Prequel

I celebrated my 70th birthday last June. Ben concocted a surprise party at one of our favorite restaurants. He put a note about the party on Facebook, and the number of people who showed up was double the number of people he was expecting. All kinds of friends and family showed up and we partied down. As special as the day was, I couldn’t shake the funk I had going for several months leading up to my birthday. Seventy seemed darned old when I was a kid, and now here I was. I felt as if the challenge of learning about new and unknown territory was somehow over on that beautiful June afternoon, and I wondered what the next decade would be like. I kind of figured I’d coast along into my own little old lady kingdom (queendom?). Regular readers know what happened next. It’s been six months since the September accident and I’m only now starting to sort out what happened to the person I used to be. The before version of me has been altered physically and spiritually in ways I never expected. I have more new and unknown territory to explore than I know what to do with.

It’s a natural thing as you age to worry about what is finally going to “get” you—and something will get you, inevitably, whether it’s the salmon mousse served at a dinner party, or an accident that you survived because a guardian angel took an overtime shift. Awkward metaphors and obscure movie references aside, here’s what’s been going on.

At the beginning of February I was discharged from home health care, meaning I am no longer “homebound,” though I am still a ways from getting truly unbound from home. Now I am in outpatient physical therapy, which means Ben has to schlep me to yet another appointment. Best. Husband. Ever. My therapist is Jen, whom I see weekly. I always have exercise homework between sessions. I try to be compliant but I’m always tussling with my inner slacker.

Monday February 12th I met with the prosthetist who created a cast of my leg. His name is Brian, which is a lot easier to say or type than prosthetist. Two weeks before that, I wore a “shrinker sock,” a compression stocking. Its purpose is to squish fluid out of my limb, because once I get my leg the pressure of standing on it will squish even more fluid out of it resulting in a poorly fitting leg. An adequate initial squish factor is essential to having a good fitting socket. After two weeks he was satisfied with the squishing and started taking measurements to make the prototype of my first leg.

These six months have felt alternatively like moments and decades. I kept a photo diary of my leg journey, from blackened toes through each surgery and recovery. I hadn’t looked at any of the photos until recently. In the midst of all of it I never really allowed myself to consider what happened to me and how much I’ve endured. I just put my head down and plowed along. Of course, lots of pain medicine in the first month blurred the really hard stuff. Anyhow, I looked at all of them, put all the photos in an electronic album and set the album to hide the photos so I’ll never accidentally see one of them while I’m scrolling through a bazillion poodle pictures. Time to put that all behind me and get moving.

This will be my last blog entry about what a movie maker trying to get a new story line from material everyone already knows would call the prequel to the rest of my life. I have a lot of new and unknown territory to explore. Onward!