GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1014: GOOD RIDDANCE TO THE CAGE

 

And hello to the cast.

I woke up at 3:30 am this morning to get the fucking cage removed from my bad foot. When I was in preop I was advised that I would have a cast on, but I'd be able to walk short distances. No more walker. However, when I woke up after the operation, they told me that I can't walk anywhere, and I can only put my foot down to balance myself. I still need the fucking walker.

That pisses me off to no end, but at least I'm no longer in agony anytime my bad foot so much as twitches. It's also good to know that if I start to fall over, I can put my bad foot down and not get sent to another galaxy with the shock of pain. And hey, look at that bandage on my toe! The surgeon removed a couple of giant scabs while she got rid of the cage. I got those scabs because . . .

OK, I lived in a friend's basement in Joliet for a while, but the floor down there was hardwood, and I had an air mattress. So I had to roll out of bed every day and climb up the walker, and I couldn't do that without fucking up my toes, which were sticking out of the cage. So yeah, those scabs had been there for quite some time. (I should also mention that once, after rolling out of the air mattress, I noticed that the floor had bent back my big toenail. Good thing I couldn't feel that. I must have done something similar this morning because the same toenail was bent back. I didn't notice until I got to the hospital.)

I'm in a much better mood today, but I'm still kinda fucked in regards to being able to move around. I have a bit more freedom now, but not much more. I was hoping I'd be able to unpack all these boxes and get my study ready for work. With these restrictions, though, it might be a long time before that becomes a reality. I'll do what I can, but that's not going to be much.

I was also hoping to get my microwave from storage. It's pretty far back, and I have to move a lot of stuff to get to it, so that might not happen for another month, either. Holy shit, I really need to get back to work to earn at least two weeks of wages, or I'm going to have some financial issues, too.

I think I'm going to have to go back to work with the walker. Fuck. I was hoping not to do that.

But last night's GF had the desired effect. I did not stop off at the place down the street for a bottle. At least the docs gave me some fentanyl as they rolled me into the recovery room. That was a nice little treat on my way out of surgery.

I haven't felt any pain yet, so I hope that part is over. Not having metal rods going through my leg has improved morale around here, but it's good to know that I still have my laudanum just in case.

It'll be good to sleep in tomorrow. Goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1008: THE SLIDING PAIN

 For the last week or so, I've been in worse pain than usual in my bad leg. It sucks because I have to put weight on it when going up or down stairs, so I can't exactly ignore it. But I had a suspicion as to why the pain is so pronounced there.

I have a skin infection. I was worried about a bone infection, because if that happened, I'd have to lose my leg from the knee down. But that's not what's causing the pain.

No, one of my pins is loose, and my leg, at about calf level, is sliding back and forth on that rod.

That's right, a rod that goes through my leg. Impaled. And the hole in my flesh keeps sliding back and forth whenever I stand or use the walker.

The podiatrist said it looks good, but then she said, "How would you feel about wearing this thing for another two months?"

Abso-fucking-lutely not. She said she figured, but she wasn't convinced that the bone she worked on previously had fused, so she wants me in a cast for a full month after this cage is removed. She added that the risk of bone infection did increase the longer this thing is on, so yeah, I don't want to wait any fucking longer for that. I do, after all, eventually have to return to work.

I'm just glad the tests came back negative for a bone infection. That would be just what I needed during this horrid fucking period of my life.

15 more days to go before this fucking thing comes off. I can't wait.

Also, the podiatrist said that this is when patients start to experience Cage Rage, where they scream to have the cage removed, and they keep kicking the cage against walls and such. I have not done any of this, no matter how eager I am to get this cage off my foot. Screaming about it won't help, anyway.

15 more days. Just 15. The countdown continues.

DON'T GET THE 'BEETUS, KIDS: PART 2

 If you've ever wondered what my foot looks like with all those pins through it, BEHOLD!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't see the bottom of my foot, so I don't know how the hole there looks. But while talking with my podiatrist, the surgeon who put the cage on me, I called this thing a "horror show." She said, "Oh no, I think it's really quite beautiful!" I'm going to take that as a sign that this is supposed to look at this. Ergo, I'm healing.

