Life goes on, as a disabled mom.

Long time since the last update, but things are more or less the usual for me. Had stomach surgery with IV anesthesia, cried as I was rolled into the ER because I thought they'd crank my neck back and I'd be wheeled back out paralyzed or dead.
Surgery has always been particularly perilous due to the other problems. I was not at all happy with the loss of control that comes with general anesthesia. If I'm out, I can't talk, and if I can't talk, I can't make sure people are being careful with my unstable spine. That's a very scary prospect.

I don't know if most people realize it, but they're very, very rough with people in surgery. You get rolled, you get flipped, you get shoved and propped and turned. Have you ever noticed weird bruising after a procedure? That's why. Since you're anesthetized, you don't have that body-stiffening "wait, this doesn't feel right" thing going. In "normal" intubations, your head gets cranked back (yes, that's the term I've heard used in physician circles) to clear the airway for whatever works they've selected to be inserted. It's all a very rough process, and I don't do so well with rough.

Anyway, I had a great physician who did the procedure herself and who made sure that everyone in the room was aware of my situation. So I was still crying, but I was glad she was there. And when I woke up, I was fine. Missing a chunk of stomach for a biopsy (gastritis nonspecific), but fine. My mom was watching my daughter and she had thoroughly exhausted her good behavior by the time I got to Recovery. She kept interrupting the surgeon to tell her stories about her plastic zoo animals.

Three days before the stomach surgery, I broke my ankle stumbling off my in-laws' front steps. I'm not sure how much of that was clumsiness due to the inflexible spine and how much was just general clumsiness and an unforgiving terrain. In any case, I stepped off the front steps backwards (facing someone on the porch who was talking to me), hit an uneven piece of concrete with my left foot, instinctively put the right foot down to support myself, it happened to land in a hollow, the foot turned under me, and down I went.

I heard a snap but thought it was my imagination. I'd sprained my ankle so badly in junior high my leg was black to the knee, so it was weak anyway. I figured I'd just turned it. My brother-in-law had just taken us on a tour of his fire station; he was there to wrap it and tape a bag of frozen spinach to it. My mother-in-law gave me her cane. The kids were standing over me with umbrellas. I had yard-mud all over my back and butt and had to limp into Walmart later for new clothes. My daughter was crying, "Mommy fall down, is she ok? Mommy fall down hurt her ankle!" It was all very embarrassing.

Not long after that, I noticed that my ankle wasn't behaving like it did the many times it'd been sprained before. It had a floppy, unstable feel to it and it was only puffy in one spot. When I poked the puffy spot, the pain was astounding. So because it was weird, I decided to get it checked out. My doctor told me that she was sure it was just a sprain and that the office had never ordered an ankle x-ray that had ended up being a fracture. A couple of days later, they called back: "Congratulations, you're the first patient in our practice to ever have an actual ankle fracture."

It was an avulsion fracture, which happened when my foot turned under me so violently. Instead of stretching or tearing as a ligament would in a sprain, it just yanked itself loose and took a chunk of bone with it. So I've been in a hateful, smelly, knee-high brace thing that I hope to be rid of soon. I don't wear it as much as I should. I'm reminded of my folly every time I step on a toy and my ankle twists anew. It's still very floppy and the house is full of brightly colored plastic landmines.

So that's been my summer...setbacks here and there, but still trying to soldier on and pack the most I can into life. My daughter is beautiful...three feet tall, a little over one-and-a-half years old, talking and imagining well enough to tell me that the abrasion on her knee was a zebra bite. She remains the best thing that ever happened to me, one mark in the positive column of a story that's frankly a bit of a downer.

;)