In the Interest of Documenting

Ankle update — I hope people aren’t getting too grossed out by my foot photos appearing in their feed; I do kind of wish I’d gotten a pedicure recently, so you’d see pretty toenails at least! Maybe I’ll ask Kavi to paint my toes this weekend. But in the interests of documenting, and for those dealing with similar injuries now or in the future, they continue.

Last night I unwrapped the splint, bathed (primarily so I could get the nerve-soothing & temperature drop to help with my RLS) and rewrapped before bed. That also let me check on how the foot is doing. As you can see, the giant swelling on the outer ankle has gone down pretty completely, yay, but the whole foot is still a little swollen, which I think is mostly an artifact of the compression bandage and splint. It’s still tender to the touch in various places, especially the outer shin, but doesn’t hurt otherwise.

Doc friend recommended I try to keep it a little more elevated to reduce that swelling — up on a pillow rather than just 90 degrees, so will be doing that as much as I can. Trying to get back to normal life a little bit today, so we’ll see how that goes.

I was planning to go to the board meeting in person last night — I feel bad about being remote on Zoom because I’m going to be travelling (fingers crossed) for the next two meetings, and will have to do those by Zoom. It really does make a difference, being in the room, especially when there are big decisions being made, and we have some very large ones right now. If nothing else, for those members of the community who are attending / watching the board meetings, I think it helps make clear to them that I’m paying close attention and taking this all very seriously.

But doc friend thought it was just not smart to go out in the rain last night (I’d have had to wrap my leg in plastic, among other things) and try to navigate a scooter or crutches through the rain, and I was honestly so exhausted that I wasn’t sure I’d make it through all of that without crying by the end. So I stuck my stubborn ‘I can do everything’ mindset back where it belonged, and Zoomed in for the meeting like a sensible person.

It’s sunny today, though, and a friend is giving me a ride to campus, so I’m going to go ahead and teach in person. (Will Uber back.) I honestly don’t know that it makes so much difference for my advanced fiction class, who are critiquing now, and are quite deft at managing having me on Zoom, but for my larger beginning fiction class, it’s definitely sub-optimal, trying to critique without me there.

So in I go, wish me luck. I’m trying to manage my energy levels appropriately — the bath did let me fall asleep well, but the RLS woke me up a few times in the night, sigh. Tired tired. Still, all I need to accomplish today is teach my two classes and attend a job talk for our new LAS dean via Zoom. Oh, and answer some e-mails for the SLF.

Once those are all done, I think the late afternoon and evening will be back to me on the couch with foot elevated — I’ve been watching two shows recently, Whistable Pearl (more British detective / murder) and Lockwood & Co. (British teenagers fighting ghosts, more gritty than you’d think from that premise).

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *