What a Spring

Hi everyone. It’s been a great Spring for me so far. Near the end of March I developed a 6.3mm kidney stone that had me hospitalized for three days and then off work (and on Percocet) for another week. The damn thing was too large to pass so I got a $6000 procedure called a Lithotripsy (thank you, God, for insurance!) that blasted it into smaller pieces, which all came out over the course of the following week.

The only good part was that, after being forced to eat hospital food for three days, nearly everything I tried to eat for the next two weeks made me feel nauseous. I lost six pounds and have, therefore, lost a total of 27 ½ pounds this year.

A week and a half after I was finally able to go back to work, I…um…broke my heel. Or ruptured my Achilles tendon. Well, not that, either.

Here’s what happened: I was playing football with the boys, just running straight, when I felt what I thought was a rock hitting my heel. I heard a distinct “pop” as I tumbled to the ground. Once I had sat back up, I discovered a) there weren’t any rocks in the vicinity and b) my heel hurt like hell. Especially after I stood and walked on it.

I gave it 24 hours to heal itself (which didn’t happen) then went to the ER. They x-rayed it and called it a “Calcaneus Avulsion Fracture”. This, it turned out, was incorrect. According to the orthopedic surgeon they sent me to, at some point in the past I severly injured my Achilles tendon and, not realizing the degree of damage, I never allowed it to heal. It kept getting re-injured until my body got tired of all the internal bleeding and calcified it, effectively turning nearly half of my Achilles tendon into not-so-supple and rather brittle bone.

That’s what broke.

I know what you’re thinking: how did I fail to notice such severe damage to my Achilles tendon? My answer: I don’t know. I don’t remember any severe injuries to it, but after thinking it over, I do remember having what I thought at the time was a case of Plantar Fasciitis, which is a swelling of the tendon that runs from the heel to the toes.

Let this be a lesson to you: NEVER SELF-DIAGNOSE! Unless you went to medical school.

So now I’m stuck at home until at least May 26th. And I will have to have surgery at some point, although that probably won’t be until next year when I have some Leave of Absence time built back up at work. In the meantime I have nearly written several times, almost done some serious studying for the A+ exam, and played a lot of NCAA football on the PS2. Duke (I like controlling weak teams to increase the challenge -- it's more fun to build a loser into a winner than to take over, say, Ohio State and win with a roster already loaded with talent) won the national championship last year and is going for two in a row tonight. Just in case you’re wondering.

Lastly, Krista (see link to the right) graciously allowed my to critique a short story she wrote for school. It was really good. I hope to read it again as a novel in the near future. ;)