I went in for x-rays & a follow-up w/ the doctor on April 18. Everything looked great, so he removed the cast & had me switch to a walking boot, with instructions to start walking on it. I pussied out for a week & didn’t do much more than half-assed attempts at putting weight on it. Until Saturday evening, that is.

Cynthia brought me to Easter Vigil at her church. Since there were plenty of opportunities to stand, I started putting weight on it. By the end of the service, I could stand & walk w/o pain or problems. When we got to the lobby of the church, I told her to look at me, the. Lifted my crutches off the floor & took 3 steps w/o them. I looked at her, smiled & said, “I’m healed!” she didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did.

So I picked up a folding cane that Monday and returned the rental hands-free crutch Tuesday. The best part of the walking boot was that it was removable, meaning I could take it off to shower & sleep. After 4 weeks, I started gingerly putting weight on my leg w/o the walking boot.

My last follow-up appointment was Monday, May 23. The doctor said everything looked great, so he wanted me to transition out of the boot. He cleared me to drive a car again, and approved using an exercise bike. I asked a out regular bikes, and he said it was up to me. He said I don’t have to go to PT unless I feel like I’m not progressing as well as I’d like. He also said there’s no need to see him again unless I have a problem or break something else.

So I’ve now completely transitioned out from the walking boot. I still use a cane if I’m walking any distance more than 50 yards or so. I’ve also driven the car with no issues. Haven’t tried cycling, either stationary or otherwise.

So after almost 3 months, I’m nearly back to normal.

Then there’s the bad news. Remember when I said that I heard two snaps/pops when I fell? Yeah, one was the fibula breaking, the other was a ligament either snapping or breaking or tearing or something bad. So even if my fibula heals perfectly, my ankle will be unstable and won’t be able to function properly. Which is why I go in for surgery in the morning.

According to the Doctor, he’ll insert a Kevlar suture that will act like a toggle bolt to hold the ankle bones together and allow the ligament to heal properly. Because it’s Kevlar, there will be no need to go back and remove it once everything is healed up.

One down side of the injury and the required surgery is that I won’t be able to put any weight on that ankle for at least 6 weeks. So I’ll be using crutches that entire time. I’ll have a splint for the first week or two, then a plastic aircast for the remainder. It’s technically a walking boot cast, but that’s more of a precaution in case I happen to accidentally put the foot down, it won’t break like a splint would. I’ll also be able to remove it to take a shower, which will make Cynthia and my friends & coworkers very happy.

So I go under the knife at 11am CST. The procedure should take about 30-45 minutes. After that they’ll move me to a room where I’ll get to come out of the anesthesia for an hour or two. Then it’s on to home.

The only things we have planned after the surgery is a maid service is coming by on Saturday morning, and we have tickets to see John Oliver at House of Blues Saturday evening. Some friends are having a Tweet Up at Sweet Tomatoes in North Dallas on Sunday evening, and I’d like to do that.

If all goes well, I expect to be at work on Monday.

We went up to Interskate on Saturday morning and had a blast. I got more confident during the lesson, and was looking forward to doing more skating. So this Friday we decided to go back to Interskate for the open skate after dinner.

Things were going well. I was getting better at turning and at maintaining speed. After about an hour or so, I wanted to sit down to rest for a bit, so I headed to the carpeted area where the benches were. I must have been going a little faster than I should have been, because I was having difficulty slowing down to stop at the bench. I started to lose my balance, swung my arms like a windmill to hopefully stabilize myself, but failed. I started to fall to my right side, and put my hands to catch myself. I was wearing wrist guards, so I wasn’t worried about them. Unfortunately the skates I have were very wide and stable. So much so that my foot stayed upright, while the rest of me fell. As my hand hit the ground, I heard two distinct snaps/pops from my right ankle.

I writhed a bit in pain, and tried to look for my wife. She was looking for me, too, but didn’t see me on the ground until I called out to her. She asked if I was OK, and I told her that no, I was not OK, and asked if she could get an adult staff member to come help. Two staff members came over and asked if I wanted help getting up. I told them that I injured my ankle, and needed someone to check it out. They said there was a medic there and they’d get him.

