healing a little ahead of schedule and it does not look like I am really going to have much of a scar. The bad news came after he looked around the room for a second and asked me, “Where are you crutches?” Okay…..problem. I figured that since they put me in the boot I should be okay just using the boot to get around. But he said it is too dangerous and that I should be using the boot and the crutches together. That really hurt hearing him say that dreaded “c” word again. I thought I was rid of those things for forever. When he told me that, I felt like a little kid who was just told to go sit in the corner and think about what he had just did wrong.

     So, I told the doc that I will reluctantly go back to using my crutches and I went on about my business. I think one of the worst things about experiencing this kind of injury is that I have developed what I like to label as, tendonrupturephobia. Since I had been hoping around on one foot and kind having to walk on my tippy toes on my good foot to make up for the height difference when walking in the CAM boot, I have started feeling a bit tender and sore on my good calf. Before my ATR I would have shrugged this feeling off and kept going, but now I feel like I’ve got another tendon ready to snap. It’s not just my legs either. While I was at the gym the other day, I figured I would try curling the weight I used to curl before I was injured and I felt like I could almost do it, but I stopped just as I felt I was about to get it up and get into my rhythm. I thought if I pushed too hard I could tear the tendon in my bicep. I know this is something that I am going to have to get over, but this is one of those injuries that can kind of mess with you a little bit.

     One thing that I can say is that it feels good being able to take a shower without wrapping my lower half up in trash bags and duct tape. It also feels good being able to stand in the shower again. But, I have also figured out that getting into the shower with a freshly repaired Achilles is like getting into trouble….it’s easy to get in, but not so easy to get out. After hopping in the shower recently, I could not help but smile as I stood there…in one place….scared to move too much for fear of slipping…. and thinking, wow, I am almost normal again. But after enjoying my shower I was faced with a dilemma. I am now forced to step out of the shower, directly on to the linoleum floor. I had moved the little bathroom carpet out of the way because my wife got it nice and wet when she got out and I did not want to slip on it or step on to a cold carpet fresh out of a warm shower. Smart move right?

   Well here was my issue….. I could not stick my good leg out first because then my bad leg would be left holding all my weight in the transfer process. I also could not step out with my bad leg because I would have to balance all of my weight on it as I pulled my good leg to dry land. So, since I figured I was already in a lose-lose situation, I started making evasive maneuvering plans. So this way, if anything goes wrong on my way out, I will already have a plan in place that would keep me from making another trip to see my doctor to get that same AT repaired. But just as I was ready to make the leap of faith, a short scene flashed across my mind. I pictured myself stepping across the edge of the tub with my bad leg and then having my good leg slip on a soapy spot in the tub. Unable to catch myself on anything else, I ended up do a split right across the edge of the bathtub. This was not a good thought! So after having that image dance in my head for a moment, I decided to just tuck away my pride and climb out of the tub on all fours. This way, even if I feel, my AT and my uhhh….jewels…would still be out of harm’s way.

    Something else my doctor told me that shocked me was concerning the length of time I was going to have to sport the fashionably stylish Roboboot. He said I was going to have to be in this thing for 3 months. 3 MONTHS!!!!! I mean, granted, the boot is better than the under arm guillotines I have had to get around on, but I thought I was only going to be boot bound for 6 weeks! Don’t get me wrong though, I love the freedom the boot gives me and I love the fact that I can take it off as well. My only complaint is the loud sound that the Velcro makes when I am taking the thing off. It’s loud enough to wake the whole house. But whenever one of the ladies at my job come around now I have a new way to make them cringe…I pull one of the Velcro straps back and get a nice loud velroish sound out of it the I say, “Did you hear that, that’s what it sounded like when my tendon ripped in two.” Wow, the faces I get from that would beat any hunted house face I have seen.

