(At left is a picture of the main room of our deluxe suite at the ranch.)
Today I went to see the orthopedic surgeon. He pressed on my swollen foot, looked at the x-rays, asked me a few questions and confirmed, yes it is a distal fibular fracture, stable, closed, and, from what I can tell, the most benign of these sorts of things. I don't have to have a cast, but can continue to use the boot as a cast, can walk on it as I can tolerate it, and can even take it off when I'm just sitting around.
It's more a nuisance than anything else because there's all this folderol with the huge boot that makes it look like something really bad, and it's not. Okay, yes, I did break my ankle, but there's no real pain, for the most part, unless I walk wrong -- and I'm getting good at not walking wrong. I don't have to lie in bed for weeks waiting for it to heal enough to put weight on it, and don't even really have to use the crutches. In fact, I can actually walk on it without the boot if I'm careful, though this is not recommended.
On the other hand, the reason I can walk on it is because the fibula is not a weight-bearing bone, which means it's going to take longer to heal than the tibia would -- six to eight weeks, he said. Six to eight weeks of wearing this boot...
What I can't figure out yet, is that he said I should be able to drive. But how I could manage to work the pedals with an inflexible foot the size of an elephant's? Maybe I'll have to go out and practice.
Anyway, I seem to have had one new, big distraction every month now since I've started Black Box and the broken ankle appears to be the distraction for June. Despite that, I did do a bit of editing on chapter 4. In fact, as I said before, this might actually be a good thing for the writing in the long run...
(At right is another picture of our room at the ranch, this one taken from where the door is in the first picture, but looking back toward the window and our view. )
Grace,
Karen