Only four more weeks in this thing . . .

DON'T GET THE 'BEETUS, KIDS: PART 1

 Not a Goodnight, Fuckers. I should be in bed because I have to be up super early for my surgery, but I'm still wide awake. They did not forbid smoking weed, so I'm about to do a bunch of that to get to bed. In related news, I've just taken my last regular shower for possibly 3 months. I changed my bandage for hopefully the last time. And I thought you might want to see what the horror looks like. The first picture is safe. So is the second. The third is a bit iffy. The fourth should not be viewed by anyone who doesn't want to see a hole in the bottom of my fucking foot because holy shit, it looks bad. If you're into gross shit, then that one will scratch the itch.

The freshly changed bandage! By the way, if you were to look at this part of my body tomorrow night, you'll see a cage installed around that leg with pins going into my bones. I'm going to be pretty sloppy on painkillers the first week as a result. Now, prepare yourself for my horrible toenails, which are impossible to cut with clippers at this point.

And now let's get inside that bandage. Let's take a look at the hole on the side of my foot. I can't see that side very well, but I was told by the doctor that she could see bone through it. Thankfully that is not visible here.

I'm not allowed to clean my foot, by the way. Anything above the ankle is fine, but below is a no-no. Only Wound Care can do that. And here's the final picture, the really fucked up one. I'm used to it by now, but holy shit. Last chance. If you don't want to see this, look away.

The white crescent is the callus growing back, a common problem with those of us who have Charcot.

Speaking of, while the surgeon is in there, she's going to do the Charcot Reconstruction I talked about before. She's going to shave some of the bone off so the callus doesn't get so padded, and if everything goes according to plan, by the time they take the cage off my leg, my foot will be somewhat normal-ish. It will never be normal again, but it will look a lot better. I might not even need my brace anymore! I don't think I'll ever be able to take up running again, but walking! I might be able to go out for night walks again! And I'll have a new neighborhood to explore when that happens!

My first alarm tomorrow morning is 3:30. Holy shit, I'm fucked. All right, they're going to keep me overnight tomorrow, so I won't be posting again for a while. Probably. When I'm sane enough, I'll take pictures of what everything looks like and do part two. Where did I put my pipe?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #984: NOT AS BAD AS EXPECTED

 Remember a while back when I said I might have to make a choice between having a roof over my head and having two feet? I've been thinking about that a lot because, after the move, as I've been changing my bandages, the wound I can see looks worse. Deeper. It doesn't help that there's a brown felt pad I have to stuff in the wound. When it gets wet, which is supposed to happen, it turns into a brown sludge that is supposed to be good for the wound. Unfortunately it makes the wound look scary as fuck when you take the bandages off.

Two weeks ago my wound care doc wanted me to get an x-ray of my bad foot. I didn't have the time that day, but I got it done last Thursday. Ordinarily when I do this, she comments on the results immediately, which always sets my mind at ease.

This time she didn't (and the raw data suggested that my bones and soft tissue were breaking down even further), and that sent my mind into a death spiral of what-if scenarios. I was able to kill the impulse until this Monday, reasoning that she might not have seen them yet but certainly would by the start of the following week.

Nope. So I've been suffering from the most horrible thoughts since then. As I parked in the Center for Health's lot I hoped that it wouldn't be amputation time. This would be the single worst moment for me to lose my foot, especially since I still don't have a real home and another move is going to happen soon. It will have to. I might have the money for one more month here, but certainly not anything beyond that.

So I entered the lobby with dread. I helpfully reminded myself that one wound had bled the night before, and it never does that. By the time my name was called I was practically in the OR saying goodbye to my foot.

Then, after the bandages were removed and my foot cleaned up, the doc came in and said my x-rays looked good. Cue the sigh of relief. She looked at the wound on the side of my foot, the one I can't see, and said that it actually looks smaller, and it's now difficult to see the bone that used to show through.