     I have been performing my own little version on physical therapy as well by doing some light stretching as I lay in the bed. I just lift my toes as far back as they can go on their own and I hold that stretch for a couple of seconds. I also like to take my boot of, put my foot flat on the floor and move my foot to thee tippy toes position while sitting down. I don’t do anything that would put any actual weighted strain on the Achilles, but just nice little light movements that allow it to start working and perhaps get some blood flow to it. I call it, Achilles yoga. By the way, just in case anybody cares, my wife is no longer mad at me for driving, she has gotten pretty used to the idea, and she has even taken a ride in the care with me. So I will be good to go until the snow hits the ground. And as a matter of fact, once it starts snowing, I don’t think I will be driving at all. People here in this state see snow every year, but as soon as the snow hits the streets it’s like these people forget how to drive in the snow and they end up with their cars folded and dented up on the side of the street after spinning out in 5 lane traffic during rush hour. That is not an environment I am willing to jump in with a left foot. Other than these little updates, not much has been happening in the ATR area. I could tell a bunch of good stories about other stuff that has happened but then my post would start to look more like gossip columns or advice columns than ATR blog post.

     Be well all and I will TRY to write tomorrow.  And to AnnieH, I apologize for screwing up your lunches….but I’m back!! 

Hello all, sorry I have not written in a while. I changed my work schedule from getting to work at 9am to getting to work at 5am, not an easy transition. I have had to go through all of this trouble so I could avoid driving to work, with my left foot, in rush hour traffic. Good news though, I have my CAM boot on now and it feels GREAT being able to go to the bathroom while standing on two feet. The CAM boot is far better than the crutches but I did figure out that I cannot move very fast while walking in that thing because of the difference in height. Needless to say, I have had a few situations where I would try to rush somewhere while walking in my CAM boot and I got a lot of laughs out of that. I have even had some good friends who really did not want to laugh at me but the more they say me trying to limp quickly to and fro, they had to stop and literally laugh out loud.

  Okay, image it. I have to almost walk on the tippy toes of my good leg, and I have to turn my CAM boot to the side a little as I walk to compensate for the extra height. Now imagine seeing someone almost spring to their tippy toes on one foot while they swing the other foot around to the side. Then imagine them trying to do that at a fast pace….now that comedy. I have been told by a friend of mine that I may still be walking to the side with my bad leg because of the atrophy in the muscles. He said when he tore his AT he had to walk sideways because his newly healed leg could not take the weight of walking regular since his calf and his quadriceps muscles had atrophied. I must admit, that bothered me a bit. So I have been doing simple leg lift while sitting in my chair at work just to make sure the muscles in my thighs don’t atrophy as bad as my calf has.

       I actually got a chance to look in the mirror at both of my legs together and I was shocked. My left leg looked as if it was nice and healthy and muscular, but my left leg looked as if it belonged to an underweight teenage girl. It almost makes sense now that some people reinjure their AT soon after getting rehabilitated because they probably did not have a good amount of the calf muscle built back up to help support the tendon. After seeing the dramatic decrease in size after being wrapped up and immobile for 3+ weeks, I think I have come up with a great idea for men and women who want to lose some weight in their midsection quickly. All they have to do is wrap a cast or some ace bandages around their mid section for a month straight and then, presto! It’s probably not likely to work but hey, people have spent tons of money on worse weight loss ideas.

   I think I almost got my wife arrested when I went to my last doctor’s appointment as well due to my little game I play. This lady, who I had no idea who she was at the time, asked me what I did to my leg to end up on crutches and in a boot. So I jokingly responded to her and said, “Well…..my wife likes the clothes folded and put in their respective drawers in a specific order and….this is what happens when you put the face towels where the bath towels go”. So just as I expected to here a quick chuckle all I heard was, “Is this the first time she has hit you?” WTF? So I had to explain to her that I was only joking and that I had injured myself playing football. After this explanation she then proceeded to tell me that she is some kind of social worker for the hospital that investigates abuse injuries. WOW. So needless to say she probably did not really find that funny though she grinned about after I told her I was joking. I am pretty sure she probably followed me home and staked my house out for a day or two anyway.

    I need to hurry and get my scar pictures on the site too. When I went to get my staples removed (a week after I originally thought they were getting removed) I was quite shocked, both at the relatively little pain that was involved in removing them, and at the very fine line that was cut into my skin and later glued and stapled back together. It almost looks like you won’t be able to tell that there was an incision made there. But I do think there will be marks on my leg from the staple holes though. But the weirdest thing that I have to deal with right now is the fact that my leg really is not sore or swollen, but for some odd reason it’s my ankle and the top of my foot are swollen and dark. Go figure.

