The Naivete of a Not Often Operarted on Person

I had surgery last week, on the tibia bone in my leg that refused to heal.  Now a nail has been shoved down the middle and a screw attached on both sides in a “so there” retribution for not healing.  I have only had one other operation and it was a long time ago and it left a minimal scar.  I had visions of the same thing with this one.

How I thought they were going to get a 14” or so nail down through my bone with just a tiny incision was beyond me, but thinking they might is the definition of naïve.  All summer I have walked like Frankenstein in this boot, lurching one foot ahead of the other and now I have the scars to complete the image. Too bad Halloween has past.

My other naïve thought was that, well I have been months at this, surely once this is in place it will be a matter of days before I am ambulating with greater ease again-or not.  LOTS of pain, lots of swelling, lots of clues that the hiking boots need to stay in cold storage a good deal longer.

In my quest for early answers of how zippy the cure would be, I turned to the Internet and tales from other nail driven leg surgeries.  What I found there were talks of 6 months, 18months, years really!!! But worse than that was that I stumbled onto a website for, I don’t know, do-it-yourself-doctors.  There, in full color, was a step-by-step guide on how the surgery was done. 

Now, I have always thanked God that they knock you out and you know nothing about what went on unless you are addicted to Dr. shows, which I am not, and even then, that’s Hollywood.  But here it was, in great detail, of slicing open your knee, reaming out your bone, shoving this nail down through the tibia etc.  And like people passing an accident, I couldn’t look away.  No wonder my leg is killing me, this was no simple procedure!

So here I sit, grounded today for yesterday I canned applesauce and my leg by the end of the day looked like a sausage ready to burst.  In 5 days time we will be taking to the highway for the 1,100-mile trip to our daughters for Thanksgiving.  The dog and I will be in the back seat and my husband will have to do all the driving.  I am naively hoping this works out fine. 

With trembling hands I also need to click “buy” pretty soon on tickets for a flight to Boston at Christmas followed by a 5-hour bus ride to Maine.  Oh please God, this is your naïve servant hoping there will be improvement by then and no layovers, sleeping in airports like last year.

Again, no natural history wonder here, just the wonder of how one fall could lead to such an altered year.  It is the very essence of an accident; an unexpected event that alters things for a good while to come.  May we all be thankful then, for the limbs that ARE working.