Wow! That was easy

I just changed my name. I took my CA marriage certificate to the S0c ial Secu rity office and filled out a form and voila! I have a new name. I tried to go get my license changed and got turned away. Apparently you can’t to them in the same day in our lovely state. I have to wait 24-48 hours after changing my name with the social security office to change my name at the D M V. I’m going to try again tomorrow. I want to take care of this before I go back to work on Thursday. One week from today. 6 weeks went by very very quickly.

We decided that R’s name would stay the same and I would hyphenate my last name-her last name. Our future children will have her last name.

Ask and ye shall receive (long)

So I got a few emails asking about my surgery. What kind of surgery, why, do I have any gory photos? I figured that if a few people spoke up and asked that there were probably some other shy readers that didn’t want to raise their hand.

The background: I have always been a klutz. People that know the adult me are often surprised to find out that I danced for 16 years because they only know me as a person that falls down a lot. I only hurt myself doing mundane things. I was a sophomore in high school the first time I hurt my left leg. I was doing laundry and sitting cross-legged in the floor. I popped up on my knees to place folded laundry in the basket. I heard a disgusting noise (think dismantling a chicken leg noise). I had ripped the synovial membrane in my knee. I was in a knee immobilizer for 10 weeks. Two years later I was walking down a friend’s driveway and I fell off of it. Yes, I managed to fall off of that little lip between a concrete driveway and the grass. I put my left foot down halfway on the driveway and rolled my ankle and fell. I was in an aircast for 8 weeks. One year after that I was a freshman at CMU. It was snowing and I was stupid to be wearing B!rkenst0cks. I was running late and cutting through the grass. I slipped on the snow and slid down a hill. As I was sliding towards a brick wall someone walked out of the door and my left leg caught on the door. That stopped me from sliding into the building but it also bruised my knee and sprained my ankle (lucky for me it was the door to student health services). I was on crutches for the rest of the semester and all through winter break. I managed to make it 5 years after that. I don’t remember all of the details of my next injury but I do remember being in an air cast in the winter of 2003-04. My next major injury was a doozy. I was stepping onto my left foot off of a curb in October 2005. There was gravel and I rolled my ankle so hard that it caused a spiral fracture on the end of my tibia. I also sprained my ankle. I was in a walking cast for 12 weeks. I made it 2 years and 2 months without hurting myself. In Dec 2007 I was walking out of my house to take the dogs for a walk. I hit the bottom step and rolled my ankle. Then I heard the noise. I knew that something was broken. I screamed, I cried, I scared the dogs. My lovely wife stopped working on her final paper for one of her classes and rushed me to the hospital. I had broken my 5th metatarsal and severely sprained my ankle. I was in a walking boot for 4 months. My bone wasn’t healing because I had a vitamin D deficiency that wasn’t discovered until 3 months after I broke my foot. I was still having ankle instability after I got out of my cast and I rolled my ankle daily. My doctor referred me to an ankle specialist. He recommended physical therapy to strengthen my ankle. I diligently went to PT for 4 months. It did nothing. I kept complaining about my unstable ankle. I avoided uneven ground. I got special shoes. Nothing helped. Finally my doctor said that he would consider surgery.

Surgery: My doctor was still not convinced that I needed surgery but scheduled a surgery date anyway. He agreed to sedate me and do stress x-rays. If my ankle was indeed unstable he would proceed to arthroscopic surgery to determine the problem. If he saw the problem he would perform the surgery. My ankle was unstable and I had a Brostrom-Gould repair. Basically my ligaments were stretched out from so many sprains that didn’t heal properly. My surgeon cut, overlapped, and restitched my ligament. I ended up having 3 incisions: 2 small incisions from the scopes and 1 larger incision from the repair.

Recovery: I was in a splint that was wrapped in an ace bandage for 1 week.

View from my hospital bed

I was supposed to be in that for 2 weeks and then get a fiberglass cast for another 4 weeks but I fell one week after my surgery. I am non-weight bearing for 6 weeks.

View from my recliner

I was supposed to only be out of work for 2 weeks but then I fell. My doctor didn’t think I should be at work on crutches so I’m home on short term disability until I get my cast off.

For those that have asked, this link will take you to photos of my incisions. Please ignore the scaly legs and hair. These were taken 1 week and 1 day after my surgery. I don’t think they’re that gross but some people may so they’re hidden.

Still here, still bored

I am still off of work. I now have a fiberglass cast (right after the surgery I had a splint and ace bandage). Actually, I’m on my second cast. One week after my surgery I fell trying to get in my house. I put weight on my ankle that wasn’t supposed to have any weight put on it for 6 weeks. They did x-rays and I didn’t screw up the repair so all was good. I got a cast that day. 2 weeks later I got a new cast. I get another cast Monday and will have that one until Oct 29th. I get a walking boot on the 29th and am not sure how long I will have to wear that. I was supposed to go back to work 2 weeks after my surgery but the fall changed that. My doctor didn’t want to risk me falling again so I haven’t been released to return to work. I don’t really have any pain, other than the pain from nerve damage. They irritated the nerves that run to my 4th and 5th toes and now I’m hypersensitive to touch (even a breeze is painful). My tailbone is also bruised from the fall so that makes sitting all day a literal pain in the ass.

R took photos of my incisions (3 not 4 like we thought) when they took the bandages off for the first time. The nurses thought we were strange. I thought about posting them. I decided not to since you really don’t get any warning and some people would be really disgusted. Two of them are tiny (~1 inch) and the other one is close to 4 inches. The big one looks like 2 fat bruised lips stitched together. Once the swelling goes down I think it will be OK. 

It is R’s last week of her master’s program. She has papers, projects, and finals so I try to be as quiet as possible. I think I’m doing well but I’m sure she’d answer differently. She’s still only working part time but has had a few interviews. She recently got a call about a job at the pol.ice dept (not a c o p). FT work would mean health insurance and the ability to return to TTC with her body.

On my side, I’m still doing acupuncture. Things were great for so long and then the surgery screwed everything up. The previous cycle was beautiful. Temps, CM, and the monitor all lined up perfectly. Then came the surgery. I’m pretty sure I was going to ovulate on the day of my surgery or the day after. I had highs on the monitor for a few days, my temp dropped the morning of surgery, copious amounts of CM, everything. Then nothing. CM was gone and I never got a peak on the monitor (although it was amusing making excuses to stay on the bedside toilet until R could come with the monitor-I thought that was easier than just asking for a urine sample or waiting on her arrival to go to the bathroom after I had been pumped full of IV fluids all night). My temps were screwy in the hospital because they don’t let you sleep more than 3 consecutive hours. First someone would come in to check BP and O2 sats. Then, just as I would fall back asleep, someone else was in to check my blood sugar. They kept checking it since I was on the met and didn’t believe me when I told them I wasn’t a diabetic (just like the nurse that didn’t believe me the at my pre-op appointment when I told her that there was no way I was pregnant even though I was sexually active and didn’t use birth control..but that’s another story).  Finally a NP from my dr’s office set them straight and they stopped pricking my fingers! I think the stress of my surgery scared my O away. Here I am, on CD 46 and no signs of AF. I haven’t needed the pro ges ter one to have a cycle since I started the acu but I’m contemplating starting it so we can get on to another cycle. The earliest we will have an insem with my body is Dec.