lizards on toast :: stitches, diablo, and bat country (personal, photo, surgery)

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.  This morning, I awoke in a pain-filled haze to an odd dripping noise. The pain stemmed from my recent ankle surgery, along with my apparent ability to kick myself directly in said ankle whilst sleeping. The dripping noise, as it was discovered, was from the toilet tank trying to refill itself. It wouldn’t normally have trouble, but the water was shut off, as Cat kindly informed me. Apparently someone managed to break a water meter somewhere on our block. My response was to pull the pillow back over my head and ignore everything, hoping that (just this once) the world could just sort everything out by itself. This didn’t happen, of course, and I was forced to get up for an appointment I had with my orthopedic surgeon.

.  The lack of running water precluded coffee being made, and if I ever discover who was responsible, I’ll beat them incessantly; with a cactus, if possible. Things were pretty grim; “grouchy” doesn’t really convey the way I am in the morning before coffee, nicotine, and (post-surgery) vicodin. To use the colloquial biblical analogy, Cat must have the patience of Job.  It’s either that or she’s still searching for a place to hide my body; I guess we’ll see in the next few weeks.

. A quick stop by a local Starbucks remedied what was most wrong with the world; by some twist of fate my mumbled order resulted in the acquisition of a drink with six shots of espresso in it. Six shots. Six. Shots. This level of caffeine is enough to make any day instantly amazing. Obviously, this is what happened, because it was now inevitable.

. Doctor Smith examined my ankle and showed me the pictures taken during the surgery. (If I can remember where I put the copies, I’ll get the pictures scanned and uploaded.) There’s a spot about the size of a dime where the cartilage was dead and meandering about loosely. He removed those pieces and drilled into the bones of my ankle in an effort to get it to re-grow new cartilage. If (when) this doesn’t work, I’ll have to have cartilage and bone dowels harvested from my knee and implanted. That seems a little grim, because of the potential to screw up my perfectly fine knee. Also, I already can’t put weight on my ankle for eight weeks; I don’t really want to consider the recovery time for a more major surgery.

. The rest of the day was spent playing Diablo 2 at an impromptu LAN party in my living room. It’s hard to convey the amount of nostalgia felt for these older games. It almost makes me miss college. Of course, when we played Diablo in high-school and college, it wasn’t usually with Dora the Explorer for background noise. (Lucas had his daughter with him) Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun.

. After the laptops and midgets were packed up and gone, Cat and I also watched “Gonzo: The Life and Works of Hunter S. Thompson”, which was wonderful. HST has always been one of my favorite authors, for (I guess) the usual reasons kids in college fall in love with his writing. Netflix has it via instant queue, so you should go watch it. Go, right now.. I’ll wait here. Anyway, I’ve added all his books to my wishlist, in case anyone needs gift ideas or something.

out.