Then she looked at the wound on the bottom of my foot and said that it was deeper, and there was a new tunnel going through the middle, and she can see bone through that hole. Fucking FUCK. Every victory seems like a pyrrhic victory. What the fuck?

But I walked out of there with no need for amputation, so I'll take it. For now.

And then I had to go to the dentist to get a cavity filled. So my day off from work was a sheer joy today. Nothing but feared infections and numb mouths and drilled bone. Such is my fuckin' life. I remember when it wasn't like that. Could I please go back to that? Please and thank you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #971: THE PLAN

 I got bad news about my foot last week on Thursday. Things had been going really well. The surgery was a success. All infection has been killed or removed. I was healing pretty well. My new podiatrist (she has yet to cut any of my body parts off, unlike the other guy) told me that if things keep going well, then we'll be able to reconstruct my foot.

But when I saw her Thursday, she said, immediately after she greeted me, "You scare me." Meaning, she's afraid that my foot won't heal and she'll have to cut it off. This was news to me, but when she unwrapped the bandage, her fears were confirmed. She told me I'd popped every single one of my stitches. There were pieces of dead skin everywhere, some flapping around the edges of my heel like pieces of paper (with the same consistency). She cut all of that off, then got to the dead white skin around the clot of stitches. There was an open wound in my foot.

I didn't see it until I changed the bandage on Friday, and it looked like a piece of my foot was ripped out. You know how, if a golfer misses their target, there's a divot knocked out of the ground? It looks like someone knocked a divot out of my foot. I have to pack it and the hole on the blind side of my foot (so I have to pack that by touch), and then I have to put these surgical dressings around it, although now I've added very thick pads of gauze over the packed wounds, then the dressings over those. Then I wrap it in a gauze band and put an Ace bandage around it. It's not a lot of fun, especially shoving stuff into the wounds.

But once again I am faced with the possibility of losing my bad foot this year, which means I'm also facing the return of booze to my life.

There are two options. One sucks, and one sucks really, really badly. The latter is putting a cage around my foot that will have to be held in place with screws attached to my lower leg. It would be weight bearing, which must hurt like fucking crazy. There will be a wound vac attached to my foot, too. Not fun.

The other option is the one I'm going to try. I have to stay off my foot completely for a while. This is unfortunate because I enjoy taking showers, which I will not be able to do. It's back to sponge baths in the bathroom sink. I fucking hate to do that, but I'm stuck with it.

So here's the plan. I need to get a knee scooter. A while back I learned that fire stations lend out things like that and wheelchairs, etc., for free. I know because I borrowed a wheelchair back when I first broke this foot. I got responses from my VMs over the weekend today. Fire stations no longer provide this service. Motherfucking fuck.

I also put out word on social media, but no one responded except for my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill, who recommended a knee scooter from Costco. I still wanted it for free, as I have next to no money, but now that I know I can't get one for free, I had no choice but to buy one. It's not the same one from Costco, but I found one even cheaper from them, so I just ordered it.

I can't use a knee scooter in the house. I can only use it outside and at work. In the house (and other places a knee scooter might not fit), I will get around on crutches. The podiatrist told me that I can use the tip of the boot I wear on my bad foot now for leverage. Meaning, I can't put weight on the foot, but if I use the toe, I won't fall over. I have terrible balance, probably from the years I spent drinking as hard as possible without actually dying. I hoped my balance would return, but it has not.

But I can't use the crutches on stairs, so I can't use them to get up to my bedroom. I have also bought kneepads. If I can't get around with the other stuff, I'll crawl like a toddler. My knees are fragile in my old age, though, so the pads are necessary.

If I can do this, I desperately hope my foot will finally heal so I can get it reconstructed. That would be nice. I've been told this will take forever to heal, so I'm guessing I'll still be living like this at least until Christmas.

