My Poor Pinky Toe

I don't know what it is about my pinky toe and the month of June that don't mix.

The first incident occurred in June of 2007.  (I think June 15th, because I remember it being the day after my grandma's birthday.)  My family had gone up to Oregon to visit her for her birthday.  We were getting ready that morning in the hotel and I was playing with my nephew.  I was chasing him around the room and my toe had an unfortunate encounter with the wheel of my moms suitcase .  It was placed diagonally on the floor, and as I ran by I kicked the wheel, which went right between my pinky toe and my other toes.

I was instantly in a LOT of pain.  I mean a lot.  I started to cry and I told my mom that I thought I broke my toe.  She told me to run it under water in the bathtub.  (How is that supposed to help?)  I did that, knowing that wasn't going to help my broken toe.  I told her I needed to go to the hospital or something and she laughed at me and said we didn't need to go to the hospital for my toe.  (If I had thought about it I would have known that, but it was my first broken bone, so what did I know?)

Anyway, my mom called my aunt, who is a nurse, and she said to just tape it to the toe next to it and take some tylenol.  My sister-in-law got some sports tape from the front desk at the hotel and came up to help me put it on.  I was still crying, by the way.  It really hurt.  One of the most painful things I've ever experienced, if not the most painful.  Within a few hours, a huge bruise had started to form, which eventually overtook about half of my foot.  Luckily the break wasn't too bad (my toe wasn't hanging off to the side, or anything).  I did eventually end up going to the doctor.  I had to get my mission physical and he saw the bruise on my foot and said "I'm going to need an xray of that."

Here's a picture of my foot several weeks after I broke my toe.  I don't know why I didn't take one sooner.  By this time the bruising had started to go away, but you can still see it.  It went almost all the way over to my big toe, and half way down my foot.  This is the coolest bruise I've ever had.

Yesterday, I went to Lagoon with my sister-in-law Kari, neice, nephew, and my neice's friend.  As my niece, her friend, and I were getting on the JetStar I misjudged my step and a little metal bar went between my pinky toe and my other toes.  I winced in extreme pain, but I had to control myself as there were others around.  But it really hurt.  However, I didn't cry, so I figured it probably wasn't broken.  When we got off the ride and I had to walk on it, it hurt but was more bearable than I remember it being in 2007 when I had to walk.  After a little while I sat down on a bench with Kari and I looked down at my toe and it was like 2x its normal size and bright red.  My poor toe. 

Here's a picture of it today.  I don't think it's broken, although I can't move it as well as I normally can, and it still hurts.  I probably just sprained it (can you sprain a toe?).  It's bruised, but not too bad.  I'm confident that it will recover quickly. 

So at this rate should I expect another pinky toe injury in June 2015?

Good Riddance

The compression sock is off!  I took it off a little early, but I think I'll be just fine.  It was driving me insane.  So so ugly.  I loved (sarcasm) having to wear it to church and having one "normal" leg and one "white stockinged" leg.  Boo.  But not it's gone!  Yeah!

Things are going well as far as my knee is concerned.  I almost don't limp anymore when I walk.  I can walk up the stairs, and sometimes down.  My right leg is still pretty weak.  It's amazing how quickly that can change after surgery.  I had finished doing ChaLEAN Extreme just before my surgery and my leg muscles were really strong.  But now it's just my left leg that's strong.  My right leg is incredibly weak.  But we're working on that in my physical therapy and it's getting stronger.  Last time I went i had to do calf raises and my calf is soooo sore today.  My right calf, that is.  My left calf is just fine.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can exercise again.  I wanna do Turbo Fire!

Happy Father's Day!

Me and my dad at a Daddy Daughter Dance.  I think I was 13 or 14 in this picture. 

(Sorry for the poor quality.  This is a picture of a picture, if you can't tell.)

Connor and I drove to the cemetery today to show some Father's Day love.  :)

And to my mom too, who had to play the role of both Father and Mother sometimes.

And I guess I shouldn't forget about my cute husband.  He's not a father yet, but he will be someday 

(but not anytime in the near future.) :)

More Knee Fun

My knee's lookin' pretty good.  I took the tape off of my knee today.  I was a little scared to do it, but it wasn't so bad.  I don't think all of the stitches have dissolved yet, but it's getting there.  I love that you can still see the "yes" on my knee, by the way.