    Another problem with having my foot wrapped up so long is the dead skin. I was lying in the bed the other night with no sock, no boot, nothing at all on my feet. This was also a night when my wife had put satin sheets on the bed. It felt great to be able to put my foot in the bed with no ties, or wraps or ice bags on it. But I started hearing this sound every time I would move my feet around the bed and at the same time I would feel something pulling on my foot. When I figured out what was going on, I noticed that the skin on the bottom of my foot was grabbing the sheets like Velcro, and as a matter of fact that was the sound that was made. It sounded like I was pulling the Velcro straps on my CAM boot. So whenever I can actually reach my foot again without having to strain, I will be soaking my foot and using one of the pedicure stones to get that dead skin off. If not, I fear that I will be kicked out of bed the first night my foot accidentally brushes up against my wife on accident and exfoliates her leg! lol

     Before I go, I have to share with you a conversation that I had with a nurse at to doctor’s office. This was the some nurse who removed my staples. I was sitting there on this table complaining about my leg shrinkage and she also told me the same thing my friend told me, “The rest of your leg my atrophy too”. So I looked at her in the eyes and said that I cannot and will not let that happen. I told her I would be crushed if that were to happen to me. So then she looks back at me and says, “Ya know……there are some other body parts that I am sure you would be even more upset about if they shrank and shriveled up”. I sat there for a minute and thought about what she said, and low and behold, shes right. So from this point on I have realized that a shrinking leg really is not all the bad in comparison to some other things shrinking.

                                                                          Till next time freinds.                                                                                  

    This weekend has been great and I got to have a lot of laughs with my parents who came to town this weekend. My mother and step-father accompanied me to my doctor’s appointment this Friday. Actually I did not have much of a choice, my wife wanted to make sure they drove me to the doctor’s office so I would not be driving. Oh, and by the way she is still p!ssed at me. Anyway, I sat and waited in the doctor’s waiting room looking around at the dark brown fabric walls of the poorly lit waiting room while listening to some pretty good jazz and guessing what injuries other people were there to get checked on. After about 5 minutes I was called to the back office, and I got up, eventually, and made my way to the back. As I was close to bending the corner and removing myself from the sight of anyone in the waiting room, I could hear my mother’s voice over the office chatter and the jazz music saying, “Do you want me to go with you like last time baby?” I turned around to see her and my step-father having the laugh of their life time at my expense. Usually I would have a nice snappy come back but I must admit, it was pretty funny and she got me good.

    Well I made it to the back and the doctor’s nurse came in and removed my ace bandage and removed the sterile wrap from my leg so that the doc can get a good look at what was going on with my leg. I cringed a bit as she slipped the scissors under the material and started cutting, but my leg really started having phantom pains after I actually saw what was hiding under the wraps all this time. I was under the impression that I had probably had a couple stitches under there that were nice and symmetrical looking, and maybe slightly bloodied. But to my surprise, my leg looked like one of the pieces of paper I would let my daughter practice her stapling skills on whenever she comes to my job. I had 18 staples in my leg, I was amazed. I took about 5 pictures and of course it was kind of hard to get a good angle with the lighting and all, but I did get a couple good shots. The doc later came in and felt around a bit and he did confirm that I did not rerupture my tendon after my little incident at work. WHEW!!!

    I also got to get a good look at my leg as well and D@mn my leg got smaller. That atrophy stuff does not take very long at all. I have another appointment next week to get my bio-staples removed and hopefully the doc’s staple remover looks nothing like the one I have in my desk at the office, if so, these staples will be with me until my dying day. I have got to watch a good 5 movies and 2 seasons worth of Law and Order with my pops so I have a few stories to share later on in the week. I will try to get some more stuff on here during the week. Right now I need to go find out where my parents are because it is dark and the both went for a walk like an hour ago and it’s gotten dark and they are probably lost! lol    Till later…..

     Okay, so today I have been crutch mishap free. I have no close calls or scares on the crutches, so in my mind I take that as a sign that I am getting better on the sticks. Oppps, okay I just thought about it, and I guess I should clarify, I did not have any “moving violations”, but I figured out something 2 or 3 times today. I have heard it be said that experience was the best teacher but apparently I was not paying attention in class while experience was teaching and when test time came around…I failed.

