Week three! Peroneal tendon surgery recovery.

So.

Turns out there was no "freak bone" in my foot once the doc got in there.  But the tears in my brevis and longus tendons?  Much more considerable than the MRI let on.  Let this be a lesson to all of you:  MRI machines are dirty liars.

Even though every meth head in the world might disagree with this sentence I'm saying it anyway.  Devouring strawberry Hostess cupcakes while downing Tylenol with cocaine every four hours (ok, it's Percocet, but it's in the same drug class as crack!) does actually get old after three weeks.  (It is interesting to note that it's the inhalation of strawberry Hostess cupcakes that go me into this pickle in the first place.  The cupcakes made me fat, which made me run, which tore my stupid tendons.)  

I spent the first two weeks in THIS:

And then last week graduated to this:

I was excited to get the Neato Blue Cast before I had it but now I can't wait to get the Stupid Ten Ton Brick off on Monday as planned.  It's coming off if my doctor knows what's good for him.  Every time I get up on my crutches the weight of the thing seems to slam down on my incision.  It does NOT feel good and makes me say naughty words in front of my daughter.  I'm having these sharp stabbing pains along where my incision presumably is that makes me worry it's dehiscing.  I don't have access to it to do a proper nursing assessment so I'm freaking out even more.  I've made a few calls to my doctor's office about my cast being too loose but the nurse there was obviously annoyed with me and told in few words to DEAL WITH IT.  I have now gone five days without calling them.  I deserve a medal.  It bears repeating: nurses make terrible patients. 

So here are before and after pics of my actual foot.  They're gross!  You've been warned!

The yellow is betadine, not a horrible toenail fungus.  (And NICU nurses reading this, please stop checking out the veins on my foot.)

(At one week post-op.)

So to bleach your brain after seeing that, here is a picture of my adorable nephew.

And the cake pops that his mama and I made together.

And the zucchini from the garden that were harvested JUST before they invaded Spain.

(With - what else? - a bottle of narcotics for reference.)

Emma has really stepped up and turned into quite the little nursey.  She can now clean bathrooms, do dishes, vacuum, dust and clean up dog vomit.  (Two dogs in one day.  Joy.) 

And Chad?
The.  Man.  Is.  Amazing. 

(Breep!  Breep!  Sap alert!)

I am so smart to have married this guy!  I know so many other wives who would KILL to have a guy that works all day and then comes home and makes dinner, cleans the house, goes grocery shopping, carts his wife's crap from room to room without even being asked, helps her get dressed and showered and obsesses that she's comfortable/fed/loved/has easy access to chocolate.  Truly.  I don't know how we went an entire year without him.  Dude, I LOVE YOU.  Now there are those reading this blog who have actually MET Chad and observed him fart, belch and make fun of.....well, pretty much everything.  You might not believe me as I gush about him.  But really!  I'm not lying here:  my husband is more awesome than any other husband out there.  We will have a contest.  And Chad will dab at this tears as they place a twinkly crown on top of his military haircut and name him Mr. Awesome Husband 2011.

Ok, maybe he won't cry.  But he will win.

And here are more end-of-post photos in lieu of any kind of real conclusion:

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Sadie!

I got scolded by horseback riding instructor for teaching her yearling naughty tricks.

That is all.

Blah blah blah

One would think that because I'm practically housebound that I would have nothing to blog about.  NOPE.  Life doesn't slow down just because you're a gimp with a boot on.

Chad had sinus surgery, similar to the one I had a few years ago, but they removed a cyst from his face instead of just chopping up his sinuses.  It turns out that a man who has made two year-long trips to a war zone doesn't come out of anesthesia calmly, but other than that he's had a very smooth recovery.  (I wonder if he'll kill me when he finds out I'm posting this picture here?  If I go missing you'll know who to blame.)

This leads into our NEXT topic, MY surgery.  (Because really, isn't it all about me?)  T minus two days today. I have a feeling I'm going to regret putting this on my blog because I know that work friends read this thing and OH THE TEASING.  Nurses are filled with EVIL, despite their friendly outer shell. We LINE UP to poke human beings with needles and find joy in stuffing tubes into places that tubes frankly just don't belong. That said, here goes: I have a sharp "accessory" bone at the base of my fifth metatarsal (foot bone) that is continuing to shred the tendons in my right foot. So I hurt it running, and it keeps getting hurt because I'm a freak of nature.  Can't wait until the respiratory therapists get hold of THIS one. I'll be in a cast for a few weeks, on crutches, and then hopefully I can transition back to The Boot of Doom and eventually get back to taking care of babies at work.

