Cast of One

I’m sitting here again, with one leg resting comfortably on my bed and the other providing some support for the floor, and I’m starting to go a little stir-crazy. Oh, and the foot that’s on the bed is also wrapped in an air cast.

A little over two weeks ago, I went to a martial arts tournament in Chicago. I had an immense amount of fun there and finally, after the third try, passed my promotion exam. The only thing was that when I landed on my foot while backing up, I rolled my foot. According to my sensei, he could hear the pop from the center of the small gym to the wall. I knew I’d messed up something in my foot, but I was pretty sure it was just twisted. At worst, it was a sprain. Nevertheless, it hurt. It hurt enough that I kept my foot elevated for two weeks afterward, took lots of ibuprofen (but well within the safety range), and in general tried to get back to normal life, which was an abject failure. My foot kept hurting, and it wasn’t getting any better. Finally, I bit the bullet and decided to go to the doctor’s office. Yes, it’d cost money that I thought could be put to better use elsewhere, and yes, other people had said it was probably a sprain and that I was treating it well anyway. Still, at this point better safe than sorry.

The doctor was quite nice about the whole thing. She agreed it was probably just a sprain, and that just to be safe, I should get some x-ray pictures taken. Just to be safe, you understand. I’d go home afterwards and she’d let me know the results.  So I limped down the corridor to the x-ray department, where a tech put me up on a table, covered all of me except my foot with a lead apron, and took some shots while I reflected that lying on a table in an x-ray room is one of the loneliest spots on the world. No one else can be with you. It’s just you and the camera, and you’re waiting for the doctor to say what’s wrong with you.

Finally, the x-ray technician came back with a serious look on her face. “We need to go back to the doctor’s office,” she said.

               

“Why?” I said.

               

“I can’t tell you that,” she said. “But we need to go back to the doctor’s office.”

Now, I’m sure there are rules for why the technician can and cannot tell me certain things. However, I can tell you I was nervous about the results the whole way back, up to the point the doctor showed me the x-ray of my foot, where the fifth metatarsal had snapped in two.

So I’m wearing a cast now for the next couple of weeks. It’s a walking cast, so I can move about in it, mostly, but it is not an easy, particularly when I’m in my apartment. See, the cast has a flat sole on it designed to keep my foot stable. This sole is also pretty thick, so it’s almost unnoticeable when I’m outside. When I’m at home, though, I take off my shoes, and I suddenly realize just what kind of difference a half-inch makes. My first few steps without a shoe on my other foot resemble an epileptic yak recovering from a hangover, only without the grace.

Then there’s the fun of trying to sleep. I usually sleep lying down, which means my left foot is snugly beneath the covers. Trying to shift a cast beneath the covers isn’t futile, but it’s almost not worth the effort with the resulting tangle it creates.

Finally, though, there’s trying to drive a stick shift in an air cast, with your ankle locked at 90 degrees. I gave up the first few times I tried it, but finally I’ve learned how to shift with the cast on. There’s a certain type of victory in relearning how to do things after you’ve been injured, and it is one of the best feelings in the world.

The big thing about wearing an air cast, though, is that it is a guaranteed conversation starter. It’s a sign you’ve been injured, that the injury is going to take a while to heal, and there seems to be a universal truth that any visible injury probably has a good story behind it. Whether or not you want to talk about it, though, is a different story in and of itself.

Still, for now my foot is getting better, which is a definite change from the “hurting so much at the end of the workday I wanted to scream or cry” phase, and hopefully I won’t have to have this cast on too awfully long. Before Thanksgiving would be wonderful, and I’ll let you all know if that happens!