    Here’s my situation, I have gotten into the habit of laying my limpy sticks down in front of me instead of standing them up on a wall or on the edge of the couch because they tend to either fall or be a little harder to retrieve than they were to place. At one point I would gently lay down my sticks and take my seat, but after performing some performing efficiency checks on my crutch skills, I figured I could save a nanosecond or two by just bending a little bit and dropping my crutches once I got a couple inches from the floor, I mean it’s not like they are going to break or anything right? Well every single time I do that when I am at home the first crutch always bounces up and hits me right on the ankle bone. OWWWWW.

    You know, speaking of crutches, I think I should go into a business designing aftermarket designer crutch parts. Okay, think about it, how much better would you feel about your limpy sticks if they were sayyyyyyyy, diamond studded? Okay, that may be going a bit far, but perhaps I could fashion some hand cushions in different colors that would match with some of your outfit’s ladies. And for the guys I could put your favorite sports team logo on yours. How about some electric hand warmers for those colder months. Oh, and ever better, how about I put a little sack of some sort in that space under the hand cushion so we would not have to use plastic bags and sweatshirts with front pockets to move our stuff around. Okay, that’s it, I’m going into business tomorrow, I am going to get my daughter bedazzler and get my Fall season crutch accessory line put together.

    You know, I don’t know what is worse; my wife is worrying about my foot, or the 80 concerned people in my department who have a comment about my medical care every time they pass me. If I am sitting at my desk and my leg is not up I hear, “Shouldn’t that leg be elevated”? If I stand in one spot talking too long to someone I have a habit of lowering my injured foot on the floor with my toes bent so that  I am not putting the pressure on my Achilles, so if someone see’s that they tap me and tell me that I should not have my foot touching the ground. I am starting to think my wife has made some calls into the office to have these people harass me. I guess it’s cool to know that people care, but I can’t catch a break at the office. To make matters worse, I have told my wife that she is acting like my mother worrying about me like she does, so guess who is coming to visit tomorrow and staying through the weekend…………MY MOTHER.

    With that being said I am sure my doctor will be receiving a lot of questions from her when she takes me to get my stitches removed. With that I am also sure I will need to get her clearance to even sit down and type on my laptop. Oh well, I guess I really won’t be getting to drive, hobble, hop, or anything else for a couple days, and that probably a good thing for me. You know, the biggest issue I have with this injury is that if I do get back to 100% I will always have that injury in the back of my mind and that will prevent me from having fun running around with my kids. I have heard from a few people that I will never be at 100% again….ever. I don’t like to hear that but I guess it should just give me motivation to do me PT and keep up on my strength training once I am cleared for body building workouts again. What have you guys heard about getting back to 100%? I have to go now, Mom is coming tomorrow morning bright and early on her plane and I am sure I will have a curfew for the rest of the weekend. I can hear her right now, “If you want to heal you need to get your sleep”. ARRRGGGGGG.      Till the next post….

Wow, today was not a good day. I went to work again today to get some things taken care of in the office. I continued to collect points in my game too! (Joke from the end of last post) Of course my wife and I are still having a bit of a spat about me driving as well. I told her the day after I ruptured that the only way I would want to go to work is if my boss came here to my home to pick me up. Well when the need came up for me to go to work, my boss informed me that he was taking the bus for another two weeks and the only other co-workers that could give me a ride without going out of their way are women, and I don’t even want to get into that argument. With all that was going on I figured I would drive back and forth to work and home, nowhere else. For one reason or another my wife views me driving with my left foot in the same light as she would view someone who would fill up at a gas station while smoking a cigarette and arch wielding their door joints.

                Well all of this steam came to a head when my wife called me and notified me that she was bringing my daughter to me so she could attend a business dinner with her co-worker and company VP’s. I don’t work at a daycare or anything, all this took place after business hours, at 530pm. Well we had been arguing the same way any sensible couple argues now-a-days….through text message! Well by the time she made it to my job, I was p!ssed. So when I went down stairs to get my daughter, I was trying to do everything in my power to not say anything to her and start arguing in the towers lobby. So when I got off the elevator she gave me this dirty look and I almost said something. But one of us had to be the bigger person, and you never refer to a woman and definitely not your wife, as the bigger ANYTHING. So I tried my best to hurry and grab my daughter and get back upstairs and in the process of doing so, one of the wing nuts on the crutches got caught in my pants pocket in the middle of forward swing, and I all of a sudden I was left with an option, not a decision, an option. It was already decided that I was going down, my option was exactly how I wanted to go down.

