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my 2012 happiness project

a post a day in 2012 using the page-a-day calendar of Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project as a jumping-off point.

Jan 2012: i'm 25, female, single, live near Vancouver, BC, have a B.A. in English lit, am unemployed, definitely sarcastic, hopefully creative, hopelessly neurotic, and currently run a book review blog. and i don't use capitals a lot.

Jan 2013: ????

$february 18 & 19, 2012 sorry i missed a few days. this week and last week was spent in a weird depressive haze. today’s message especially has meaning for me. sort of. a year ago today (the 18th, rather the 17th), i broke my left ankle. i slipped on a vacuum hose when walking downstairs at home and dislocated it as well as fractured it. that afternoon, it was popped back into place. the following Tuesday (a few days later), i underwent 3 and a half hours of surgery to put everything back together because just popping my foot back into the socket wasn’t good enough. the next morning, i was told i wouldn’t be able to walk on it for the next 6 to 8 weeks. (to be honest, i would’ve been better off having surgery that Saturday when i broke it.) then came 2 weeks in a soft cast, gauze and tensor bandages wrapped around hard plaster strips to keep my foot and leg straight. after that was 3 months in a walking boot, the first 5 weeks of it still off weight. then came physiotherapy from April to June, and another surgery in late June to remove one of the screws. apparently, i’d broken my ankle so bad that when the surgeon opened up my ankle, the two bones in my lower leg wanted to spread apart instead of stay together, so a really long screw was put in to keep both bones in place until it could come out. i’m glad i live in Canada and have some form of healthcare, because i never had to pay for x-rays (i think i had at least a dozen done so i’m set for radiation exposure) or the surgeries. what was paid for was my prescription after the surgery, renting crutches and a wheelchair for 3 months, physio, and the walking boot. it sucked, because i’d started job hunting again right before this happened. i never heard back from anything i’d applied to (which was both good and bad), but it kept me homebound for a good 8 weeks (not counting a check-up with my surgeon every 2 weeks). one year later, i don’t think my ankle is at 100%. most of the flexibility and rage of movement has come back, but not all of it. my left ankle is bigger than my right, because of scar tissue (and according to my physiotherapist, i have loads of scar tissue because i broke it so badly). three times since November i’ve had pain spiking through my foot and up my leg. my doctor says it might be from the screws scraping against the scar tissue. ewww. it’s been stiff in cold mornings. it swelled up every night when i was working a week-long volunteer job at the library in August. i get a limp if i walk or stand on it for too long, then it’s stiff the next day. i can always feel it. i’m not sure if i’d trade this experience for something else, but it did make me realize that life was more fragile than i thought. still. i’m still waiting for the first time i go through a metal detector and have to explain it to security. ;)$

february 18 & 19, 2012

sorry i missed a few days. this week and last week was spent in a weird depressive haze.

today’s message especially has meaning for me. sort of.

a year ago today (the 18th, rather the 17th), i broke my left ankle. i slipped on a vacuum hose when walking downstairs at home and dislocated it as well as fractured it. that afternoon, it was popped back into place. the following Tuesday (a few days later), i underwent 3 and a half hours of surgery to put everything back together because just popping my foot back into the socket wasn’t good enough. the next morning, i was told i wouldn’t be able to walk on it for the next 6 to 8 weeks.

(to be honest, i would’ve been better off having surgery that Saturday when i broke it.)

then came 2 weeks in a soft cast, gauze and tensor bandages wrapped around hard plaster strips to keep my foot and leg straight. after that was 3 months in a walking boot, the first 5 weeks of it still off weight. then came physiotherapy from April to June, and another surgery in late June to remove one of the screws. apparently, i’d broken my ankle so bad that when the surgeon opened up my ankle, the two bones in my lower leg wanted to spread apart instead of stay together, so a really long screw was put in to keep both bones in place until it could come out.

i’m glad i live in Canada and have some form of healthcare, because i never had to pay for x-rays (i think i had at least a dozen done so i’m set for radiation exposure) or the surgeries. what was paid for was my prescription after the surgery, renting crutches and a wheelchair for 3 months, physio, and the walking boot.

it sucked, because i’d started job hunting again right before this happened. i never heard back from anything i’d applied to (which was both good and bad), but it kept me homebound for a good 8 weeks (not counting a check-up with my surgeon every 2 weeks).

one year later, i don’t think my ankle is at 100%. most of the flexibility and rage of movement has come back, but not all of it. my left ankle is bigger than my right, because of scar tissue (and according to my physiotherapist, i have loads of scar tissue because i broke it so badly). three times since November i’ve had pain spiking through my foot and up my leg. my doctor says it might be from the screws scraping against the scar tissue. ewww. it’s been stiff in cold mornings. it swelled up every night when i was working a week-long volunteer job at the library in August. i get a limp if i walk or stand on it for too long, then it’s stiff the next day. i can always feel it.

i’m not sure if i’d trade this experience for something else, but it did make me realize that life was more fragile than i thought.

still.

i’m still waiting for the first time i go through a metal detector and have to explain it to security. ;)