I'll begin when my knee scooter arrives. Wish me luck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #952: CLOSE CALL

 That was a scary hospital stay. Good thing I didn't have a bone infection, or I'd be Pegleg Johnny by now. They went into my foot and cut all the garbage out including a terrible pocket of infection that was ON MY FUCKING BONE. I'm stitched up, but I hope that soon that will be done, and my foot will be healed.

Because if that's the case, they might be able to fix my bad foot. I have Charcot's Foot, if you want to know what it is specifically. It turned out that the podiatrist in the hospital is an expert in Charcot's to the point where she seemed pretty excited to work on me.

And then she mentioned something that perked me right the fuck up: Charcot's Reconstruction. If I heal from this infection, it's possible to fix my bad foot! I don't know if I'll be able to do stuff like running and jumping, but the idea that I might not need a brace for the rest of my life is very appealing to me right now. I'd like to walk without worrying about my bad foot constantly, and now I have this ray of hope for the first time in the years since the break that caused this problem.

In case you're new around here, I like to say I broke my foot in an ass-kicking contest, but it's from a stress fracture. I walked too fast on my way to work, in other words. So yeah, if I can put the bad foot behind me (as in healing, not amputation) then maybe I can do other things, like restore myself with exercise. And night walks! I want to walk at night again. I miss doing that. I used to get a couple of miles in a night. That was great.

For now, my foot looks terrifying. I thought I would be able to change the bandages on my own, but now that I've seen what it looks like? I have my doubts. You'd be grossed out by how much gauze I can fit in the drain in my foot. Thankfully I have an appointment with the podiatrist soon so she can take a look at her work. I really hope she's as good as I think she is.

The alternative sucks.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #927: THE FOOT

 It occurred to me that I've never posted pictures of my bad foot. This is going to be a little disgusting, so if feet gross you out, you might want to skip this one. My feet are exceptionally gross.

I'm sure you can tell which of my feet is the bad one even though my good one has fewer toes. You will also be able to surmise that I will never be the object of affection for a foot fetishist. I show that for comparison. Let's remove the bandage.

Look at that horrible lump I've been walking on for years. Now you see why I get around on a leg brace, which is designed to make the heel of my foot take the brunt of my weight when walking. None of the weight goes on the first half of my foot, which is possibly how I got by so long without losing said foot.

We're about to get really gross now, because here's that hole in my foot.

Yeeeeeeeeeikes. You can see why it's so reluctant to close itself. That patch of dead skin it's on is really difficult to heal. I can see new skin through the hole, but it might never reach the surface because of this patch, which can't be removed without a full amputation.

OK, one more picture, and then I'm done.

In case you were wondering, my dead toe is the second from the bottom. It doesn't look too bad for a dead digit, but you can tell it's a little different from the other toes if you look closely. If, for some insane reason, you wish to do so.

Now that you're more familiar with my feet than you ever cared to be, nighty-night. Or, as Gramps used to say, "Good night, sleep tight, pleasant dreams and all that kinda gas." Except he pronounced it "gazz."

Here's something I've never told anyone before. At least, I don't think I have. There's a great big patch of my thirties that can't be accounted for. But my mom used to say the same thing to me every night while tucking me in as a child: "Bonsoir, mon ami. Je'taime, John Paul Bruni." She was a rabid Francofile.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #792: MORE HORRORS

 Since I'm sure you were all horrified by last night's GF, I figured, why not keep the horrors coming? In the time I was off I suffered another injury that could lead to the amputation of my left foot.

I don't have a lot of feeling in my feet. On the surface? Nothing. My pain comes from deep down in the bone. So I could probably walk across broken glass and not feel it.

Before I went on vacation I somehow got three terrible blisters on two of my toes. They're on the bad foot, but keep in mind, my good foot only has three complete toes, so . . . I don't know where these blisters came from. One was tiny and not an issue, but two were big and on a toe I'd like to keep. Not just because it's mine, but also because the corresponding toe on my good foot is gone. And these were blood blisters. I think I probably got them from not having my toes straightened out in my shoes.

