you may refer to me as grace

For I am now adorned with a black and blue and over-sized ankle, and my very own air splint. Which is something  I’d never heard of  until I had one slapped on me. I also now have this pronounced and very awkward limp, so you may also refer to me as "Gimpy".

Or as She Who Pays No Attention To What The Hell She’s Doing. I was leaving for lunch, going down the cement stairs outside my building, and trying to get my sunglasses out of their case without the lens falling out, which it keeps doing and hitting the ground and getting scratched. And my annoying hair was blowing right in my face because I’m really needing a haircut. And apparently I just skipped right over the last step – and WHAM. And OWWWWW. I leapt right back up and tried real hard and somewhat unsuccessfully to not swear like a drunken sailor out loud – despite how I’d just gone down the stairs like a drunken sailor so it actually was not all that inappropriate – and looked around to see if anyone had seen me catapult through the air (apparently not – no one was staring and I was up on the hill above the main sidewalk) and then I rushed hobbled to my car (luckily close by for once) and THEN swore and wept and tried to see if I could tell how much damage had been done. Because duuude, it HURT.

I spent my lunch drinking tea and reading the paper while sitting sideways in my small car with my leg up on the back of the passenger seat. Which did help a bit.

When I got back to work I admitted what I’d done and D suggested I go up to the infirmary to get it checked out, just in case. Because it WAS a Campus Fall and since all our sidewalks and stairs are ten zillion years old and crumbling all over the place, it might be a Safety Issue as well. So I went to the Infirmary and got to sit around forever reading old magazines despite their not being anyone else waiting. And I also got to find out how the new computer system is totally screwed up there too, since I’d already seen a doctor for a backache half an hour before I even arrived for my twisted ankle.

I got x-rays which were really fun to watch – they are all fancy and digital now, unlike when I was a student visiting the infirmary in the Dark Ages – and I got to look at them as they appeared on the computer like magic and view my own bones. Which are probably not cracked or broken or fractured, although I DO appear to have an old fracture, oddly enough. They were going to have a radiologist look at it today, so apparently it’s okay since nobody has called me. They offered me some Moultrin and slapped the Air Splint on me and told me to stay off my foot. And to pay attention to what I’m doing when I’m going down stairs.

I spent all last night lying on the couch with cats on top of me, periodically icing my ankle, reading Wicked and sleeping.

It doesn’t hurt now nearly as much as I’d expect it to. It doesn’t hurt much at all unless I’m walking on it. Which is inconvenient, as I kind of need to walk. And it’s not that bad even walking, but my ankle is so swollen that I can’t bend it so I’ve got that massive limp and have to just crawl along wherever I go. Which is getting kind of annoying already. Ordinarily I’m a brisk walker.

The good thing is that this must mean my anti-cancer drug isn’t causing bone loss, which is one of the side effects. Otherwise surely I’d have clearly broken something. It may cause attention-span loss, since this is the THIRD time in a year that I’ve fallen all over the place because I wasn’t watching what I was doing. The other two times I tripped and fell and hit pretty much every part of my body I could possibly hit on the pavement, yet was not more than slightly bruised. Another sign that I must have nice strong bones. I did actually have a bone density scan last week, and haven’t gotten the results. But who needs results when you can take spectacular falls with no broken bones??
 
And now I get to sit with my leg propped up on my extra chair here in the office. It makes typing a little difficult, so perhaps I better get back to work.