Thursday 23 February 2012

A Week of Work

I'm lucky that my office is at home and all I need is a computer, a phone, a piece of paper and a pen. This meant I could stay home, do everything I needed to do for work and also fit in my various exercises.

The one problem to be ready for was if I was on the walk around the house and the phone went. I had to convince myself that I could get to the phone without hurrying. Hurrying when you're on crutches is dangerous. I found this out on day 1.

I was really excited when I  saw Katie appear in the front window on her bike and was suddenly determined to open the door for her. I'm chivalrous like that. Stupid.

I jumped up grabbed my crutches and set off without steadying myself, my left leg whacked into the crutch and I went flying. As I was in mid air, I just managed to get my right leg under me and to land on it, my left was all over the place and it felt like the surgery had exploded. I didn't want Katie to know how stupid I was so hid the pain, opened the door and smiled.

Once she was in I went back to the sofa and tried to assess the damage. It felt bad. I tried some movement but everything hurt. I was convinced I had undone the surgery. I breathed slowly and told myself to calm down. Katie was busy getting dinner ready but I was in despair.

In the end I convinced myself it was ok, but the extra pain only subsided after bed time.

As each day passed the exercises improved and I was starting to move the weight from my crutches to my leg. By the end of the week, I couldn't walk without them, but could hobble.

The only major excitement of the first week was a shower. You're meant to keep the wound dry for the first 12 days. I didn't have my first shower till the Tuesday evening. That was five days after my previous shower. Urrrghhh, I hear you cry but luckily, when you don't move about much, you don't really sweat, so you don't really smell. I'm lucky too, that I am generally not a smelly person. If I wear my boxer shorts, by accident, for two days running, they still smell clean. I kid you not. I've smelt them in this situation to try and work out if they are clean or not. Nada, zilch.

So I wasn't smelly.

How to keep the wounds dry? Cling film, it says it the leaflet. On the first shower I used a bit too much, enough to wrap a small cow, but boy was my leg dry. Over the next few days my technique improved such that by Friday, I was using hardly any and still keeping it dry.

It's a bit nuts how strange situations force you to learn new, and totally useless skills but if you ever need anything wrapping in a rain storm with not much cling film, let me know.

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