Blue Monday

Today is Blue Monday.  It's supposed to be the most depressing day of the year.  The depths of winter, limited daylight hours, cold temperatures, all the bills coming in from Christmas.  This year, on top of all that we have the inauguration of Donald Trump down in the United States, and all the blowhard, bullying threats that come along with that.

It was actually a very good day for me, and I feel a huge sense of relief.  My broken leg has been bothering me the past few days and has actually been getting worse.  The break is getting stronger, and the pain and the swelling are subsiding.  But for the last few days my leg, in the area of the incision, has been very raw and sore.  I swear I could feel staples digging into my skin from the pressure of the splint.  And the point of my ankle bone is just raw and burning.  This has made it very difficult to sleep, as it is hard to find a position where it does not start to hurt.  Generally I've just been sleeping in short stretches of a couple of hours at time.  Most nights I've been waking up around 3:00 or 4:00AM, and then lying awake for several hours, before eventually dozing off and sleeping in a couple hours more.  It has not been very restful.

On the weekend I called in to the Alberta Health Telephone service and explained what was happening.  They couldn't really offer much in the way of suggestions, other than to go in to the emergency department and have it checked for infection.  I was told that it was highly unlikely that I had staples in my leg, as these typically have to be removed after a week or so.  I checked the wait times at several nearby emergency rooms and they were all in the range of 3 to 8 hours.  And of course, this not being a real emergency would have bumped me to the end of the line, and wait would likely be longer.  On top of that it was cold on the weekend, with the night time temperatures dropping down to near -30C, without any wind chill factored in.

Even though I was told that I should go to emergency within no more than four hours, I bailed on the idea.  This morning, I called the office of my surgeon and explained the discomfort and difficulty sleeping.  I wouldn't call it pain, at least not in the sense of the pain that I've dealt with the last month or so.  But it sure was raw and burning and uncomfortable.  The surgeon graciously fitted me in for an quick appointment, even though I was not scheduled for a follow up until a week later.  They took some x-rays to check the healing of the break, and then removed the cast.  Low and behold, I did in fact have staples in my leg... 13 of them to be precise.  I'm not criticizing the phone in health line, because they had no way of knowing, and didn't have the opportunity to see anything.  But I was pretty certain that it had been staples that I felt digging into the wound whenever I moved.  The surgeon decided that although it was a little early to remove staples from an incision of this nature, that it was healed well enough for that to proceed.  I can not express the relief I felt when those 13 staples were pulled out.  There was some stinging when some of them were removed, but in general it was not that difficult a process.  Though one of them must have started to grow in a bit, as when it was pulled out the stinging jab of pain brought a tear to my eye.

The surgeon also decided not to put on a new splint and instead I was allowed to wear the air boot that I had previously purchased.  I still have to keep my leg elevated as much as possible, and not walk on it for three more weeks, but at least I feel a lot more comfortable.  I can take the boot off when I am resting with my leg elevated and provide some relief.  One more step down the road to recovery...!