         I wanted to go ahead and do the belly flop right on the floor but 3 things stopped me…1- I could not let my wife see me fall right in front of her while we are arguing, 2- I was too close to the odd and short double glass swinging door type security gate my building installed by the elevators and 3- Marble floors do not create nearly the same splash that water does. Now for my first issue; me falling in front of her would have given her a great cue to say “I told you that you should not leave the house”. As far as falling toward the security gate, I probably would have decapitated myself on the doors or otherwise placed myself in a position that would have still gotten my picture on rotten.com.  I believe the third issue needs no explication.

    After placing my options under intense review, I decided to release my limpy sticks because they were moving me forward towards the security gate…..at a very bad angel, and attempted to just catch myself by hopping on my good foot. That plan worked great, but space became an issue real quick. There are motion censored posts that protrude from the security gate that  come out about 3 feet from the glass gate itself, and my first hop got me dangerously close to it but my momentum was still carrying me forward. Then without really thinking about my next move (my slow motion remote control was not functioning) I stuck out my withered leg to save myself. That move did not go well…..at all. At this point in time, my slow motion remote seemed to working to its fullest capacity.

                As my bad foot mad contact with the floor it slid forward slightly (because the floor is marble and I had a dress sock covering my whole bandage) and then it stopped my forward motion. I felt nothing at all for a good…half a second or so. But soon thereafter, my brain and nervous system were synced up again after the horrific scare, then I felt a very tense feeling in my Achilles area. I stood there for a second waiting for that second wave of pain and waiting for the blood to start rushing out of the bandage. To my surprise, that second rush of pain did not come and neither did the blood from my tendon ripping apart from its stitches and the stitches on my skin ripping apart. It throbbed a little for a moment, and that throb stayed there, but no real pain.  My wife of course asked if I hurt myself and proceeded to give me the, “I told you so” speech. I then told her that what just happened could have easily happened at home, and I walked into the elevator with my daughter.

                As I stood in the elevator, my daughter set her eyes on me and they did not move. She was looking for the smallest indication that I was hurt before she flipped out.  I squeezed my eyes together as tight as I could to stop the mental pain of thinking about having to go get my Achilles reattached after less than a week. But I did not have much time to do so because when I squeezed my eyes like that my daughter flipped out and started screaming my name asking if I was okay.  I smiled and said yes, and she chilled out pretty quick. Once I got to my desk I could not shake the thought that I might have done some damage, so I took of my ace bandage to see if I could see some blood or any other signs. I still had a sterile cotton type thing wrapped around my leg so I could not see my actual scar (which I am really nervous about seeing). I tried the Thompsons test, but my foot was already angled from the brace and I tried feeling it and flexing it to see if it seemed “loose” but nothing I did gave me a clear indication that I was good to go.

         So to gain peace of mind, I had to text my wife and ask if she could provide me with my doctor’s home number. She then calls me and asks me if I am okay, and why I am making her out to be the bad guy etc. So to avoid further conflict, I just asked again for the number and she gave it to me and I called the doctor and explained the situation. I told him what I did and I also told him that I had not taken my pain meds all day and the pain I felt from the incident was not that bad at all, it was just a little sore. He assured me that with the stitching material and stitching pattern he used that I would have a lot more pain than I had at the time if I would have torn through them. He will still check it out when we meet on Friday but as for now my mind is eased.

Our argument about me driving is still not resolved, but….my wife  did say one sentence to me when I got home though. She asked if I would like her to make me something to eat before she goes to sleep. Ummm, I don’t care if you are the Pope, I am not letting you make me any food if you have ill feelings toward me, nope, not happening. So I politely declined and she went off to bed. I then went upstairs to get my own food. My 4 course meal consisted of 4 peanut butter sandwiches (that I carried down to my area in a Wal-Mart bag), 2 bags of Doritos (that I opened a little to let the air out and stuffed in my pockets), and a jar of apple sauce (no spoon either- I tossed the jar down the stairs so I would not have to carry it. But this was before I found a plastic bag for my sandwiches). Last but not least, the cup of water (that I have learned to carry with my fingertips).

All I can say is that as a man, sacrificing your pride can help you lead a more comfortable life! But also as a man, sacrificing that same pride can be taken as a sign of admitting wrong doing, and I have done nothing wrong, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Lol

Until tomorrow my friends.