I still hobble out to the backyard daily to check on the garden, but haven't done a lot of work there except for hacking off part of the tomato plant that insists on repeatedly invading his neighbors. (It's got to be a dude because how often do you see a woman trying to take over other countries?) Despite my neglect the garden is thriving. I'm actually kind of scared that one of these mornings I'm going to wake up and find that our house has been entirely swallowed by the zucchini plant.  It does look slightly aggressive, no?

 ROWR!

(That's a baby watermelon!)

 


Miss Thang got her braces off.  Here she is with one of the dogs Chad came home with after a walk to the mailbox.  Woah woah, let me finish - WE FOUND THE OWNERS.  The Dixons are not taking in any more dogs, no matter how cute and licky they are. 

We can't leave Joey out of this Photo-palooza.

Oh!  And check out this weirdness.  These were our fortunes from a recent lunch.  Army man Chad's on top and NICU nurse Corinne's on bottom:

More signs of the Rapture?  Oh wait, that already passed.  Well it's Twilight Zone stuff anyway.....

I have plans to post my nasty post-op foot and more pics of our baby watermelon as it grows.  (Emma has already been recruited to take pictures of it as I'll be restricted to the couch after Thursday.)  I suppose that means I'll need to name it.  Stay tuned!

Found this in Emma's backback

Yes, I know it's from nearly three months ago.  I'm really on top of things around here.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, my daughter, the next Shel Silverstein.

(Yerg!)

This entry brought to you by cupcakes

No, I'm not dead.  I've been really busy trying to train myself to run a 5K.  I'm doing so great!  I have new custom-fitted running shoes!  I can run for a full continuous five minutes without dying!  I'm up to 10 miles a week!  I am a running machine!!

Wait, what is that numb feeling shooting up my right leg?

Yeeeeeah.  My effing body decided to give me the big middle finger. My MRI shows a tendon tear in my foot.  I might need surgery and am waiting to hear from the specialist.  If I have to suffer through one more morning of daytime TV (those View ladies are RIDICULOUS) I'm going to brain someone so he'd better have a snappy solution for me.  Let this be a lesson to all of you:  EXERCISE WILL KILL YOU.  And if it doesn't kill you it will at least disable you.  So don't do it.  I'm switching to cupcake therapy.  I'll be fat and happy.  I'll just need bigger clothes.  I don't care. 

Sexay!

Here's a photograph album of everything else that's been going on around here:

Chewy the Haflinger turned twenty.  She had a party.  With cake.

Ask a genius child to dust and what happens?  She rigs herself a Mission Impossible dusting ensemble.

Ok, those of you with heart conditions might wanna skip these next photos. Jessica taught ME how to sew.  No really.  She did.  Because she's awesome.

Jess has the coolest scrap room on the planet.  And also makes the world's best cherry chip cupcakes.

 I want to marry her.

She CAN BE TAUGHT!  (This is right before we sewed ALL the patches together.)

Chad got his E7 promotion.  He brought me home the E8 patch for MY uniform because he says that I outrank him. 

So I used my newly acquired rank to start a project!  Look at him go!

 

Yes, I know I need to weed.

Expect me to be on here a lot more in the near future.  Because until I know whether I can get up off the couch I'll have NOTHING ELSE TO DO!

We took a little road trip up past Payson today.  We planned in advance to eat at a little diner in a town called Happy Jack, AZ.  The food was outstanding but Emma wasn't thrilled about the ambiance of the place.  She informed me that she didn't like how all the dead animal heads on the walls were staring at her while she was trying to eat.  (She completely lost her shit when she saw an elk body dangling out of the back of some hunter dude's truck, too.)  Some people are just so picky.

None of us were prepared for the amount of snow we would find (it's March! in Arizona!) and Chad was especially not prepared to have his ass handed to him by Miss Thang in a snowball fight. (She plotted chucking a snowball at him the entire way up - quite loudly actually - so I don't know how he wasn't ready for a smackdown.) He is still complaining of tingling in his nearly frostbitten fingers because we, being the most intelligent of native Valley of the Sun.....ites.....brought NO cold weather gear.



