A brand new spanking cast

What a weekend!

We've had a crazy family weekend where I: Saw a baby in 4 dimensions - 3 months early, Saw 2 half films, Saw 2 whole X factors, Saw (not met) Adam Buxton, Knitted 5 squares of a blanket, Picked out 2 dresses and 1 poncho to knit for said 4 dimensional baby. It was pretty fun filled.

Yesterday my stitches came out. That was an adventure. It meant saying goodbye to the old bright orange cast, thank goodness for modern technology though, it means I don't have to keep an empty shell full of dead skin, instead, here are some pictures:

Unfortunately some of the earlier messages were so faded they wouldn't come out on the pictures very well.

So, I go to the hospital, expecting to see my doctor that I had only actually seen twice, and one of those times he came just to tell me I had a fat leg, but it turns out I don't actually have to see him, I was a little bit glad because my leg isn't getting any thinner while I can't move it. Why are doctors all such fat bashers?

The man who does the casts, let's call him...cast man. He calls me into the room and gets me to hop into a giant chair, he then lifts the chair so I am the TALLEST PERSON IN THE ROOM! Cast man removes my cast with a mini buzz saw and, even though it's his job to do this every day, I pray that he isn't going to cut into my leg, and guess what, he doesn't! What does that tell you? Cast man leaves me there for about 10 minutes waiting for the nurse to come and remove the stitches, let's call her...stitch nurse.

In the meantime I notice how hairy my leg has gotten, and I have a long way to go yet, in fact it's so hairy when I sent it to Josh's phone he thought it was his own thigh he'd accidentally taken a photo of. There's also this bruise looking thing, how do I get a bruise on a leg that's been in a cast for over 2 weeks? Oh wait, that's an arrow so they operated on the right leg, still there.

Hairy right?

I also finally get to see how many stitches I had. Everyone always says "I had 2 stitches" or "I had 8 stitches" but no one ever told me how many stitches I had, so I was starting to feel a bit left out. Here was I, recovering from a major operation and I didn't even know how many stitches I had. Well to answer this question that had been plaguing me, I had 19 stitches. Here's some picture of (what I have affectionately named) my frankenfoot:

Considering it was my ankle that broke, they seem to have cut a pretty long way up my leg.

Along comes stitch nurse, she's friendly enough and I'm not too worried as all of my friends who have had stitches say that they don't hurt. Granted this hurt the least of everything I've been through so far, it still bloody hurt! Literally, when she took out the first 3 stitches they bleed, she went to get some new tweezers, apparently they weren't very good. That puts my mind at ease perhaps it was just the tweezers, with the new tweezers I bet it won't hurt very much at all. I lost that bet. Imagine waxing your legs when they are twice as hairy as they should be. Now double that pain.

The worst parts over! Wrong again. Cast man comes back to put another cast on me. He plasters up the bleeding stitch holes. He tells me my leg has inverted itself and he pushes my foot to the left and up a bit, it's agony but it least it's done. What's that? I'm wrong AGAIN? As he is putting all the layers of bandage on my foot slowly, but very surely, inverts itself again "like elastic" cast man says. So he calls over his buddy Matt.

Matt has to put to cast on while cast man is remodelling my foot. In a very rude, patronising, but somehow compassionate way, cast man tells me I need to work with him or I won't be able to walk when the cast comes off. It's agony but I agree with cast man that I will probably want to walk after this whole ordeal, so I let cast man bend my leg and I move my toes when he tells me to. Matt tries to sell me his unborn baby, and then immediately reneges on the deal. Just as I was working out a price! And before I know it the cast is on, cast man has stopped torturing me, and I only have to wait for half an hour before I can have more pain drugs! Life is wonderful!

Isn't it pretty?

And after all that, I have to go in next Monday to do it all again, apparently my foot is still swollen and I have to sleep with it above my heart in order to get the swelling down. C'est la vie!