It turns out there were actually two EMTs there skating with their roller derby team. They came over and examined my ankle, and said that I had most likely broken a bone. They rigged up a make-shift splint with a towel and some tape, helped me to my car, and told me to go to the ER.

Cynthia and I decided to drive down to Baylor Medical Center near Downtown rather than go to the Lewisville hospital 2 minutes away. From previous experience with broken bones, I figured that it would be easier to deal with follow-up care if I went to a hospital close to home.

I figured that we’d be sitting in the waiting room for a couple of hours before being seen, since it was Friday night. I was wrong. They checked me in within 5 minutes, and sent me up to the Minor Emergency Room, where I was immediately put in an exam room. The X-ray tech came right away and took the x-rays, then staff came & went checking on me.

After about an hour or so, the doctor came in and tole me that I had a non-displaced fracture of the fibula just above the ankle. A nurse came in and gave me some hydrocodone, then a tech came in and applied a splint, then we waited until the nurse was able to get around to discharging me. They gave me prescriptions for hydrocodone and ibuprofen, a pair of crutches, and instructed me to make an appointment with an osteopathic surgeon on Monday.

So I’m in pain that gets diminished a bit by the drugs, which make me sleepy. But I can’t sleep well because it’s nearly impossible to get comfortable, and after lying for 2 hours in the same position, my foot/ankle starts to hurt. I have to hobble around, using muscles I didn’t know existed. It sucks, but it’ll get better.

The MacBook is working well for me.  I did drop it on the concrete floor one evening while it was running, but nothing was damaged.  I’m more careful now.

We moved at the end of July to a new loft in a new(er) building.  Our old loft was in a 100+ year old building.  Our new loft is in a 50+ year old building.  It’s a smaller space, but the layout is very efficient, and we like it.

Work is work.  Nothing new there.

We’re now down to two cats.  We had to have Lorenzo put down at the end of July.  His ear cancer had come back, and his kidneys were failing.  The best thing for him was to humanely have him euthanized.  It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, but it was the right thing to do.  Lance & Arianna have adapted to his loss fairly well, but I can tell they miss him.

I got an iPhone recently.  It’s great, as I expected.  I’ve downloaded lots of free apps for it.  I’m afraid of downloading non-free apps because I don’t want to run up a huge iTunes bill.

We went to the NYC area for a week from the 18th through the 25th.  I’ll go into detail in another post.

I called the Knox store to see if they’d make me wait, too.  Yep, same deal.  They said the line might be shorter the next day, but if there still was a line, we’d still have to wait.  So I called Best Buy to make sure they had the computer I wanted.  They said they had 16, so we headed over there.  We stood around for about 15 minutes with no one even acknowledging our presence before we gave up and decided to go to MicroCenter instead.

We’d picked up an Eee PC for Cynthia there a couple weeks ago, and the Mac guy was really helpful, so we figured we could get a Mac from him.  He got it for us, and helped us pick out some other items, and we went up to pay for it.  Unfortunately, the purchase amount was over our daily limit for our debit cards.  We ended up having to split the purchase between two cards, but we got it done.  The cashier was very patient.

So I’ve spent the last hour or so getting it set up the way I like it.  I’ve downloaded Firefox 3.0 and customized it a bit.  Now I need to get a better background image for the wallpaper.

I just looked up gifts for the 6th wedding anniversary.  The traditional gifts are candy or iron.  The Modern gift is wood.

heh heh heh, I said “wood.”

As we drove into Downtown, we were still a few miles short. So we headed down through the Cedars area, looking at the loft buildings there. As we were heading back into Downtown, it turned over 100k miles. So I stopped and took a picture.

Here’s hoping it goes another 100k miles before it needs replacing.

My brother took me to dinner at an IHOP that’s no longer an IHOP.

I started working the next day at a sporting goods store that’s no longer in existence.

About the only possession from that move that I still have is my stereo.