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Frankenfoot, Parte Tres

2008-01-19T16:39:00.000-06:00

OK, so here we are, 5 weeks post accident, 2 weeks post surgery.

I went to see doctor plastic fantastic yesterday morning and everything looks great - I am allowed to walk around a bit and put some weight on it, with the warning not to overdo it. I go back to see him Monday morning, and we'll see from there. He thinks I **may** be able to go back to work the following week - but we'll see. I still can't drive, and when I can, I won't be able to drive my car since its a stick. So Al & I will swap cars for a while, until I can stomp the clutch with my left foot again!!! My poor little Mazda3 - I'm sure Mr. Speedy Zoom Zoom has been quite lonely, just sitting in the driveway....

I still don't have the pics with the staples, but we did manage to remember the camera yesterday. I created an album so that you don't have to look if you don't want to - click on the album below if you want to see them! All of the foot pics are there - so you may see some repeats - but this way, they're not all out in the open for the more delicate of my viewers....!

Icky Foot

I am sparing you the sight of my graft site, which to me looks like a slice of lunchmeat. A friend at work suggested spam....but I'm a darker pink than spam! I really don't have much pain, just a pulling sensation as the skin heals - but I am still taking it more or less "easy". Still using the walker for longer distances, still scooting up and down stairs sometimes....but progress is occurring!

What about the knitting, you say? Well. Let me tell you, knitting is NOT the relaxing sport that its been cracked up to be. I'm pretty sure I have invented a few new cuss words in the past week. However, my second "project" does look like actual knitting. Last night I tried to purl for the first time, and I do NOT have the hang of that yet. There's time..... Let me make a recommendation to all of you potential knitters out there - get needles and yarn that are high contrast. Al, my sweet, wonderful husband, bought me red needles and dark red yarn - bless his heart, red is my favorite color! But the lack of contrast is certainly adding to the challenge of trying to learn!

Ah, this is the life!

Two really good books

2008-01-16T12:06:00.000-06:00

So far this year I have finished two books, both of which were really good!

I ripped through Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells in two days - wow! I haven't read anything that intensely in ages. It was so good I couldn't put it down! Lyrical, magical, tender, funny - this one had it all. I hope she writes more - her first effort was amazing!

Today I finished Nancy Horan's Loving Frank. I am not much of a fan of historical fiction, so I wouldn't have picked this one up on my own, but I am glad I was prodded to do so! (My library is doing this as a staff reading group project.) I didn't know much about Frank Lloyd Wright before reading this book (other than the names of a few houses he'd built), and I had no idea that he'd had this long-lasting affair. Truly an amazing first novel - well written and captivating.

Now as a reward I will go back to the SFF novel I'm in the middle of - Wolf Captured, by Jane Linskold. 4th in the Firekeeper series. Slow going, I think mainly because I was in a Vicodin-induced haze when I started it a couple of weeks ago (see foot posts). But I love this story about a girl raised by wolves who can truly communicate with them!

The continuing saga of Frankenfoot

2008-01-14T12:55:00.000-06:00

The saga continues.... We are at day 30 since the accident. At day 19, the fantastic plastic surgeon announced that skin grafts would be necessary, since the burns were not healing at a fast enough pace. I was not excited at the prospect of general anesthesia, but since every nerve ending on my left foot was screaming in pain, I decided I would defer to his expert opinion.

On January 3rd we did the surgery. It was only supposed to be 1.5 hours, but when they got in there, it became more complicated since Dr. Roberg decided he needed to graft the toes as well, so it took 2.5 hours. My husband was a little freaked out that it was taking a long time.

They put a cast on to immobilize my left leg from the knee down, and I swear the thing weighed a hundred pounds!

We didn't get home until 1:15 am. Trying to get me into the house, still groggy from anesthesia, morphine, and the goofy cast, was certainly a challenge. I do believe Al needs some sort of medal of honor. Especially since he had to haul me up a half-flight of stairs to get me into bed....

So a week after the surgery they took the cast off. This is where Frankenfoot comes in. I forgot to bring my camera, but Dr. Plastic Fantastic took some shots he is supposed to email to me. There were 19 staples (it looked like my big toe was just stapled onto my foot) and we lost track after 35 stitches, although there were more. Its healing very well, even though it still looks like special effects makeup for some zombie movie.

I still can't put any weight on that foot, and I'm getting around the house with a combination of a walker and scooting up and down stairs on my butt. If nothing else, I'm getting a good upper body workout everyday!!

This week's goal: learn to knit. No impact (other than on my brain, which is befuddled by the two needle concept).

Do NOT try this at home

2007-12-16T18:03:00.000-06:00

This posting is NOT for the faint of heart. Graphic photos at the bottom.

Friday evening I dropped a pot of boiling water on my foot. Well, on the floor, but the water and the pasta I was trying to drain all hit my left foot - and then splashed onto my right foot, and my husband's bare feet as well. I have one blister on the instep od my right foot, and Al has a blister on his toes similar to mine but much smaller.

My left foot is disgusting. I put ice and cold water on both feet all night, kept them elevated, went to Immediate Care Saturday morning, and they told me other than dressing the skin with burn creme and keeping them elevated, its just a waiting game now. I have to go see a plastic surgeon Monday. I'm like, whoa, I'm not a foot model, I'm a librarian fer cryin out loud. But apparently a plastics guy can determine whether they can get my toes to work again.

Warning: graphic photos to follow. I took these 12 hours post-pot-dropping - the blisters actually look worse now (almost 48 hours later).

Left foot, side view Top view Closeup of toes
Can I just say, extreme ickiness?!

