Saturday, July 19, 2008

Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!

Greetings from the sauna ... oops ... city of Philadelphia!!!

It hasn't been a bad week, but I can also say I've had better. Here's my headline news of the week ....

On Tuesday, I started my day with my daily routine -- coffee, shower, hair, make-up, work. Except I never got past the hair part of the routine. In the middle of doing my hair, I dropped my brush on the floor, went to pick it up and felt a really horrible pain in my knee. I thought I'd walked it off, so I finished doing my hair and headed down my steps to start on make-up in front of the big fan.

Well .... when I took the first step I had a pain that mostly closely resembles fire or lightning, shoot through my body. Thank goodness I fell backwards on the top step instead of forwards!

Once I collected myself and came out of my fog, I realized I couldn't move my leg. So I slid down the steps on my butt, across the floor and hung out there while trying to figure out a game plan.

The Acura car inspector and a cab driver ended up picking me up off the floor and putting me in the cab to visit the ER. There, I learned nothing. All I got was a pair of crutches, a knee brace and a big pile of pain pills. "Go see a specialist", they said.

Fast forward to Thursday ..... the doc says I tore my meniscus and will need a short arthroscopic procedure to fix it. The good news is, it's fast and doesn't have a big recovery time. I'm also really not in any pain until I try to sit/stand, sleep, and I can't drive. Walking is not much of a problem, I only use the crutches if I have to venture out of the house. I'm also lucky that I can work from home, so I'm not using my vacay time on this bullshit.

Speaking of vacation ....... I'm still going on my vacation in a week, so that means I'll be having this little surgery when I get back. I am WAYYYY excited for vacation .... will be writing about that next!!

So yesterday, I had my MRI then cabbed to lunch with a business associate. I hit a convenience store a block from the restaurant to pick up a jar of mayo -- a requirement for all the tomato sandwiches I've been consuming lately. I couldn't find a cab home, so I ended up walking home about 8 blocks in the 100 degree weather with a plastic bag filled with MRI results and mayo swinging from my crutches. I WANT MY SEXY BACK!! If something had happened to me and somebody found me like that, what would they have thought?!?!?!! I can only hope that I lost 10 pounds on that hike ...... not fun!!!

All things considered, I'm lucky that it's not worse and I'm not in any real pain. I can get around, and just have to be careful I don't do anything to make it worse.

I wonder if anybody else could do such damage to themself just doing their hair???????

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I fell down 3 whole stairs once and tore my patellar tendon almost all the way off! It's all in the landing. Mary Lou Retton I am not.

But my hair didn't look nearly as fluffy and stylish as yours.

Take good care, dear Babs!!

Los said...

Wow - that must've been an interesting sight ... I can't believe the people who had lunch with you didn't drive you home ... jerks.

I had an ACL tear before - the recovery on that wasn't much fun.

SGM said...

Oh G!
I'm sorry to hear about your leg - and 8 blocks in thsi heat is too much even without crutches and a jar of mayo.

BTW - I so deeply dig tomato sandwiches. Tell me how you fix yours, and I'll tell you how I fix mine.

Take care!

Lisa said...

The classic tomato sandwich for me is potato bread slathered with mayo, salt, pepper, and thick slices of tomatoes.

BUT .... with this last batch of tomatoes, I've been eating this:

Sarcone's seeded bread brushed with olive oil, salt, pepper, sliced tomatoes, and topped with fontina cheese. Them it goes under the broiler until the fontina is golden bubbly. Just typing that makes me want one!!

......babs