     Alrightttttt! My first day back to work was today. Man I missed actually seeing and interacting with real people rather than living vicariously through sitcom characters. I have watched the entire 2 and a half seasons of a sitcom called Eureka….wow, that’s a good show. Anyway, I actually drove to work today….with my left foot….and I live in America, and my wife blew a gasket. She was very disappointed in the fact that I selfishly risked my life to go to work by driving with my left foot. Umm, in my opinion, I was not risking my life, I was adapting to my situation. I have lived and driven in 3 different countries, I have driven with the steering wheel and pedals on both sides of the car, and not to mention, I have driven manual transmissions vehicles, with the pedals and equipment on either side of the car so I think I should be safe driving and automatic with my left foot. Does anyone think I am crazy here? It is not like I have both of my arms in a sling and I am driving to work using my knees to steer me all the way to work, although that would be a fun project to try tomorrow! lol

    It’s amazing to me how free I feel when I work out or when I am driving, because as soon as I get done, I almost feel as if I can stand up and walk off as if I never had this injury. I am an active person and it is only so long I can sit in that house and not do anything but watch TV all day. I have wished I can do that many of days while at work, but when I got my chance to do just that, it is not all it is cracked up to be. My wife was obviously so irate with me that she felt as if I did not need anyone to do anything for me. She walked in the house and prepared a meal for our daughter, and then she went to her room. Hmmmm, now I have to get upstairs, get my own food and carry my food and drink back downstairs while using my limpy sticks.

   You know I could have played the victim and made her feel guilty, but I said screw it and attempted to do the impossible, and I did it. I did not drop one drop….okay, I did have a little water spillage but not much, and all my food made it do the couch. HAHAHAHA! I did something on my own, and I was proud of it. But it was easier to drive to work than it was to do that crap. Next thing you know she will be replacing my pain pills with vitamin C pills to really try to do me in.

   Recently I have been feeling like a chore in the house. I felt like I was a senior citizen being cared for on a schedule. Lunch at 1230pm, short conversation between 1 and 1:15pm, Water at 3pm, etc. And to make matters worse, my daughter would come down stairs, grab some lip balm and apply it to my lips, and then put hand sanitizer on my hands?????? I have no idea why but at least she is trying. But the oddest and sweetest/weirdest thing happened today. After her and her mother came home this evening, her mother of course said nothing to me and my daughter said hello and asked if my foot was feeling better. Then she disappeared upstairs for a while as I watched old presidential debates….yeah I got THAT bored. Then she came back down stairs with about 4 of her oddest dressed dolls and sat them on the other end of the couch and did not say a word, just walked away. Now we have had conversations about her starting these toy terrorist cells all around the house before, so I asked her where she was going and why she was leaving her dolls on the couch. She then turned to me and said, “So you don’t have to be down here by yourself”. There was a moment of silence and she walked off. A four year old ladies and gentlemen, a four year old.

   Speaking of being back at work, I have a pretty cool game for you to play if you have not been back to work yet. Hopefully most people at the job have no idea about how you hurt yourself, and normally if they do, they still ask. What is with that anyway? So here is the game, every time someone new see’s you on crutches and ask what happened, you have to give them a different out of this world superhero type of story, with a straight face. If you make it through the story with a straight face, that’s 1 point. If you get them to open their eyes wide and drop their jaw, that’s 5 points. If you get a tear, that’s 50. LMAO But just so your game does not end early, I have pretty much ran the, I jumped out of a burning building with a little girl, cat, puppy…llama, in my arms and saved it’s life story has pretty much been played out. Along with my story of winning on an American gladiators episode that wont air because of the terrible injury that I gave the “other guy” while in competition. 

   Have fun out there!!

   Well, I feel good. Today was my first actual day working out again. I felt free, I felt enabled….and most of all, I felt normal again for a moment. Not being able to do some of my daily activities has made me feel as if I was just wasting away. I got to almost 400 push ups. Of course this was over the course of about 15 minutes but hey, it made me feel better. I also got to toss the dumbbells around a bit too.

