Frankenfoot

The end of this post is not for the squeamish.

Before: You can clearly see the bunion where the joint of the big toe has separated from the rest of the toes. That's what the surgery is going to repair. Don't I have a nice sandal tan?

During: Here is the xray of what they did during surgery. Dr Pederson cut into the big lower bone, moved it over and screwed it back together. Then, he ground off the extra bone on the side of that joint. In order to straighten out the big toe, he took a wedge out of the smaller upper bone and you can see where it's wired back together.

Post Op Checkup 1: And here is what it looks like 5 days later. The xray from today looked good, and the foot itself is looking entirely normal, according to Dr Pederson. So, keep that in mind when you're thinking, "My God, that's disgusting!"

Footwork

So on Thursday Mel had her first foot done. Bunion work. I was all groggy after my wisdom teeth were removed, but when I went in to pick up Mel she was downright perky. She was alert and comfortable until we got her to bed. She said that she was starting to feel it maybe around 8:00, so she took a pain pill at that time. I think she took one or two more just before bed right around 10:00. She didn't complain about feeling ill, but she didn't want to eat much either.

Then, around 1:00 in the morning or so the local anesthetic finished wearing off, and she started waking up. It was kinda rough, peaking with a trip to the restroom and a dizzy spell on the way back. After that she stacked some ibuprofen on top of the vikodin (she says the doc said this was ok), and found a better way to elevate her foot in the bed. 4:00 a.m. and I was at least better able to get some sleep. I presume she was able to get a few winks as well.

This morning I called in to work and told 'em I had to look after Mel today. She stayed in bed, grazing lightly, sleeping lightly, and trying to stay to her 'ice the foot' schedule (20 min every hour). For my part I tried to get her to eat, and ferried her ice pack between her and the freezer. After lunch which consisted of about 2/3 of a cheesy-bacony baked potato I left her to try and get a half day at work.

S minus 2 and counting

Exactly two days from now, I will be having surgery on my right foot. It's a little scary, but I'm looking forward to having healthy feet. I don't know if my feet have actually become much more painful, or if knowing I had the surgery scheduled made me aware of just how painful they were in the first place. You can endure almost anything, if you haven't got a choice, but now that I'm only a few months away from life without bunions, I'm suddenly full of whiney self-pity. Go, me!

We spent last weekend down in Indianapolis visiting friends and family. Alex was in town for GenCon, so we had a nice lunch with him. My friend Douglas just moved to Indy, so we brought him books and other household miscellany. Adam's sister Erin and her husband just bought a house, so we spent time there talking about home improvement projects and playing cornhole (which seems to be the IN version of horseshoes).

Tonight and tomorrow will be spent cleaning and cooking in preparation for copious amounts of time spent laying on the couch. My parents supplied us with the DVDs of Planet Earth, which they enjoyed a lot, so I'm looking forward to watching those. Ah, if only Marc were still here, I could steal his Firefly series for another six months....

A Post About A Post

It feels a little MC Escher to post a post in my blog about a post I wrote to post on another blog.

But I couldn't resist writing that sentence.

The Teeter-Totter of Karma

Thursday
Adam can't find his wallet.

Friday
We have lovely drinks with Renate at Merlin's Rest.

Saturday
Adam scrapes his car against a telephone pole.
We get a free dresser from Renate.
We notice that the toilet upstairs is leaking.
We have lovely drinks with Jesse and friends for Jesse' birthday.
Leaving the bar, we find that the back passenger window of my car has been smashed, and my discman and fm broadcaster stolen.

Sunday
We replace wax seal on toilet for $1. It only takes us 30 minutes.

Monday
Adam finds his wallet.

We're all fine here. How are you?

Yesterday, for the first time in a year, I turned on the TV to regular channel programming, and all it took to get me to do it was the collapse of 450' of bridge.

I'm not going to post a whole ton of pictures or videos--you can find that all over the web, along with the lists of statistics that I listened to all night last night.

This was a bridge that we used fairly often. It was not the route that either of us traveled to work, so our commutes have not changed. It is the route that we took to one of our favorite breakfast restaurants, and to our usual grocery store and Home Depot. It was a very major North-South corridor in Minneapolis, and there are thousands of families who will be dreadfully affected, much worse than we will be.

We've heard from our friends here, and they are all safe. We are lucky, and very, very thankful.