17 Days Later....

Traffic was a bear getting into San Francisco today. Who thought it was a good idea to schedule a follow-up appointment at 9 AM on a Tuesday morning? We're in the middle of commute traffic. Fortunately we were able to play a good game of "Spot the Techie Bus" along the way. Google still won, but Facebook, Yahoo, and Genentech all came pretty close. Passing a decrepit passenger van, I opined "that's the MySpace bus". 

Arrived at the CPMC campus just in time to make the appointment. Into an exam room we went, ushered in by David, Dr. Knee's new assistant. At least I think that was his name, he kinda mumbled an introduction. I would say I hopped up onto the table, but then again unless I'm one knee on the scooter, I have to hop in order to get anywhere. So in this rather small exam room there was Betsey, me, the assistant whose name I think is David, the knee scooter, the table, a chair for Betsey, a rolling chair and not much room for anything else.  David (let's call him that for the sake of brevity) took my vitals and brought out....the saw.

Having never had a cast before and therefore having never had a cast removed before, the saw was a bit intimidating. The fact that it came in a hard plastic case similar to what a jigsaw from Home Depot comes in and looked like the Dremel electric router I acquired somewhere along the line didn't help either. He placed it reverently on the floor next to the table. I swear it hissed at me, it's snake like tail plugged into an outlet and ready to rumble.

Dr. Knee poked her head in with a cheery "Hi kids, how we doin'?". Opening the door knocked David into the scooter which decided  to make a break for itself but was quickly grabbed and set back in place. David took a powder at that point and Dr. Knee got down to the business of removing the cast. I'm sure she thought of it as completely routine. I thought of it as this:

Do you expect me to talk Dr. Knee?

But moments later the cast was off. Strangely enough over the past two weeks I had thought that the first thing I'd do after getting the cast off was reach down and scratch away like a mad man. Instead, I had no desire to scratch at all. However looking down, what I saw concerned me. My foot was puffed up and swollen and in a distinct shade of orange which nicely set off the black of the stitches. So as to prevent young or sensitive eyes from having to get a close up view, you can take a look at a picture here. But Dr. Knee was oohing and ahhing about how good it looked, how the swelling was less than she expected and how well the stitches held up.

"Umm, but what about the orange tint?", I asked.

She laughed. "That's the sterilization liquid from the operation. You know, like iodine before we had to stop using iodine." 

And it was at that point that I realized I hadn't washed my foot in seventeen days; of course that stuff was still going to be on it. And that I didn't know they don't use iodine anymore.  I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. She wrapped my foot in an ace bandage and sent me off to X-Ray for pictures. Here's what they found:

This apparently is a good thing.

Back in the office again it was time to get the stitches out. While Dr. Knee was going over the x-rays, David came in and announced he was going to take out the stitches. Oh, I thought, so the doctor doesn't do that? The ambiguously hipster twenty-something does that? And why do I have a feeling mine might be the first time he's not practicing on his mom's Sunday roast beef? With a combination of  feeling "someone's got to be the first", wanting to get this over with, and knowing that the doctor was only steps away should it come to that, I let him loose. 

"So howya think the Giants will do this year?"

Other than his running out of the room to find out if it was normal for there to be as much blood as there was (it is), it all went fine. A snip, a tug, and soon the table was covered in little bits of black thread. For the after picture click here. Dr. Knee came back in and put a new cast on. Two weeks with this cast and we'll see if the bones are strong enough to actually be able to put weight on the foot. If so then I get a walking cast. Once that cast comes off, she'll send me to these guys for them to stretch and manipulate the ligaments, tendons, bones, and nerves:

"We're going to stretch your little girly-man foot"

Sigh. It's a process.