Friday, March 18, 2011

How to Properly Break Your Ankle: Day 55

Today was all about the visit to the doctor. It's been about two months since the incident when I broke my ankle, let's recap on how it all went down -with some added bonus information.

How to Properly Break Your Ankle: The Amy Anderson Way

Step 1: Go bouldering with friends.

Step 2: When it's your turn, first be sure to fake your fight with gravity. Then have a real competition, see who wins. Also, be sure only one part of you misses the crash pad and listen for the snap when you land.


     To deviate for just a moment, I did not just break one part of my fibula, I        broke two parts of it.


          The first, larger break, was fixed easily once the screws were inserted.


          But the second, smaller break (as circled in both x-ray photos) is the                 special one. When you break your fibula, there are two different ways               to break it. The 'normal' way and the 'other' (or Amy Anderson) way.
               The normal way leaves your fibula broken at an angle -there's a                        doctor term for an angled fracture but I am no doctor, I think it                        starts with an 'o.'
               The Amy Anderson way is when you break your fibula with a                            perpendicular fracture (again, not a doctor term.) The boring part                      about a perpendicular fracture is that it takes your bone longer to                      heal because there is less surface area for it to heal to.
And I thought that was a dust fleck...

Step 3: Once the paramedics arrive, make life easier on yourself and have them remove the shoe on your foot for you.


Step 4: Once in the hospital, just kind of hang out and wait for your doctor to set your ankle so it doesn't look like this anymore:


Step 5: Stay in the hospital an extra day because you're running a fever and try not to go stir crazy.
I'm surprised there were no repercussions for writing on the walls.

Step 6: Fill your time at home with mostly useless activities until you're more mobile.
So bored!

Step 6.5: If you hang out with friends, don't let them pity you. Do your best to convince them you're completely capable ... then fall right in front of them.


Step 7: Go to your doctor for a check up around two months after the incident and learn that because you just had to be different, you get to be on crutches and in a boot longer.

But it's cool because then you can be buff in one leg and not the other
Booyah!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

How to Properly Break Your Ankle: Days 47-54

As mentioned in other posts, I spend a lot of my time sitting on my bed, watching the next episode of Bones or a random now streaming movie on Netflix.


If the movies are really good -and my friends are online- I narrate the best parts of the movie to them. Case and point, Aliens.
"They're coming out of the goddamn walls!"

Other movies that deserve honorable mentions are:
Clash of the Titans


2001: A Space Odyssey
At first glance it may look boring....
... but once you get it, it's kind of like this.

This laziness can occur for days on end until something interrupts me; like my roommate needing Netflix for a paper, or the mailman delivering a package. This package was no ordinary package though. No. This package came with a specially wrapped new super power for Crutch Girl.


What followed was a sequence of awesome that can best be described with this comic panel:


Thus marks the first time Crutch Girl ventured out on her own.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

How to Properly Break Your Ankle: Days 39 - 46

The excitement began about a week in advance. A conference known as TMS (it has something to do with materials engineering) was taking place in San Diego from February 27th through March 3rd. Due to its proximity to San Luis Obispo -about 5 hours when it's not raining- Cal Poly MatEs had decided they were going to go. And, one of the coolest girls I know, Sarah Baker, wanted to crash at my parent's place to save me from myself.
With the okay from my mom, I was counting down the days until Sarah was to show up.


Then, a little less than a week before Sarah was to show up, even better news was delivered via phone call.
Sarah: "Hey, so you know I'm coming down on Friday, right?"


I updated my calendar and did a little dance.


I sat around and willed Friday night to come faster. I looked very similar to this:


The day came, Sarah picked me up and we hung out until the early morning hours.


Saturday was an important day. We got up, toured the Self Realization Garden in Encinitas, looked at the beach, and even did a drive by of Legoland.


Then night fell and our alter egos, Rogue and Crutch Girl, came out to play.


All was going along perfectly fine. Then the worst happened, it started raining. Unbeknown to both Rogue and herself, Crutch Girl's number two weakness is Water. Her number one weakness is Metal.
This was all discovered in only the most appropriate of ways. Rogue and Crutch Girl were walking along the street with a group of friends. Suddenly, Wet Metal Man jumped out of the bushes and blocked Crutch Girl's path. Crutch Girl fell to the ground in a state of confusion while Rogue used her flame throwing powers to defeat Wet Metal Man.


After the defeat of Wet Metal Man, Rouge realized that Crutch Girl was in no state to move forward on her own. Rogue used her powers of transportation to move Crutch Girl and all their friends to an ice cream parlor where everyone celebrated.
A victorious conclusion to the adventures of Rogue and Crutch Girl.

The following morning, we were back to our normal selves. Sarah had some boring conference stuff to do and I decided to spend the day being extra productive.


By Monday we decided to hang up our alter egos for the remainder of Sarah's visit and went exploring.


Suddenly Tuesday morning was upon us and the adventures of Rouge and Crutch Girl were to be continued.