It is so beyond frustrating being injured. There are so many things that have come along with this broken foot that I had no idea would. It’s so disheartening to feel my body disintegrating around the injury. My ‘good’ leg is bearing all of my weight, & I’m not a tiny girl. An old sports injury to that knee has flared up, making walking extremely uncomfortable.
Then there’s the actual broken foot. Seven weeks in, no bone cell growth, still unsure of surgery, and my leg is deteriorating. The muscles in my foot can’t even be felt anymore. The first 4 toes unaffected by the break under the 5th now have no flexion or movement. The joints constantly feel under pressure, like I need to crack them, because they are unmoved in my walking boot. My heel can’t handle my weight without the boot on. There are muscle spasms, charlie horses, uncontrollable twitching, extreme itching.
My calf muscles …are gone. What used to be steel under skin is now easily pinched between two fingers. This was honestly the realization that undid me tonight. I can handle the muscular atrophy in my foot, the knee pain in my good leg, the uncomfortable gait I have to use to get around, I can even handle the extra two inches from the sole of my boot off-setting my alignment with the added height and the lower back problems I now have. But I cannot even begin to accept that my solid strong legs, my proudest attribute, are now weak. It’s like salt in an already-festering wound.
What makes me feel even weaker is that I really can’t take this. I know there are people dying of cancers and ailments much worse than a slow-healing broken foot. I do feel blessed that I have the limited mobility I have. The real point of all this was more to put down in words everything I haven’t been, to acknowledge the disability I’m at so I can face it. I’ve been doing everything I can to ignore it, to try to speed it up & get it over with. I need to accept this for what it truly is- an injury that is going to follow me in life.
I hope to God that I really won’t need surgery.
