No, he told me I could move into partial weight bearing using crutches only (no more wheelchair) for three more weeks. That might seem like an improvement to some people, but to me it sounded like three more weeks of torture. I was despondent. I was aggravated. I was deflated. Basically, I was a mean, angry, bitch. No other way to say it. I could not be cheered up or humored yesterday and probably owe apologies to both my children and my dog.
Anyway, today is a new day. I slept pretty good, even though it was on the couch AGAIN and for some reason the alarm in my bedroom upstairs started going off at 4:00 a.m. and I had to call Harry to wake him up to go turn it off. Also, my forearms itched liked crazy several times during the night. That doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, but my cortisone cream was all the way in the kitchen and the thought of dragging myself there to get the cream was harder than just scratching my stupid arms. You know what happens when you scratch an itch...it itches more! So, lesson learned....tubes of cortisone in every room from this day forward! Isn't this lovely? What the heck? It does fade and tame down once I hit it with the cortisone so I am grateful for that.
BUT, let's get to the part where I woke up and the sun was shining and my knee didn't hurt while putting somewhere between 10% and 25% weight on my bad leg. No idea how to measure that percentage, but that is what I am going with. The bottom of my foot on that leg hurts like a mother, but I think I just need to stretch out those tendons that have been out of operation for five weeks. After being up and around for a couple of hours my foot already feels better.
My first challenge of the day was how to get a cup of coffee down my neck! With crutches, you can't carry things, especially not hot, liquid things. I put on my Lana thinking cap, because Lana can figure some things out. I thought about a thermos, in a cross body bag like a purse. Kind of a pain in the butt and I really don't think drinking coffee out of a thermos at your kitchen table has the same taste as if you were drinking coffee out of thermos while sitting in a hunting blind or on a stakeout (neither of which I have ever done, but still...) I really wanted my coffee in a coffee cup. It is the small things.
After running through a couple of options, I developed a coffee moving strategy that I will forever call the Crutch Coffee Olympics! Y'all, I have already cut my time from 6 minutes to 2 minutes on my very first day of training! If you want to play along to be my competition when this becomes an Olympic sport, here is what you need to do. Get an empty cup down from the cupboard and put it as close to the left side of the sink as possible...crutch yourself towards the coffee pot on the right side of the sink, just far enough that you can barely reach the coffee cup on the counter. Grab the cup and move it across the sink and close to the pot. Pour your coffee. Reverse your actions and move the full coffee cup back over the sink. Crutching just far enough away that you can stretch and reach the cup and bring it towards you. Then you repeat (crutch, stretch, reach, crutch, stretch, reach, etc.) going from the counter to the island and the island to the kitchen table. It takes some time and when you first get started your coffee is already lukewarm and ready to drink by the time you sit your butt down to drink it! You very quickly improve your time and I am shooting for less than a minute by the end of the weekend!
To wrap things up, I am in better spirits, my leg doesn't hurt too bad and cortisone cream works. It's all going to be fine.
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