
Photo by Diane Taylor
Actually, the casting couch was a table in the doctor’s office, and his surgical assistant, Marisa Calderon, asked me what color I would like on my cast. This was the leg cast that was going to protect my broken ankle from further harm. Would I like pink? (No thanks; I’m not a four-year-old princess.) Or black? (Too depressing.) Maybe purple? (O.K. Purple. Why not?)
Before the cast was applied, my orthopedic doctor had scared the (censored) out of me. He asked me to transfer from the chair to the table and as I did, using a walker and carefully sliding my injured foot for a bit of balance, he shouted, “No, you can’t do that! NO weight on that leg. None! Didn’t they tell you that in the emergency room?”
“Well yes, but I just…
The doctor went on to say that we could “take care” of my ankle two ways: with a cast and absolutely no weight on the ankle for six weeks… or…duh-da-duh…. surgery. His eyes brightened at the word surgery. “I’m a surgeon,” he said. “I like surgery. You won’t like it, but I will…then he sort of licked his lips.

Photo by Diane Taylor
I’m a grown woman and was about to cry. One little ankle and this is what I get? I opted for the cast and six weeks of pretending I didn’t have a left foot. My husband rented a wheelchair “in case” I’m able to wheel around town to see a show or have dinner with friends. In the meantime, I’m home with the electric wheelchair loaned by a friend. To get to the car, I have a walker. I more or less walk with my arms…and hop.
To pass the time, I have my TV, a computer, and a Kindle. My dogs are afraid of me in the moveable chair and run away, so I’m missing their attention. My husband is chief cook and bottle washer, and he’s good at it. However, he keeps sneaking glances at me as if he KNOWS I want to put weight on my left foot. Yeah, like I’m dying to give that surgeon more vacation money.

Photo by Diane Taylor
Oh, the good news? The doctor gave me some pain pills that really work…at least better than my generic Ibuprofen. I get knocked out for a while — a good nap — but then I’m pain free and raring to go.
Too much TV has its pluses and minuses. I’m up to date on the “scandals”, and I know how to rehab everything from a condo to a tree house. During commercials, I switch to the shopping channels, and by golly they have some really good stuff that I didn’t even know I needed! A bit of wisdom from QVC: “Eighty percent of the time, we wear only 20 percent of our wardrobe.” Probably true. Much of my 80 percent seldom-used wardrobe came from….the shopping channels.
Baths, for now, are sink-experiences, but they still feel good. Yep, I’m hopping on one foot and washing my hair in the sink and hopping some more and applying makeup. (Makeup tends to get smudged during hopping, however.)
Elevating feet and icing the sore spots are part of the treatment and that feels good. We’ve had multiple ice packs in the freezer for years and were always afraid to get rid of perfectly good ice packs. Now we need the ice packs and we have them. Can you believe some people say no good comes from hoarding? Friends have been great with their phone calls and their humor, so the time will pass….I guess.
I’m going to add a couple unrelated photos to this column because I’m not willing, yet, to star in my own stories. Therefore, I….
Hold on; wait a minute, it’s the doorbell…. it’s the UPS man…the first of my packages from QVC are here!
So sorry to hear about your ankle. But great story telling and a geat sense of humor.
fun article! too bad it had to be at your expense! you must have to be reminded all day long not to put weight on that ankle. your sense of humor is wonderful and I am sure you and hubby will have wonderful stories later on about your time alone!
Ahh, the joys of broken bones. Glad you can still see the humor in this situation. You’d better heal quickly – we have shows to see!