I think I timed the surgery right. My contract runs out February 5th, and I should be completely out of Das Boot by the first. Today I spent three hours out, hobbling but upright, and I start physical therapy on Monday.
I originally injured this thing in Pakistan is 1263, but I've kept putting off getting it fixed because I figured I had plenty of time and life is short and usually before I got to hobbling around and groaning like a political activist I was dead.
This time was different and so far I am more than 63 years beyond the incept date. Although I'm often mistaken for 45 and my brain is still arrested in its early teens, it's beginning to look like I may live another century or so, so it's a real bummer limping around when I could really be kicking ass up the road instead of just on the Internet, so I talked to the doctor, doctor, Mr. M.D., doctor, can you tell me, doctor, how to fix my feets?
Initially, I was looking at 6 weeks with no weight on the leg. A month or so later, when I checked with insurance to see if they would cover it, I was told I'd be off my feet for 6-8 weeks.
During the pre-op consult, I was told I might be off my feet for 8-10 weeks, and the day I showed up for the procedure as I was slipping into darkness before getting general anesthesia shoved down my throat, the last words I heard from the same doctor was I'd probably not be able to put any weight on my right leg for 10-12 weeks.
Considering that this was my first time under general anesthesia and people around me have been dropping like flies deprived of shit, I can't really complain. I actually spent only seven weeks on the knee scooter, four days on crutches, another three days doing House impressions with a cane, and a week with just the boot.
At the last visit with my foot fetishist, I learned that I need at least four weeks of physical therapy to begin regaining lost muscle mass and breaking any internal scar tissue in the calf where the tendon was repaired and may have incorrectly attached to muscle tissue. He said in six months I'd be much better than I am now and six months from then, I would be even better.
I am really glad that I decided to do this at 63 instead of 73 or 83 or 93, as my mother-in-law did with a knee procedure that ultimately killed her. I can only assume she needed to go skiing.
I don't intend to undergo another surgery during my ludicrous lifetime to make me more comfortable if it is going to take more than a year for the procedure-induced pain to wear off and get back to where I was when I started. My body will just be older and closer to planned obsolescence and Punch and Judy show disposal.
I'm feeling great now, don't get me wrong, but I can never shake those Korean figures, like this one:
Just because you're healed
Don't think you'll live
I also think that the inverse is true. I am three times as old as I ever intended to be. I think healing is fiction.
You can find earlier posts about some of the recent accidents between living assification and my feet here, here, here, and here.