   On a sadder note, upon going outside for my first time in ages to visit my little garden, I found what could likened to the scene of a disregarded and patient occupied assisted living center. All of my plants were on their last leg and had not been cared for for about a week. My plants were on one of the first things I tended to once I got home. They were my calming solution, kind of like my happy place if you will. I think my wife knows how important those plants are to me, but I don’t think she was very concerned with making sure they got water on the daily bases. But then again, I can’t really be mad at her. She did not cause my injury, I did, and I guess I can’t expect her to take care of EVERYTHING. But I have raised all of those plants from simple little seeds and I am not the type of person that you can sit down and talk to and say, “Yep, he’s a plant guy”.

   You know maybe it’s mental, but every now and again I really start feeling like the reject in the house now. I feel like the daily chore. I feel like as long as I don’t tumble down the stairs or put up too much of a racket, I could just float on by like a ghost or something. Speaking of floating by, I found out first hand today that there are two inherent dangers to look out for when you are bound to the limpy sticks (crutches). The first obstacle we have to look out for is the unsuspecting bathroom rug. Those things feel really secure under a regular foot, but too much pressure generated in a small area at a slight angle, and you will be doing more tricks and flips with your stick than you would see at a typical martial arts exhibition.

   The second boobie trap we need to look out for is wet spots on smooth surfaces. I encountered this happy little heart rate increaser this afternoon while my wife was away and I was, a-roaming. I had just finished working out and I had worked up quite a sweat, so I decided to hobble my way back upstairs to grab a drink. I have linoleum floors with this really odd print on them so seeing a puddle is quite difficult unless you look at it from the right angle and/or you have the right lighting, which apparently I did not have. Now I came to the refrigerator and as I passed the fridge to grab a cup, my life was paused after I felt a slight shift in my foundation. It was almost like when you are driving on a snowy road, and you take a turn and somewhere in that turn u realize that the medium you are traveling on is not asphalt, its ice.

    Well now, all though I know I am very lucky I had not leaned my full weight on my crutches and got into my forward swing, but I was still in a pickle. My left stick was starting to slip and I was afraid to put too much weight on my right stick because I did not know rather or not it would hydroplane on me too, and my knee was in the ready to push off position. So, while my life was paused I figured the best thing I could do was to apply pressure on both the right stick, which had not start to slip, so it could assumedly be safe, and apply a little weight to my good foot and lean back slightly so if I fall, it would be straight back on my butt. The right stick worked well, “Yes”, the good foot…did not, “Crap”. So now the good foot with no socks or shoes on is starting to slide a bit and to top it off, the water I stepped in as cold as heck and that shocked me a bit which did not help my stability.

   Now that I am at the point to where it’s time to brace for impact, my left stick has slid itself into a dry patch and has enough traction to stop sliding, but I have already went in to damage control mode and I was positioned and bracing for rear impact……hmmm, okay that did not come out right. I was ready to fall on my a$$. But, being the stubborn person that I am, I figured I was not going down without a fight, so with one crooked stick and one straight one, I attempted to balance myself on what support I had to try to regain balance. To my surprise, it worked. I felt like one of those guys in the Olympics doing the ring routine and trying to hold my strenuous position for 10 seconds, while keeping an ear to ear smile the whole time.

  Once I recovered I was actually pretty impressed with my performance, but I was about as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs or a crutch bound man working the fries at McDonalds. I guess I am not as old as I thought because I did not injury anything during the event. But then again, if I did I probably won’t feel it until tomorrow. So until then…..

    Well today was just another day, nothing special. The pain really came on last night, partly because I actually did not want to take the meds. I actually wanted to see how bad the pain really got. Not a smart move! The medicine does not work as fast as I expected it to so I had to endure the painful pulsations coming from my Achilles. It felt as if I could feel every single stitch that the doctor made, and it feels like my cut is pretty long too. I thought these things were only supposed to be about 3 inches? I really feel like taking off the bandages that are on my leg just to take a glance at it. I guess I will have to settle for seeing it when I got get my stitches removed. I bet that procedure is a pain in the backside too.

    My wife is still being such an angel. She is really taking care of me and canceling a lot of her plans so that she can be with me. I have told her a couple of times to go out with one of her friends and not be held hostage with me in the house. She has been keeping me up on my med times, keeping me clean, fed, off the stairs, and still keeping the whole house spotless. What can I say, I know how to pick’em. I think I will try to make it in to work on Monday as well. How long did some of you guys stay off of work before going back?

                                                                  Until tomorrow