At any rate, I took care of the blisters, and the small one healed first. The smaller one of the remaining two healed next, but that last fucker was hanging on for dear life. Finally, after about a month and a half of keeping an eye on this thing, the scab came off, leaving fresh skin underneath. Not that it makes the foot look better, of course. I'm super prone to scars on my feet, so the mark isn't ever going away. I imagine Dorian Gray's feet would look like mine if you could see them in the painting. But at least I wasn't going to lose my foot.

That joy lasted about a day.

The next day was a Sunday. Clean up day. Laundry day. Etc. So I went about my tasks for the day, and I was taking a final shit before I had to clean the bathroom when I noticed something odd. I was stepping in a weird red mark on the tiled floor.

Oh shit. Remember how I said I could walk across broken glass and not feel it?

I lifted my foot (the bad one) and saw that I was bleeding profusely from the sole. And the mark looked pretty big. I hadn't touched any of my dirty bits yet, so I felt around the wound. And would you look at that? The offending shard of glass was still in my foot.

(I also tried to figure out when it had happened. While I was writing downstairs one of my slippers came off. When I noticed it, I put it back on. So in my backwards sleuthing I looked in that slipper and saw a huge spot of blood. So that meant it had happened between me losing the slipper and putting it back on . . . which was three hours ago at that point.)

I folded up a couple of Kleenexes and pressed them into the blood so I could finish the shit, wipe, wash my hands and prepare for the horror of reaching my fingers into the wound to pull the glass out.

Actual photo of me removing glass from my foot.

(I almost just posted the entire video clip just so I could call it "foot-age," but I'm not that cruel. And I'm just too tired to do a Crypt-keeper laugh right now.)

I pulled it out, and it was about the size of my thumbprint. I let it drop into the sink basin for the required tink! sound. And then I had to figure out how to stop the bleeding. I decided to let physics do that, so I got a gauze pad, folded it up and taped it to the bottom of my foot with maybe six feet of medical tape. I went about my day knowing that the situation would take care of itself.

After my shower that night I gave it a close examination. No blood. Nothing looked infected. There was still a pocket in my sole from where the glass had been, but I figured if I kept it clean, I wouldn't have any problems.

So far I have not. That was about a month ago. There is still a nick there, but you can't really tell why. I'm pretty sure I have this thing beaten, but I've learned something about the horrors. When they start, they never really stop. Kind of like when you go in for your first surgical procedure. Once the doctors get a taste for you, they just can't seem to stop cutting.

I'll take it easier on you tomorrow night. Oh! And don't think I've forgotten about my five-part GF series. Circumstances have delayed it, but it's getting done. I imagine it will happen the second week I'm back from hand surgery. Some folks might think I'm crossing the line with that series, but as with all pieces attacking abuse of power, I don't think it will go far enough.

We'll see. I've got a short one for you tomorrow. It won't even take you a minute to read. One for Monday. One for Tuesday. And then I'm going on break again.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #644: FOOT PAIN

 So here's something horrible that happened to me yesterday morning. I woke up two hours earlier than my alarm was supposed to go off. I wasn't sure why. Then, suddenly, my bad foot flared up with pain. I'm not talking about the usual neuropathy that comes with being diabetic. That feels like a needle getting stuck in your foot for one second, two max, and then it goes away for weeks. It sucks, but it's fast.

No, this felt like someone had put a railroad spike into the heel of my foot and kept it there. Then it went away. I felt relief and tried to go back to sleep only to feel it again a couple of minutes later. And that cycle continued for the next half-hour.

My bad foot is fat. Even if you knew nothing about me, you would know there was something wrong with it. I tried looking at it, trying to see if it looked any different, but it was hard to say. I thought maybe putting pressure on it would help, so I stood up for a while and still felt the intermittent pain.

This was it. I was hoping that this day would be somewhere far into the future. Perhaps it would be scheduled for sometime after my impeding fatal heart attack, which was what I was really hoping for. But it seemed like this was the day that I would go to the ER, and the doctors would tell me they would have to amputate.

