Check Up #2

Thursday Christine and I headed up to GR for my Friday morning appointment. I was able to sit in the front seat, which was good, because I got really carsick in the back seat. I was even able to use the bathroom at Wendy's, my first outdoor excursion besides the hospital. It was magical.

At check up #1, the nurse told me to take a Vicodin before having my staples removed, so I anticipated that it would be painful. It wasn't too bad; it kind of felt like having hairs plucked, except for the staples directly above the fractured bones. That hurt.

After the nurse removed the staples, she put on my cast. She put a stand in front of me that I was supposed to put my foot on and drop my heel so that my foot and leg were at a ninety degree angle. That was impossible. So she had me lie on my stomach and raise my leg. Then it was easier for me to put my foot at the right angle. But apparently my foot still angled outward, so she called in the doctor, who wrenched my foot into the right angle. Thought I was gonna die. It hurt worse than the initial break. The nurse said they let the doctor be the bad guy, but since he prescribes the drugs, I guess it evens out.

Now the cast is on (it's blue), and my leg is much more supported. I still can't put weight on it, but I can set it down for balance. I'm hoping to have job interviews soon, so I won't be letting anyone sign it. Sorry.

Pre-check up #2

I apologize that my posting has been rather sporadic lately, but the Vicodin makes any activity more strenuous than watching TV or playing computer games a little strenuous.

Tomorrow we head up to Michigan. My second appointment is Friday, when I get my staples removed and my permanent fiber glass cast put on. Yippee!

In other news, Christine passed her math course and so will begin her assistantship in two weeks. She's very excited and nervous. With the math course over, she has a bit of a break until grad school starts, and when she's not waiting on her invalid husband, she's watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Her mom found a video store that has all seven seasons to rent, so Christine began with season one, episode one and is now on season five. I watch them once in a while, and while some are interesting, others are incredibly stupid.

An example of the latter, a character realizes that something is amiss on the space station, so he scans everyone with a tricorder. When he turns it on himself, he discovers that he is producing only alpha waves, which means he is in a coma. So everything around him is part of his dream, including the tricorder that accurately read his alpha waves and revealed that he was in a coma and everything around him was a figment of his imagination! In case you missed it, that's INCLUDING THE TRICORDER! AAAAARGH!

One positive is the character Dax, who has a two-hundred-year-old tapeworm that has had several previous hosts, whose personalities manifest in Dax. That's stupid, but the character is wicked hot, so I'm willing to suspend disbelief. She eventually hooks up with Worf, my favorite Star Trek character ever.

I, meanwhile, am addicted to a computer game called BigJig. It's a virtual jigsaw puzzle. You can pick the number of pieces, style, colors, and download one free puzzle per week. Check it out.

Ah, to be clean again

My mom's blog said that Christine and I made it home safe, and she included a link to mine, so I figured I should corroborate her claims. Thursday morning I took my Vicodin along with two Dramamine and slept in the backseat of the car for the more than four-hour journey from my parents' house in Grand Rapids, MI to my in-laws' house in Union, IL. That's a testament to the drowsy side-effects of the drugs, not to the comfort of our backseat. Believe me, if my wife and I are in the car together and I'm reclining in the backseat, there are a few things I'd rather be doing than nursing a broken leg.

Friday I was finally able to take a shower. Not that sponge baths aren't great, but I'm a large man, and I inherited my grandfather's family's sweat glands, so they weren't cutting it after a week of 90+ degree weather.

I received an assignment from one of the jobs I applied to as part of the hiring process, but I've either been to drugged or in too much pain to work on it this week, so pray that they won't weigh turnover too heavily. I'd love to get this job.

Check Up #1

This morning I went back to my doctor to have my dressing changed. I got three new X-rays, and since I was only on Vicodin, I remember seeing them. I have two plates and ten screws in my leg. It looked really weird.