 

As we decided to make a detour on the way home to visit our favorite camping spot we saw posters for a lost dog taped onto every little mile marker in the middle of the forest.  It's very sad that someone lost their doggie in the middle of the woods.  It was a small dog and there are bears and bobcats in that area so we can all guess what fate the poor guy met.  We *are* so sensitive to the plight of the random lost dog that somehow the conversation devolved from Emma trying to guess what kind of dog it was to the parents making up the most idiotic dog breed names imaginable. 

Chad won with "Labradonkey".

Emma was not amused with the turn of conversation.

Actually now that I think about it I can't believe I'm telling this story because it really does make us look like a bunch of heartless buffoons.

So to distract you from our evillll here's a new picture of Joey the Lovebird!

Awwwww.

Have you forgotten yet?

It's Valentine's Day.  Either you completely loathe this day or you absolutely adore it, depending on a number of factors: your level of love for all things chocolate, your current relationship status, or your stock holdings in Hallmark.  I personally appreciate any holiday that centers around candy.  At any rate, this year on Valentine's Day I have learned a few things:

1.  My child is a genius.  Ok, perhaps we already knew that.  BUT.  We purchased Rock Band 3 today (we are fond of bonding by making complete idiots of ourselves as a family) and a Mana song was chosen for us by the game.  I'm on the keyboard, Military Man is spazzing out on the guitar (expert!) and I'm playing the keyboard.  I wasn't even aware of what song we were playing, since I couldn't hear anything over the sound of my husband's seizures/guitar smashing and my own AWESOME, but suddenly I realized that Emma was singing in some language other than English.  And as far as I know she isn't bilingual.  I asked her, with disbelief in my voice, if she was singing in Spanish, and she waited for a pause in her verse to blurt "apparently so!" before continuing to speak in tongues.  I laughed so hard that tears were forming in my eyes but I STILL MANAGED 97% ACCURACY ON THE SONG.  You may worship me now. 

2.  My husband is also a genius, especially when it comes to ordering flowers.  Last year when he was in Iraq he ordered me roses for February 14th, and I forgave him when they came in a box and I had to assemble them because he was so proud of how much money he saved. When they lost that "just came out of a box" look they were actually quite beautiful!  I was even amused and took photographic evidence of the assembling process to post about it here.  (And I never posted it.  Oops.  Well I was a little distracted, considering that my HUSBAND WAS IN A WAR ZONE so you'll please forgive me.)  This year, can you guess how my flowers arrived?  IN A BOX PEOPLE.  And I assembled them myself.  My husband is so romantic. 

3.  Valentines' Day lunch will never again consist of fried pickles, spicy garlic boneless wings and a drink containing Jack Daniels.  Let's just say that my eyes and throat burned even more the second time I made my lunch's acquaintance.

In all seriousness, today is the anniversary of a little friend who left my life on this day last year.  She and her family have been in my thoughts all day, just as I celebrate my own special relationship with my daughter and husband.  I almost feel a bit guilty being able to enjoy sneaking into my ten year-old's room to tape paper hearts all over the door while she's asleep and to share a box of See's candy with the man I most love.  There were plenty of posts on Facebook today among my friends and family vowing their hatred for this day, and maybe it's easy for me to say this because I have a great marriage and the world's best (and bilingual!) daughter, but part of me just wanted reach through the computer and say HEY! Today isn't just about whether you have a SPOUSE or a BOYFRIEND to love. Remember all those other people who love you: your mom or your dad or even your crazy Aunt Gertrude.  I witness a great struggle between life and death every time I head off to work and sometimes as I'm driving home after twelve hours of it it just hits me how LUCKY I am to have the people in my life that I do.  I am surely not the first nurse to feel this way, but it's just so UNFAIR that someone like me - surly, dysfunctional me, the woman who can't make up her mind about whether she believes in a god that lets much-wanted babies die and drug moms constantly reproduce, a grumpster always ready to pick a fight with those DAMN ARMY WIVES - is able to hold my little girl today and others - people who deserve to hear their kids sing in Spanish on Valentine's Day - are today putting flowers on the graves of their own children.

And now that you're totally depressed by my blog: HAVE A HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY DAMMIT.  Because you're most likely one of the lucky ones like me.