If at first you don't succeed, take the pain medication

Yesterday down right sucked. I went to work, propped my foot up on my desk and went about my day as usual. The only time I got up was to go to the bathroom, otherwise I was at my desk. The only problem was that earlier in the day (as you'll read from the previous post) I fell. By 10AM I was beginning to pay for that fall. The pain started slowly and came in waves. It didn't really throb, but rather pulsed. There is a difference. By noon the pain was evident on my face. As people walked by and made eye-contact I'd get the "Geez, are you ok?" question. More and more the answer in my head was "No, I'm dying!" But to my audience of passerby's I simply told them that I was fine.

At 1:30 Pete texted me, letting me know that he was heading home from work. I quickly returned the text asking if he could pick me up. By this point I couldn't see straight the pain was so bad. I think I said good-bye to folks at the office, but maybe not.

By the time I got home I was in such agony that I realized the one pain pill I took wasn't going to do a damn thing. This was more pain than I've felt the entire time I've been laid up. Sharp shooting pain, throbbing knocking pain. Sometimes in the area of my incision, sometimes just my whole damn foot. I called the doctor's office. She was in surgery, they left her a message. I closed my eyes, moaned in pain and waited impatiently for her to call back. By 4:45 I realized that the doctor's office would be closing and my window to talk to her was getting smaller. I called back. This time I got the after-hours answering service. Shit! I left a message knowing that the on-call doctor would get back to me.

Eventually I got a call back from the on-call doctor. I felt silly of course for having called, but the pain was so bad. And something didn't feel right. On that scale they give you to rate your pain, one through ten, I was at a solid ten. I've never been at a solid ten before. I can handle pain. I was told to take the boot off, look at the incision and after examining it, and telling the doctor how it looked, it was more than likely that during my fall I jostled the soft tissue around the bones. I had actually taken my temperature too, knowing that a staph infection is nothing to mess around with. No fever.

Eventually my doctor was out of surgery and called me back. She told me that I've probably backed out of the pain meds way too early. While I've been doing everything right, aside from falling, I needed to keep up with the meds and realize that this is going to take time to heal. After getting off the phone and realizing that I wasn't in imminent danger, I took more pain killers, melted into the sofa and breathed a sigh of relief through my tear-soaked face.

I woke up around 3AM in pain again, and was just reminded that I have to stay on top of controlling this. That I'm not a weakling for needing more than a couple of Tylenol. I'm curled up right now, haven't gotten out of bed yet and don't plan to until around 1PM. I know that Pete's frustrated with my stubborn need to do more, be active and not want to be a burden on him. The lessons that I'm forced to learn right now are all about how I treat myself, how I think other people are perceiving me, that I don't have to be a super hero and that if I try, I'm more than likely going to hurt myself.

Stay put lil lady, there's no rush.

Side note: Reluctantly, over the last week my very dear friend Diane has been driving me to work. I say reluctantly because its my left foot that's booted up and I drive and automatic. She however has really dug her heals in and insisted in driving me. I've never seen her so adamant, so I've taken her up on these offers. In retrospect, she's right. Its not just about driving to work, but parking, hobbling two blocks to the office. Diane - thank you. And then having to turn around in four hours and move my car again. As of Monday parking at work will no longer be an issue. After eleven years, my company is moving to a grand new location in NE Minneapolis. We've renovated an amazing old warehouse space. That's a whole different story, but I'm proud to be a part of that, so I had to mention it.