Three days out from ankle surgery and I am doing OK. My leg is still quite numb, which I have been assured by medical professionals is quite normal, even if I find it very strange to go three days feeling like I am on the verge of terrible pins and needles after letting my foot fall asleep. My appetite is good and I’m doing my best to stay hydrated, even if that does mean I have to get up more to use the bathroom – a task that requires crutches to get there and then a really awkward balancing act to keep my rhino horn foot off the floor. Perhaps I mentioned this in my previous post but that sucker is heavy! Ben says it is probably 5 pounds of bandage but to me it feels like 15 at least.

Thankfully I have good cushions to hold up my foot at night (no matter what its actual current weight) and have been managing to get some decent sleep around my medication schedule; this is also good considering the fact that I am not a back sleeper like this is forcing me to be right now. The Nest seems to working out just fine and the kids and Ben and I have settled into a fairly set routine of recovery.

Today I broke that routine, though, because with full sun and temps in the upper 40s, I couldn’t resist getting outside for some fresh air and real Vitamin D. The catch, though, is that there is literally only one way to get out of our house that doesn’t involve stairs, and once you get out that door, you’re not exactly working with much real estate before again, you encounter stairs. Stairs are NOT my friend right now and I have avoided them since I got in the house post-surgery on Wednesday. The need for clean hair wasn’t even enough to tempt me to try stairs, but I solved that problem yesterday by washing my hair in the kitchen sink. And in a similar vein, today’s little adventure involved Ben getting me out the front door, then grabbing a lawn chair so I could set up on the front stoop and sun myself like the little lizard that I am. Did it look odd to anyone driving by? I’m sure it did. I’m also sure I don’t care one bit because it felt so good to be out there, even for just 20 minutes before I needed to come back in to ice and properly elevate my leg.

All told, recovery is going pretty well. The one outlier is the fact that I must have chomped the hell out of my tongue in the recovery room as I was waking up from anesthia and my word, does it hurt so much. A terrible, not-so-little canker sore formed on the spot that I bit and honestly, my tongue now hurts more than any other part of my body. Definitely not something I was aware could even happen much less cause so much trouble post-surgery. Thankfully I’ve had some good distractions in the form of movies with the kids and shows just for me. And I might be able to sneak outside a few more times this weekend, which always does me good.