Last week I taped some video footage for a Momversation about swine flu:
I'm posting it here for a couple of reasons. One, there are days here in this third trimester of pregnancy when I retain every ounce of liquid I consume causing all extremities of my body to swell. And then the very next day there is nothing, no swelling, and people could swear that I've suddenly lost ten pounds. I taped this video on one of the days when my hands were so sausage-like that I could not bend my index finger, and you can see in the footage that I'm even retaining water under my eyes. How is this supposed to be useful? I cannot imagine that this serves a purpose. Were cave women routinely running out of food and left no choice but to puncture the swollen bags under their eyes to feed their starving children? Is that even sanitary? Hey mom, I'm hungry, CAN I SUCK YOUR EYE?
Two, Jon took me to the clinic yesterday to have a week-old broken toe checked out, and as we were waiting in the lobby for the nurse to call my name someone emphasized the word SNEEZE in a conversation they were having with a friend. And I'm not even kidding, three people ran for the door. Seems people have a touch of the panic. I could understand such a reaction if the person had shouted FIRE! or LOOK, IT'S ANDY DICK! but there wasn't even an actual sneeze involved in this exchange. Unless of course the virus has mutated and is now being passed around through vocabulary.
About that week-old broken toe... yeah. When I called to make an appointment the nurse was like, wait a minute, it's been broken how long? And I just didn't have the energy to explain to her how I like to practice a holistic approach to healing called DENIAL. The thing is, I've got really long toes and a life-long habit of ramming them into stationary objects. My pinky toes are always reaching out and grabbing the corners of furniture, kind of like a thirteen-year-old boy who is clutching a bat and leaning out the passenger-side window of a station wagon so that he can swing at passing mailboxes. Is a table missing a leg? Is there a mysterious hole in the kitchen cabinet? You might think to blame a vandal, but chances are I WAS JUST WALKING THROUGH THE ROOM.
Nine days ago I was just passing through the living room on my way to the front door when suddenly the pinky toe on my left foot lunged at the couch and grabbed hold of its wooden base. It all happened so quickly that it wasn't until five seconds later that I remembered hearing a CRUNCH! And then the pain settled in, a throbbing, soaring pain. Hours later the entire left side of my foot turned black. Is that not the most pathetic thing you've ever heard? I mean, it's not like I can go around bragging about the wild bear I wrestled to the ground. People ask me why I'm limping and I want to go, "The war! I just got back from the war!" When really I got my ass whooped by an inanimate couch.
I thought I'd just treat it at home, stick a bag of ice on it every other hour and pop a few tylenol here and there. Except I forgot I was living with The World's Worst Dog, an animal who has no sense of boundaries and routinely steps on our faces while we're lying in bed. So of course she followed me around for seven days, trailed my every move, and treated my toe like the wounded sheep most vulnerable to wolves. Cute, right? You can't buy that kind of attention. Except she thought that by standing on my toe she was protecting it from further couch attack. Like, is this helping? How about if I pounce on it? Is that better? Here, let me grind my front paws into your toe and we'll call it a massage.
The bruising and pain only got worse, so we decided to have a doctor take a look at it to make sure I didn't need surgery. Good news is that my toe is still attached to my foot, although there is a clear spiral fracture on my pinky toe:
Bad news is that I have to wear an incredibly awkward boot for the next four weeks, and oh my god, the immobility is DRIVING ME NUTS. Especially since the nesting hormones are so strong right now that the adrenaline rush I got from organizing our toothbrushes was not unlike snorting an entire eight ball of cocaine.
by dooce in Daily
© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally
published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as A touch of the panic. This post
cannot be republished without express written permission.
Comments
Post a Comment