I sat there on the edge of my bed thinking about calling into work and then going to the ER. A part of me thought maybe I was mistaken. Or perhaps I could keep on keeping on and ignore the pain. Or better yet, I could start drinking again and banish the pain that way. Booze usually did the trick. If I ignored it, maybe the bad news would never find me.

Finally I came to a compromise. I would go about my day and see if the pain kept flaring up. If it interfered with my ability to work, I would tell my supervisors and then go to the ER.

When I went downstairs I felt something crackling in my foot. I hoped it was the usual shit and not something new and worse. I felt pain. Then I made breakfast, and I still felt the pain. I brushed my teeth. I took my first shit of the day. And by the time I got out to my car I realized I hadn't felt the pain for a bit. I waited for it to come back, and it didn't. I drove to work and made it through the rest of my day without the pain.

Maybe it was just a new version of diabetic neuropathy? I don't know. I'm just glad it stopped happening. I still haven't felt it as of this moment, and I hope it stays that way.

Because this pain fucking sucked.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #440: HAVING A BAD LEG SUCKS BALLS, BUT IT COULD BE WORSE

 Today there was a fire alarm at work. Our office is on the third floor of the building, and you know what that means. Yeah, I had to go down three flights of stairs in order to comply with that alarm. In my experience, we don't do drills. There is too much money that we'd lose if we did. So I was fairly certain this was for real, and for a moment I almost hesitated, thinking, "Fuck it. I'm not going down. I guess I'll burn."

To our VP's credit, he joked at first. "Who wanted a break so bad?" he asked. But when people weren't going fast enough to suit him, he said, "I'm the last one out. Let's go!"

I struggled down the steps and told people to go around me. I know my leg's bad. I didn't want to back everyone up. At the bottom my leg felt like it was on fire. I went out to my car to collapse in the passenger seat for a while. The firetrucks showed up, and after a while, it was determined that nothing happened. Except someone pulled the alarm lever. I used my cane to get back upstairs and spent some time hyperventilating in the kitchen, waiting to see if I might have a heart attack.

I swear, if it was some jackass just being a dick . . .

And if I get my foot cut off because of this . . .

But it could have been worse. What if someone in a wheelchair worked in the office with us? What would that person have done? If that was me, I'd be fucking psychotic right now.

It reminded me of something from a few years back. This was when I'd first injured the foot, and I figured that it would heal and I'd be able to get back to my life as usual (silly me). I had to get around on crutches. And this is one of the things my old pharmacy fucked up that CVS does well. The old pharmacy had a handicapped space, but they didn't have a dip in the curb. I was fresh from the hospital, on crutches for the first time since I was in fifth grade, learning to use them all over again. I thought it would be a breeze. Like riding a bike. But it was a lot harder than I thought.

So I managed to get up on the walk, and that was when I noticed for the first time there isn't that dip I just mentioned. I wondered what it would be like to be in a wheelchair and need to get in here. I hoped I never had to find out.

I had to wait for my meds. That was fine. They were just prescribed. So I found a chair and waited, and wouldn't you know it? A guy in a wheelchair went past me to the counter. He needed to wait for his meds, too, and he saw me in a similar predicament. We talked for a while, and I mentioned the lack of a dip in the curb, asking him how he'd gotten up it.

"There is a dip," he said. "It's just all the way down that way." Pointing down the way toward a cafe and a dentist (who is actually now my dentist). The point being, it was so far away from the handicapped space it was barely worth the point of putting it there.

Not enough people think of this shit. I remember when America started making places handicapped accessible, and people started telling jokes about it. Kind of like when we decided to make seat belts mandatory. The resistance to change is strong, even if that change has got nothing to do with that.

That's an awful way to live, which is why I groan every time I hear some dipshit complaining about so-called "woke culture," which doesn't really exist.

I'm stopping now because I promised myself no tangents tonight. Last night got out of control. Believe it or not, I actually cut a tangent from last night. It--nope. I'm stopping.