The most disturbing part, though, was my leg itself. It's swollen, misshapen, and bruised. I have a large incision on the outside and several small ones on the inside where all the screws went in.

The dressing was changed, and the doctor said that everything looked perfect (which I thought was an odd word choice). I go back next Friday to get the staples taken out of my incisions and get a permanent cast. The doctor said I won't be able to put any weight on it for four weeks.

Or an hour and a half as it turned out. When I got back to my parents house, I lost my balance on the steps and came down on my broken leg. Twice. I cried.

Sitting in the backseat bent so that my leg was propped up made me incredibly carsick, so we won't be heading home today. I feel bad, because Christine has been so wonderful, and I know she'd rather be in Illinois. We should be leaving tomorrow morning.

Until then, another day of movies and naps. Send me e-mail. It helps.

Why I cried for the first time in years

Parts of this story are disturbing, but they are all true (as well as I can recall them). Be warned.

One of my assignments at camp last week was running the waterslide with another cabin leader. One of us had to stand at the top and spray campers before they went down; the other stood at the bottom to make sure campers got off safely and to announce to the person at the top that the next camper could come down. With the canoe trip in the middle of the week, we only had the waterslide open for two days. The first day, we played rock, scissors, paper to see who had to go to the bottom. I won (I always win; I kick butt at rock, scissors, paper), so I got to stand at the top and spray campers with freezing water.

Friday was the next day for waterslide, and my partner claimed that I had said that I would go to the bottom because she went last time. This does not sound like something I would say, so I argued that we should play again. She refused and insisted that I go. I decided to take the waterslide down. I turned on the water, took off my shirt and sandals, and held onto my backpack. I hopped onto the slide, my feet slid out, and I landed on my butt and slid to the bottom of the slide.

Actually, that's what happened the previous hundred times I've gone down this waterslide. On this particular day, my left foot hit a dry part of the slide and instead of sliding in front of me, it bent outward and I collapsed into the water. Are you squinting and baring your teeth in a grimace? That's been a common response.

I called my partner and told her that I had broken my ankle. She didn't believe me and thought I intended to push her down the slide. Until she saw the angle at which my foot was bent. She then ran for the nurse who arrived in her golf cart, followed by my brother in his golf cart (incidentally the golf cart that I crashed into a tree five years ago, injuring my other leg). My brother gave me a hard time. "Give me a break!" he said. I told him I just had one (witty as ever under stress), and when he saw my foot, his balls shrank to the size of raisins.

My brother made further sarcastic comments that he will not tell me about, but redeemed himself by driving me to the hospital, giving me his rubber bracelet to gnaw on, and not telling anyone how I cried like a little girl in the backseat of the car.

The X-rays revealed that I had three-inch spiral fractures in both my tibia and fibula and a third vertical fracture near the ankle. I don't really remember. I had a lot of pain medication in me at the time.

My injury required surgery, so I called Christine and had her come up from Illinois. My parents also came to stay at the hospital.

They gave me an epideral and I believe something else, but I don't recall what. I woke up on the table and was able to wiggle my toes shortly afterward. The camp director and his wife came to see me, which was nice. Christine showed up a little while later, which was even more wonderful. remember, I've been away from home for two weeks, so I would have rather seen her under happier circumstances, but it was great to see her nevertheless.

Four hours after my surgery was over, I still hadn't urinated, and the nurse told me that if I didn't go soon, I'd need a catheter. I have shy kidneys, so I asked Christine to leave. I didn't pee while she was gone, but I did manage to vomit all over myself. I paged the nurse, who cleaned me off, and when Christine came back, I asked her never to leave again. I slept and woke up every couple of hours to vomit and not pee. So after I hadn't peed for nearly twelve hours, they gave me the catheter.

If you've never had something go UP your urethra, I can tell you it is as awful as you imagine it might be. If you have had the experience, I am so sorry. I couldn't watch, but Christine says that once it was in, I peed seventeen milliliters.

