Should I make a filter?

I'll probably be musing/venting about the recuperation. I don't have any idea how much people might care about the minor little bits of dealing with a broken ankle.

So, if you think there ought to be a filter, speak up. Otherwise I'll just post in the clear.

This is day three, morning two.

It fucking hurts. I don't know if that's because of the drugs wearing off in the night, my moving about before I let the drugs kick in, or what, but the just fine in the night (never got to a more than 4) becoming a royal pain (it's orbiting 7) is not my idea of a good time.

Pain... some people commented about my going to the museum Monday. Maybe it was a bit silly. I thought, briefly, when I got up from the wreck (and one of the things I've noticed about motorcycle crashes is how aware I am of just what is happening to my head in them. The scooter crash, the time I dropped the scooter on my knee, the time Marna and I slid out on the road to Gibbs, this one, I was very clear on just what my head was doing as the ground rose up to meet me. Helmets are your friend.)

Putting aside the Ebola Scale I am far too familiar, even to the point of intimacy, with the, "on a scale of 1-10 how much does it hurt?" way of measuring pain. It's actually a pretty good measure because it creates a valid baseline; by giving it a sliding scale, and making it internal to the patient.

That's the important thing. Pain is internal and the patient's perception of it is what needs to be dealt with.

I think, all in all, I tend to underrate it to about 7. Some of that may be trying to be, "brave", or just thinking it's not that bad, I don't need to medicate it (as Les says, I am not fond of medications). Between 5-6 I start to really notice it.

Seven, seven is the break point. Seven is where I start wanting drugs.

Last night I slept pretty well (apart from Bugulu deciding I am loved,and lovable, and insisting on using my neck as a mattress). I had two cats cuddled up to me (which, at the moment may even be better than a lover, because they are less likely to move and impinge on my ankle, fond as I am of having a warm body to snuggle up to), and my nighttime pain never seemed to rise to more than about 4. I've been on the couch, which lets me use the back to keep my leg up, which is good.

I did dream about the foot. I was on a shuttle flight of some sort (I say some sort because the initial start was much like an olympic bobsled run, with us shoving until it was going, and then hopping onto a ramp while the pilot transitioned to real flight. This was apparently new, as there was a news piece on it. I have odd dreams, and that sort of detail filling is normal in them).

I observed, aloud, that being on the trip meant I could recover in zero-g, to which someone replied that it was offset by not being able to get my foot above my heart.

When I actually started to move around... things were not so well. The foot started to hurt. The effect of the vicodin (not as effective as I'd like, the pain is never really gone, even when I am a woozy dope, with poor balance and severely degraded motor skills: Speaking with my mother, it seems she has no great benefit from it either).

By the time I moved to a full dose (10 mg vicodin, 1,000 tylenol) it was orbiting 7, with the spikes edging to eight, and the troughs never below 6+. I'll be talking with Ortho about different meds when I see them today.

So, that's the state of things. I may be off the net until sometime tomorrow, depending on the treatment plan we work out this afternoon.

News as it happens.

Clunk

Which is the sound my right foot now makes.

No surgery. Snap decision to give me a cast right away, instead of the splint he was planning because, if it fits, the cast is better for healing.

That was, in part, the benefit of my being an informed consumer of medical data. He made a point of asking me to tell him if he was speaking over my head, or if I felt he was talking down to me. We talked about this and that, and what my injury might do, and the risks of various treatments. He said he was fairly conservative; one of his mentors had told him there was almost nothing which surgery couldn't make worse, so he was reluctant to do it if it wasn't obviously needed. He had also asked if I had any other medical issues, and I told him I had Reiter's.

He acted just like every other non-rheumatologist physician I've encountered since my diagnosis... "Really", with that eager sense of having encountered something wonderful. The important part of that was both to establish that I was tolerably familiar with things, and to see what else I was taking. It turns out my meds for the Reiter's are going to slow the healing from the break. Oh well.

I have a spiral fracture of the right fibula. The good news is I don't seem to have any ligament damage, which is why I don't need surgery. He was going to splint it, and then a cast, looking at the way in swelled, and the lack of fracture blisters at more than 48 hours meant I wasn't likely to inflame any more, so a cast was a better option; if I understood it might need to come off if I did swell any more.

I said that for a better prognosis (more support for the ankle, less chance of it sustaining more damage, more comfort, etc. I was willing to court the risk.

So he wrapped my foot, listened to my story about the dream, and the idea that I wouldn't be able to elevate my foot above my heart in zero-g, and slapped some fiberglass around it and said he wanted to see me in two weeks. At that point we'll probably take an x-ray, replace the cast and I'll, with luck, be ready for a walking cast in another two weeks.

I won't, mind you, be able to walk on it. Not for at least six weeks, but the big advantage will be the ability to take it off and soak/shower. Right now I have to bag my foot, or do a sponge bath. I am thinking about getting one of these waterproof cast cover. I'm a bit torn, this is tightening my budget (I won't be working for at least two weeks, and disability isn't automatic. I suspect my employer hasn't been covering it, so the GI bill, and my disability compensation are it for income).

It's also frustrating that I don't really fit. My cast is an XS for length, and my leg, at the point of seal, is 11 inches. The XS is 7, which is too small (they say one inch less is needed for a good seal, but I don't think a latex sheath four inches smaller than my leg is going to be comfortable). The next size up, is 13 inches. Luckily that one is 29 inches long, which is far enough up my leg that I am large enough (15 inches) to get a good seal. Looking at the images, this is doable.

I'm thinking of, in a week or so, being able to soak in the hot tub, and get increased blood flow (one ices for a while, then one uses heat). It would speed my recovery, so the 40 bucks or so would be worth it.

Pain Management: I told him the Vicodin wasn't cutting it. He said, fine, we can try percoset. The nice thing about the percoset... it's a 5/325, not a 5/500, so I have more flexibility. It also seems to be working better, though the secondary effects are more notable, in the way they affect my thinking. Neither of them are drugs I can operate a vehicle, machinery, etc. while taking.

For those who care to look at The injury

And, for those who don't care to see the bruising and the swelling,