On May 10th, 18 days ago, I had my first ever surgical procedure. 16 years ago, I was a typical college student: I took a good amount of drugs, I drank semi-regularly, I socialized a lot, and I loved everything about college. Once, while riding my bike near my dorm, having just tightened the brakes, I applied a tad too much pressure and went catapulting over the handle bars trying to stop. I landed hard on my right big toe and it broke. I was seeing someone (very casually) at the time and I called her to ask if she would accompany me to the hospital. She agreed. I went, they fixed me right up with a splint and some crutches and told me not to put too much weight on it. Then I went back to my dorm and slept with my little friend. Well, long story short, I did not exactly heed my doctor’s advice and ripped the splint off as soon as the pain went away and ended up causing the damaged bone of my right big toe to heal imperfectly leaving me with a deformity. It wasn’t exactly debilitating, I could still walk ok, it just looked odd. Essentially, I gave it no further thought for the next 16 years. Then, all of a sudden, I bought a new pair of tennis shoes for the purpose of getting back out on the courts to play a little in a league I joined (just for kicks) and my toe started hurting. It rubbed noticeably against the inside of that new shoe and I began thinking about possibly getting it fixed.

When I thought about having surgery, a light went on in my brain and I immediately started comparing the possibility of my having surgery with Frances McDormand’s character’s situation in “Burn After Reading.” In case you haven’t seen it, Frances McDormand works at a gym in Washington DC called Hard Bodies and she wants to have liposuction but can’t afford it. She finds a classified government document and attempts to use it as leverage in extorting money from the government by threatening to give it to the Russian embassy in order to pay for her operation. Now, granted, my situation is nothing like this one really but I do work for the government as a federal employee and I did want to have an operation that I didn’t have the money for. Well, fortunately for me, my insurance seems to have covered it judging from the fact that I haven’t received a bill yet. Fingers crossed. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was actually somewhat surprised at how smoothly the process of having an idea, investigating it, and then implementing it went. I expected to run into a lot more difficulty than I did. Basically, I called my PCP, asked about getting an x-ray, was informed about a walk-in clinic where I could do that, went there, got the x-ray, made an appointment with a specialist, who referred me another specialist, and that person agreed to take me right in to surgery in a few days.

Well, I had the surgery almost 3 weeks ago today and I’ve been staying with my parents since then. They have been doing my grocery shopping for me and preparing my meals. I was not exactly comfortable with this arrangement because I tend to like doing everything for myself as much as I can but I’ve just had to adapt seeing as how I can’t drive if I want my foot to heal.

The past few weeks have been a strange sort of experience. I haven’t been able to drive anywhere or even leave the house of my own volition. Trapped in the same space as my parents for weeks on end. This sort of thing wasn’t so bad when I was younger or even when I had things to occupy myself with like steady work or friends or school or whatever but I haven’t had that this time around. It has been a little like time travel. I spent a lot of time growing up in this house and I don’t come here much anymore except on certain occasions. I mean, I still visit it but I don’t spend any substantial amount of time here. Having spent almost 3 weeks in this house has been, again, strange. It has made me a little nostalgic for my teens when I lived here full time. Not much but a little.

It has given me some perspective on city life in general that I missed when I used to live here because back then, city life was alien to me. It makes city life seem frazzled and hectic in ways I didn’t even perceive before I got this long break of sorts in which to just do nothing.

The cast is coming off tomorrow supposedly and then I’ll be free to go to back to my lonely, frazzled urban life and get back to being ignored and hung up on by every Tom, Dick, and Harry I encounter in the course of my job. I’m not excited. I’m glad the cast is coming off though. My mother called it being in foot jail. She has a lot of funny little phrases like that in her repertoire.

The surgical site seems to be healing up ok. I just recently had another appointment with my doctor during which she removed the post-operative shoe (as they called it) and gave me the go ahead to drive a car.

Going through the pre-surgery procedures at the hospital was not a pleasant experience. I had to wear a hospital Johnny (you know those things that tie in the back and show your ass if your not wearing anything underneath it?) and sit in some chair on an IV for an hour or two before they took me into the operating room. It was very unnerving. For some reason, the hospital gave me the distinct impression of being understaffed, almost abandoned in a way. It possessed a quality I can’t quite describe, like a door swinging open and shut on a single hinge.

Still the surgery seems to have come off without a hitch. Time will tell though if the surgery really did come out ok as my foot takes its time healing up and becoming flexible again.

So it’s technically fixed now, though I won’t know with absolute certainty for another few weeks. Basically, it seems as though I was able to fix (at least partially) a mistake a made 16 years ago with not a lot of hassle. And its something that may have been impacting my quality of life these last 16 years without my knowledge. Here’s to modern medicine, may it always be affordable and efficient.