Since the next morning, I have been able to go on my own. I would be annoyed at having to hobble on a crutch to the bathroom, except that the annoyance is outweighed by the euphoria of not having something jammed UP my urethra.

I've spent the last three days lying on the couch at my parents house watching movies and falling into Vicodin induced slumber. I also finished the new Harry Potter book. And I have a metal plate and several screws in my leg.

That's the story as I remember it. If anyone else who was there tells you anything different, believe them. I was really drugged up.

Hello mother, hello father...

I survived my fifth summer of what used to be called MI (Mentally Impaired) week, now called Freddy's Friends in honor of a puppet the campers all love who can never seem to remember the memory verse. As I said in my last post, the program is really growing, and it was great to be a part of it again.

The camp itself is divided up into The Ridge where the Jr. and Sr. High campers stay during the regular summer program, and the Main Camp (which sounds disturbingly like the title of Hitler's book) where the 7-year-olds through 6th graders stay. The Main Camp cabins house up to twelve campers and a cabin leader and have electricity and plumbing. The ridge has tabits, which I assume is a combination of tent and cabin because that's what they look like. Imagine chicken coop, and you're on the right track. I lived in one for four summers and loved it, which surprises many people who know that I am not generally an outdoorsy person.

This week, Freddy's Friends week was so full that they had to use the tabits, and I got to spend the week in my old home away from home. It still says "Buddy's Cabin" on the outside, the work of friendly vandals five years ago. The holder for my portable alarm clock is still stuck to the inside wall, and the one rule written by my predecessor is still above the door: "Whatever is said in the cabin stays in the cabin."

the tabits don't work quite as well for the challenged as they do for teenagers, but we made it work and had a great time. Several yards into the woods is a large tree that has a capital "P" sprayed on it. Can you guess what it stands for? This was a concept rather new to my campers, but they took to it with vigor. I don't think anything will ever grow within three feet of it.

I had six campers, three of whom I had had when I worked there before. One of them always calls me chubby, and another decided chubby cheeks described me more accurately. It may be awhile before I remember to respond to anything besides chubby, chubby cheeks, and old man.

The food is slightly better than in previous years, but every meal still feels like an episode of Jamie's School Dinners. On the first day we had baked beans for lunch and tacos for dinner. As my mom's three-year-old friend would say, Stupid, stupid, stupid. One camper had diarrhea the entire week. On Thursday night, I had to help him while he was going on a toilet that was overflowing. His shorts and underwear were drenched with poopy water, so I got him a bag to put them in, some moist towelettes to wipe him off, and a towel to wrap around himself as we walked back to his cabin to get some dry clothes. I felt so bad for the guy. But he recovered, and so did I, and we both had a great week.

I got talked in to working next week as well. It's a Sr. High week with a canoe trip, so I'm looking forward to it. I haven't worked with this age in a while, and I'm a bit nervous about devotions. The things I want to talk about may be over their heads (they would have been over mine when I was that age). I hope to find a way to talk to them about the narrative of Scripture as Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, but I'm not sure how to introduce the concept since many come from traditions that see Christianity as abstinence from social dancing, alcohol and tobacco and asking Jesus into your hear (what ever that means). I guess this week will stretch me in different ways than last week did.

Being at camp is a challenge in itself. There's enough there that it feels like home, but enough different that I miss how things used to be. I miss the great relationships I had that are nearly non-existent now, and I regret the ones that ended poorly because of my immaturity. I'm nostalgic like crazy and hope it stops soon. The past is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Pray for me if you think of it. I'm beginning to feel like Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon movies: "I'm getting too old for this." I think I'll go soak my aching muscles in my sister's pool for a while.

Talk to you next week.

I shall return!

I will be away for a while. I'm heading up to Michigan for the Fourth, and the following week I'll be working as a cbin leader at a camp where I used to work. Every summer they have a week of mentally challenged campers, and the program is really growing. I'm excited to help out again.

Talk to you all later.