Son of a *bitch*.
I find myself reluctant to post about this, as I have several friends right now dealing with medical complaints of a much more serious nature. But I also know those friends would tell me that their difficulties do not mean I should somehow be happy about my own, and I’m going to have to bring this up sooner or later. So:
I’m having ankle surgery.
Again.
I had a private bet on with myself that my recent pain was going to turn out to be the same thing I had surgery for when I was nine. (Osteochondritis dissecans, for the curious.) Instead it’s a torn ligament. But yeah, that’s why my ankle’s been making unpleasant crunching feelings every so often, because one of the ligaments isn’t stabilizing the joint like it ought to. And the other pain, when I try to crouch, that’s the cartilege taking on stress because of the ligament not doing its job. So I get to cancel my physical therapy appointment and make one for surgery instead.
Four weeks in a boot, four weeks of physical therapy — at least it isn’t six weeks on crutches and then more serious physical therapy, which is what another round of OCD would have meant. Two months out of karate, grrr argh. (I was looking forward to starting kobudo soon, but I guess that’s delayed.) The biggest hassle, though, is my research trip to London. I need to talk to the surgical scheduling coordinator, but my basic choice is between surgery in March followed by London in late May/early June, and London in early April followed by surgery as soon as I come back. I think I’m leaning toward the former, because while the doctor said it wouldn’t be a problem to wait on the surgery, he recommended wearing an ankle brace around London. I don’t think he understood what I meant when I said “a trip with a lot of walking.” The ankle brace, while generally quite good, strikes me as a recipe for blister disaster if I wear it for miles every day.
Sigh. I want new feet, that will stop malfunctioning on me. I’m tired of the twisted ankles and collapsing arches and metatarsalphalangeal joint sprains and all the rest of it. And I’m really, really tired of surgeries, because one is more than enough and two is way more than I ever wanted.
It isn’t the end of the world, of course. But it’s an annoyance, and one I really could have done without.
