Christi

26 feb 2008
I broke my back, but I'm fine. I'm feeling really really really lucky - my doctors have mentioned this a few times too.

We're remodeling the bathroom. We bought all the new drywall a few weeks back, and in the process of moving something, I knocked about 538 lbs of it over onto myself. I screamed, gene heard it, and lifted it off of me. The ambulance was there within minutes and probably 15 minutes after I had started trying to get insulation out, I was in the emergency room with a morphine drip in my arm.

I broke one vertebrate. I had some temporary paralysis caused by swelling, but as soon as we realized that it wasn't permanent, it was kind of interesting to feel how feelings return. One of my painkillers didn't really kill the pain, but rather made me not care about the pain. That was fun. I spent a few days in the hospital, and now am home and moving about - with a cane, in a fairly stiff manner. I can't bend over, I can't get anything off the floor, and I sleep about 16 hours a day. It's been getting better and better every day and I should return to normal (non grimacing / non cane using / up and down stairs with ease) in a week. It will be totally healed in 6 weeks from the fracture date - so about 4.5 weeks to go.

I feel incredibly incredibly lucky, not just that I'll be fine, but also that I have some of the best friends in the world. People have been taking care of me, cooking us food, lending us movies (and video games.. and seasons 2, 3, and 4 of the golden girls), and a projectorÉ and lots of flowers and entertaining emails and phone calls.

So thank you thank you thank you to all the people who have helped out (most especially gene and tiffany, who have been spending 24/7, rearranging things, giving me drugs, making me eatÉ). Sorry that I've been so drugged as of late.

And that the explanation as to where we've been and why we won't been in france on time.

9 march 2008 update:
It's been almost exactly 3 weeks, and I'm not doing bad. Sometimes it hurts like crazy, sometimes it doesn't. I'm still using the cane to get around, but I don't have to - mostly it's just so that the random public doesn't get the impression that they can bump into me, not let me have a seat on the bus, or that I might hurry up... oh, and I totally need it for things like stairs and curbs and getting up and sitting down. but you know, besides that, I'm totally fine. Actually, better than that - I'm not so drugged all the time. and I really like that.