Convalescence Day 5: A Trip to the Supermarket in the Rain

What a fucking miserable proposition. It seemed like such a fabulous idea too. But apparently I have no level of fitness anymore and moving anywhere was the biggest effort in the world. Worse still, floors everywhere were slippery and thus my crutches were flying out from underneath me almost constantly (it felt). Shannon was fab and I kind of felt even worse being grumpy and frustrated because he was being so patient with me. He managed to maintain this patience even while being rained on as I hobbled VERY SLOWLY down Blallen Street.

The outside world is out there.

It's just far far away from me.

And more difficult to access than I could have possibly imagined.

It's unbelievably fucking depressing to be so dependent on other people and to be physically STUCK. Did I mention how much more empathy I have for people with a permanent disability now? It is a great deal more empathy. HUGE BAGS more empathy. Imagine coping with immobility for your entire life? I don't even want to. I'm bloody miserable enough as it is.

I'm drinking red wine in bed and I spilt some on Shannon's sheets by accident. I think I wiped it off in time tho. Geeky documentaries and much sulking for me now I think.

Convalescence Day 3: Depression Rising

Last night I suddenly realised how reliant I'm going to be on other people for weeks and weeks and weeks. How fucking depressing. My leg is like an enormous plaster anchor, chaining me to one spot. Today I feel like refusing to get out of Shannon's bed - I'm set up here and I can't think of any reason to get up. Let's face it, having a shower is a mission equivalent to a ten day tramp through the mountains, and takes almost as long. I'm going mad and becoming scary paranoid in my stir craziness.

Convalescence, Day 2: A Perfect Storm

 

The weather is something else - glorious southerly gales and wind whipping sideways and huge swells at Princess Bay and all around the coast... Shannon took me for a drive and I saw the outside world for the first time since the drive back from the hospital on Friday. Getting down the six or seven stairs outside his house was scary as all hell - I was frozen with fear that I might slip and either do more damage to myself or break something else and somehow end up in a full body cast. And the worst part of the above - going back into hospital.

Otherwise I have been fed exceptionally well, drunk a hell of a lot of coffee and taken many many less painkillers. So, pepped up in one department and less so in another. I feel exceptionally smug because I have done lots of difficult looking-after-myself things with NO assistance. Hopefully I'll be able to get up my stairs sometime in the not too distance future. Going back to my own home is beginning to seem like a fabulous dream.

Convalescing a la @ the Boy's

I am on the couch, and I suspect that maybe my butt is growing into the couch... doesn't look like I'm going to be much more than part of the furniture for some time yet. Merryn sent me a link to a site called mybrokenleg.com which is a site for people with broken legs. As the name might suggest.

The Boy is EXTREMELY VIGILANT in his looking after me, extra fab it must be said. My abilities on crutches are slowly improving... not only making trips to the bathroom and back but also up and down the hallway, just when the whim takes me.

In other news, New Zealand is sending another especially liberated young woman to the Miss Universe pageant in Vietnam. And by "liberated" I mean she has big tits:

Horowhenua hottie. A genius turn of phrase there... alliteration is everything.

The Cultural Costume, of which Beatrice was especially scathing: "The most obscene bastardisation of a Maori costume ever." "She looks like some kind of angry goth manga chick." "She looks like someone from the Tribe who grew up." Heh. Too accurate with that last one, methinks.

And: The glamour shot."It's like the cover of a porn DVD... I love it." This quote could have only come from Shannon, lets face it.

My leg aches... possibly need more drugs from my exceptional pharmacopia. Having a broken ankle sucks arse more than I can possibly express in more words. Lots of gesturing and gurning needed to fully describe the horror.

Feeling sleepy. Went to bed at half nine nearly every night at the hospital... Feeling vaguely nostalgic about my experience now. Ugh, too weird.

Kansas City Bomber

BACK STORY: I broke my ankle at skating the other night. In three places. I jumped up and landed badly; my foot folded underneath me. I don't believe I heard it snap... Anyhow, I need surgery: a pin and a plate but they won't operate until the swelling goes down. Maybe tomorrow... which means that tonight will be my third night here. My ankle hurts. Morphine helps.

So, watching hilariously bad B-Grade Movie called Kansas City Bomber. It stars Raquel Welch as a sexy (yet easily bamboozled) '70s Roller Derby star. Her introduction into the Portland Loggers heralds a team destroying over haul of the team. At the moment I'm watching a scene with hilariously obvious stunt doubles... Impossible to see their faces as they all do this Cousin It thing where their hair hangs down over their faces while they're fighting. Also, this movies has some of the most awful kissing ever caught on camera - a bit TOO visceral for the movies, catching a glimpse of the tongues in the process of grappling with one another. Ewww.