Looking Shiny, Feeling Shiny

I spent more than 33 years without crutches, but it's like they never existed. My life just started back on June 15th. Before that, who knows what happened. Memories of the "before-time" are even more blurred now than they'd ever been with drink and smoke. My arms are big and strong now, like that summer I set tile.

Oh yeah, I set tile...worked with Boo...he even came to the graduation party at the Madonna Inn...

My right leg is toned and muscular, and my right foot is probably a whole size larger than my left. That's probably due to shrinking rather than extra growth, but still, I notice it. My left leg looks like it needs to go to a rehab clinic, like it's been hitting the pipe or needle or too long.

I've become quite the killer of Musca domesticus; to keep the breeze circulating I keep our back door open, and we don't have a screen door.

The other day I looked down at the incision, now healed up and smooth looking, sealed up and all, and I noticed it looked shiny.

The sun was hitting it just right, and all along the incision, along a path a half-inch wide to each side, it looked like someone slathered Vaseline. I started to notice something else: feeling was returning to the area.

It was feeling shiny as well.

During all this time, I noticed that the area around the incision, maybe an inch and a half total centered on the cut-line, was totally numb. I could feel in my leg as my finger would get closer, then I could only feel it in my finger, like I was touching someone else.

Only the other day, when it was shiny and glimmering in the sun, I realized that the feeling was returning to the numb no-man's land. I imagined the life shining out of it, and the return of feeling personifying that life.

The doctor told me that in time full feeling will return (he said it could take years), and that it was the shock of the trauma (making the incision) had caused the local nerves to wig out and turn off. I think his "years" estimate is off, by, eh, years. It's almost back right now.

I've spent a few weeks doing exercises that strengthen and stretch the ligaments and muscles in my muscle-less left leg, and now I'm allowed to put some weight on it. Not full weight-bearing yet---they want to be sure everything is fully healed before they let me go crazy with it.

That just means more time before Corrie and I can go play some tennis. Bummer.

But soon enough...

Two Anecdotes from Today

As I waited for my X-ray, a nurse was pushing a bed with a blanketed man laying in it. I heard her ask him, "So, what are you here for?" There had been an older man with a large cast on his left leg sitting in a wheel-chair and taking up lots of hallway space, enabling me to hear this exchange by way of their reduced speed through the hall.

The man in the bed responded, "I swallowed some glass." 

"And how did that happen?"

"When I was smoking." 

The nurse, who obviously had prior knowledge of what was going on, started in almost immediately about how that's the real concern, and that's what we need to focus on, and that makes these other current problems a little less important.

Wow. I could tell this wasn't some resin covered colored hand-blown glass, if you get my drift.

Minutes later I heard the call from the X-ray tech, "Pah-teeq Sur-wuud?" Uh, what?

I'd never heard my name butchered as bad as that in this country. Seriously, no "s-h" sound in my last name. As I was getting up from my seat I laughed and looked at Corrie and said, "Ssssuuuurrrr-whad? Okay..."

I got into the room and the tech, a short and young Vietnamese girl, asked me which knee was bothering me. Bothering me? I said with my eyes as I took my seat on the bed.

"Neither of 'em." 

"Huuuuuuhhhh?" with a slight valley-girl upward lilt.

"Well I broke my left one, so that's probably the guy you'll wanna X-ray."

She gave a cutesy laugh that would be a chuckle in someone else, someone with more girth. Then she had me pose a certain way for the picture, and kept saying things like Wow, that must be a huge pin in there, assuming that the long incision meant I was carrying some serious hardware. I told her no, there wasn't one long pin, there were multiple screws and a plate, but no single long thing.

The second shot she wanted the inside of my left knee up. She jammed the plate that collects the X-rays under my leg (which was unpleasant), and had me turn towards the left, bringing my knee into the orientation she wanted. It was like I was trying to spoon. The knee wasn't quite in the right spot, so she had me swing my right leg over my left, leaving it dangling over the side of the table, and incidentally crushing my testicles.

As I was getting into this position, a guy had entered the X-ray room and was having a talk with this tech about what they were going to do for lunch. That's probably why they couldn't really understand me when I yelped, "That's my balls!"

I was adjusting myself when she admonished me to stop moving, to which I said clearly, I'm just adjusting my testicles, which were getting squashed. I don't think she was listening though.

I couldn't help by have a laugh about it after leaving and heading to the other waiting room.

Exceeding my expectations, depravity and all...