Nuisance

Notwithstanding that I am already in a wheelchair, this AirCast is a bloody great nuisance. Of course, so it the pain of a broken ankle. The break is not serious, more of a stress fracture from my leg folding under myself as I slid gracelessly onto my garage floor. It hurts like hell, two days on from the injury itself, even with me happily popping a Percoset each morning. I can't take them at night; that's when I drink wine. Percoset and wine don't mix well.

As to the cast, it is a clumsy great plastic affair which raises my foot about two inches higher in the footpad of my wheelchair, making it impossible for my right leg to fit under my kitchen table. My one option to fit at the table is to take my foot off the foot pad, cast and all, and let it hang free. This hurts, as the weight of my dead leg pulls down, the pressure building up in my ankle, the very part that hurts the most. I can do this for a while, but only a short while. Then the pain becomes enough that I have to lift my leg back up onto the footpad once again.

Getting dressed is difficult too. In fact I now need assistance in dressing. Because of the pain in my ankle, I cannot simply lean over to put on my underwear. So the HCA has to help me with it, pulling them on very carefully over my legs until they are high enough where I can take over. And compression socks! Forget it. They compress. They are designed to push inwards. Getting them over my toes and ankle is impossibly painful. There will be no compression socks this week.

Wearing jeans is also out of the question. It will be sweat pants for me for the next week or two, until the pain has gone down enough that I can twist and turn to get into jeans. The plan is that I will dress first, then pull up the pant leg of my jeans and put on the AirCast. Once the cast is one, we will try to get the jeans over top of the cast. That process, however, is at least a week away, far enough away for the worst of the pain to subside.

All in all, I'm going to need help in the mornings, so I have asked for Home Care to come in every day at 11:00 AM. They will help me dress, and perhaps make a bit of breakfast for me. At least in this I might get spoiled. As to the rest of it, it's a bloody great nuisance.