Break a Leg!
Ecce homo!
To my four regular readers, and to anyone else who might have noticed and wondered, I have now an explanation for my sudden and total silence in this space since 4 November.
Put simply: in the late morning of that day, I slipped in our bathroom and landed on the little protuberance at the hip that, in my imagination at least, says "Push Here to Break Leg". It was as simple and unromantic as that. It surprised me how quickly one can go from an upright position to lying on one's back saying "Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!"
To relieve possible worry at the outset: the break was small, at the top of my right femur, and far from life threatening, just not far enough from painful, unfortunately. But let's keep the long story short. An ambulance was involved; x-rays at the emergency room; a decision for surgical intervention; a metal plate screwed to the top of my femur with five fierce looking screws (I mean, looking like 5-inch wood screws with serious threads); 19 staples in my thigh; lying in hospital for a week (total before and after surgery); five days in a rehab place; then home, where I've been restricted to the first floor of our house which, fortunately, has a bathroom with a shower and a very comfortable couch, long enough to accommodate all of me and deep enough to sleep on comfortably.
For several weeks I moved with the aid of a walker, graduating this past week to a cane. Two days ago was the first time I attempted the stairs — it went rather easily, actually — and the first time I've seen the second floor of our house in eight weeks. It looked oddly new and strangely familiar. It also meant a return to computer access, since my computer is on the second floor, and. alas, not portable with wireless network access.
It all seems like returning normalcy (such as possible in our household), which is mostly a good thing, although I had developed some new habits during my time downstairs that were also good things that I hate to abandon. In particular, I used some of the new-found time to return — at long last! — to writing short stories, a routine that I had slipped out of after my heart attack in January, 2004. I can't tell you how pleased I am that in just a couple of weeks the muse visited regularly in the wee hours and I have finished five stories so far, rivalling my usual yearly output. I'll now have to find a way to re-integrate that activity back into the other routines that developed this year.
There you go: my broken leg, the short form. There may or may not be more as, in my usual way, I slowly process the events in search of amusing and telling anecdotes. Anyway, it's nice to see everyone again, in a manner of speaking.
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on Tuesday, 27 December 2005 at 00.03
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Jeff, I am so sorry you had such a nasty injury. I'm just as sorry for the expense. The pain of penury so often follows the indignities of illness and injury any more.
As a matter of fact, you've been missed, and your absence has been the source of mystification and worry. (Gee, was it something I said, maybe a humorous riposte mistaken for an insult . . .?)
Cut off from the PC for weeks, were you? I'm not sure I could take that. Were I you, I probably would've been up to the second floor about the second day home, if I had to rig up some kind of winch, lay on a board on the stairway and pull myself up while lying prone. That, or have the PC relocated on the first floor. Amazing, how these things become integral to our lives.
In any case, it's great to see you're back. Hope you'll find a bit of time here and there to drop in at Oh!pinion and comment. You may be relieved to know our agent-provocateur from the Dark Side, rightsaidfred, staged a disappearance about the same time you did. Perhaps warmed and softened by the holiday spirit, I hope that he's not suffering some painful setback. An epiphany would be OK (grin), but not the sort of thing you suffered.