Travels through Texas - November 2007

2007-11-14T22:53:00.000-06:00

It really is like a whole 'nother country.

Saturday morning at oh-dark-thirty, my husband and hit the road for our first solo (well, just the two of us) road trip in about five years. Sunday, we reached the Texas panhandle community of Welch, to visit a cousin and his family. We were surprising the cousin, so we called his son, Juan, to make sure that Jose and his wife would be home when we arrived. Juan called back a couple of hours later to see how close we were, and to let us know his dad would be home. His quote, which will forever be imprinted in my mind:

"Y'all won't have a hard time finding the place - we've got street signs now!"

Welch has approximately 209 residents (not including all the wild-roaming dogs). About 4 years ago, they actually named the streets, numbered the houses, and put up street signs. When we asked how people found the house before, we were told that everybody knows everybody else, so basically you just know where your neighbors live. As for giving directions to visitors - "Well, we live four streets down from the school, and its the white house on the end." Guess you can't decide to repaint your house a different color without notifying the entire town!

We hadn't been in that part of Texas before, so it was interesting to drive through the panhandle and then down through "hill country", west of San Antonio. Very pretty country. Would be neat to see it in the summer. The panhandle's main crop appeared to be cotton, and it's harvest time, so everywhere there were drifts of loose cotton that the pickers had missed, and these monstrous trailer sized bales of cotton, which looked like neat rectangular piles of tightly packed snow.

On the way to the panhandle, we listened to a book about the people who stuck it out through the DustBowl of the 30s. I thought it was fitting, since we'd be spending almost a whole day in Oklahoma, where we also haven't driven before. The worst hard time: the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl, by Timothy Egan, was an incredible story that really gave us an appreciation for the landscape we were driving through. Hard to believe that this huge ecological disaster happened just 70 years ago.

The family visit was fun, by the way - two of Jose's kids and their spouses and kids came over, and we had enough food to serve at least 20 people. The sun was shining and it was about 75 degrees - 30 degrees warmer than it had been in Elgin, so we were happy to be outdoors. The entertainment hit of the afternoon was when Raquel's 5 year old son found a rope tied to a dolly and we improvised a game of limbo, which then morphed into a jumprope competition. We got a longer rope, and all 3 of the boys, plus their dad, took turns trying to out-jump each other while Raquel and I turned the rope. I tried to convice Alvino that the perfect cure for sitting in a car too long would be to jump rope, but he was content to hang out in the shed and chat with his cousin. Unfortunately I forgot the camera in the trunk, so I don't have any pictures.

The other thing I wished I'd photographed was the teeny tiny storefront libraries we saw between the panhandle and San Angelo, where we spent Sunday night. We didn't stop, but could tell from the size of the buildings just how small these places were. And two of the three were county libraries! West Texas and the panhandle are sparsely populated, but at least they have some library service.

Monday we drove from San Angelo down to Weslaco, in the Rio Grande Valley, our final destination. Our route took us through San Antonio, which is apparently the speed trap capital of the universe. I got my first speeding ticket in at least 10 years, for a measly 10 over. Come on! In the Chicago area, they don't even pull you over for 10 over. Ah well. Another $162 contribution to the tourism council of S.A.

The fabulous news is that the chemo is working, and Alice's lungs now appear to be clear. Our trip was to come down and visit Al's sister, who was diagnosed with uterine cancer - that had spread into her lungs - in September. She's had 3 chemo treatments so far, her fourth is tomorrow, and then two more after that. The doctor is actually planning to reduce the dosage of the chemo since it has been so effective so far.

Tuesday we went shopping in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, just over the border from Weslaco. Hot, sweaty, dusty - I can never seem to pack correctly when we come to south Texas. Inevitably, just as now, I have not enough clothes for the current temperature. Gives me an excuse to buy some souvenir shirts, I guess! Te town has grown a lot since the first time I visited back in '94 - lots more street vendors, higher prices, and even though there are more stores there seems to be less variety.

Wednesday, we spent the morning at a National Shrine - the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle, an incredibly beautiful church about 20 minutes west of Weslaco. The church and grounds are gorgeous, and were built on faith. Pilgrims come from all over to pray for intercessions and miracles. The grounds feature a Way of the Cross, with life-sized bronze statues over a 3/4 mile path. We walked that today in 90-degree blazing sunshine. The grounds crew were watering, and I at least welcomed the spray from the sprinklers, although Al did his best to avoid the water. Here is a picture of the first Station:

There is also a beautiful mural on the exterior wall of the church. It can easily be seen from the highway.:

The Bad Beginning

2006-10-03T11:04:00.000-05:00

You guessed it, another librarian's blog. Mostly this will be about books - what else?

What I'm reading now:

Scott Smith. The Ruins, horror, 2006. A bunch of just-graduated-from-college idiots get lost in the jungle of Mexico, and are being stalked by a killer vine. I'm having a hard time working up some empathy for these people, but maybe that's because it's been a long time since I was that young..... Interesting premise with the vine, though.

Woods, Stuart. The Short Forever, mystery/thriller series, 2002. Gotta love that Stone Barrington. He dresses well, eats well, and always gets laid, no matter what situation he's found himself in. I'm getting tired of this series, but the sex is always good!

Rivenbark, Celia. Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank: and Other Words of Delicate Southern Wisdom, humor, 2006. How could I NOT check out a book with this title?!?!? Hilarious.

Dunning, John. The Bookman's Wake, mystery series, 1995. Second in the Cliff Janeway series. Interesting to get a look at how a bookseller views books.

Casagrande, June. Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite, NF, 2006. Another fun book, since I love language!