Physical therapy is all sorts of fun.  My physical therapist's name is Oryslava and she's from the Ukraine.  (Why do we say the Ukraine?  Why not just Ukraine?)  Anyway, it really hasn't been too bad....so far.  I have to do exercises at home 2x a day.  From start to finish it takes me about an hour each time.  I have to heat it up first with a heating pad for about 10 minutes (which I'm doing right now).  Then I do the exercises which take between 20 to 30 minutes.  Then I have to ice my knee for 20 to 30 minutes. 

I'm starting to walk a lot better and I'm officially off the percocet.  Yay!  I wasn't taking too much of it anyway, only as needed.  But now I'm out so I'll keep taking the naproxen and ibuprofen as needed.

Para mis amigos Argentinos

Queridos Amigos,

Hace dos anos que regrese a casa.  Extrano mucho a ustedes, a Argentina, y a la mision.  No puedo creer que ya ha pasado tanto tiemp.  Quesiera decir que no pasa ni un dia que no recuerdo de ustedes.  Siempre estan en mi mente, y en mi corazon.

La mision fue una experiencia hermosa y inolvidable.  Cada uno de ustedes tocaron mi corazon y nunca les puedo olvidar.  Tengo tantas ganas de regresar a Argentina.  Voy a hacer todo que puedo para regresar para cuando dediquen el templo do Cordoba.  Y si puedo, me gustaria volver antes de eso, pero me es dificil con la plata y todo que necesito para irme.

Espero que ustedes sepan que los extrano mucho, y los quiero mucho.  Son personas buenisimas, simpaticas, generosas, y hermosas.  Espero que nos volvamos a ver algun dia muy pronto.  Pero sin saber lo que pasara en esta vida, se que nos volveremos a ver en la vida que viene por que la amistad tambien es eterna.

Los amo mucho.

Con mucho amor,
Jenna

El dia que llegue a Argentina.
22 de Enero 2008

En la casa de la mision
6 de Junio 2009

I'm Free!

I got my brace off today!  Yay!  It's soooooo nice to have it off.

Since I'm still not allowed to drive, and since Connor had a funeral service for one of the people that died in the plane crash in Wendover, my wonderful friend, Jenni, took me to my doctors appointment.

When they took us back the first thing they did was take off my brace and my bandage and gauze.  My knee isn't too swollen.  The PA did put a compression sock on my leg.  And let me just say, it's pretty awesome.  And quite attractive.  Jenni said that it's too bad that it only comes in white.  It'd be more fun if it came in other colors, and I couldn't agree more!  :)

I thought they were going to take out the stitches, but apparently they should just dissolve on their own.  That's good, because the idea of them taking out the stitches makes me nervous.  I know, I'm a wuss, but things like that make me really nervous.

Anyway, then Dr Cooley came in and talked to me a little bit and showed me some photos they took of the inside of my knee during my surgery.  He told me what the name of the problem was, but I can't remember it.  Basically, it's what I had said before.  My knee cap was out of place so it was rubbing something wrong.  You can kind of see in some of the photos of my knee that there's some blistering and some red parts from irritation and inflammation.  He let me keep the photos so I'll have to scan them and post them.  :)

Anyway, he said that it's a genetic issue and it's very common to have the same problem in both knees so we're going to have to watch the other one.  If I do end up doing the other knee I'd like to do it this year and just get it over with.  Plus, I figure I can make the most of my insurance deductible since we've already paid for the one surgery.  But if I don't need it at all that would be great.  Let's hope for that!

Dr. Cooley told me that I'd need to go back in about 6 weeks, and also that I should do some physical therapy to get my strength in my leg back to where it needs to be.  I have an appointment scheduled for tomorrow with a physical therapist.

My knee is hurting a little more today than yesterday, but that's probably because I don't have my brace on anymore with my ice pack.  I am supposed to ice my knee 2x/day for about 30 minutes so my handy little cooler will be useful for that too.

My pretty knee. 

This was supposed to show the difference between the 2 legs with my swelling but the lighting is really bad.
But you can sort of tell.

My super hot compression sock.  I have to wear it for 2 weeks.
I know you're jealous.  :) 

Knee Update

It's been one week since my surgery.  I'm feeling pretty good today.  I made dinner (in the crockpot -- my favorite cooking appliance), and cleaned the kitchen up a little bit.  Now I'm relaxing and watching Toy Story 3 on TV.  (How is it that the Toy Story movies keep getting better, but Pirates of the Caribbean movies keep getting worse?  Granted, I haven't seen the last one, but that's what I heard.)

Tomorrow morning I go see Dr. Cooley.  I am hoping to be able to take my brace off.  My right leg is sooooo itchy.  I'm going crazy.  It's probably because I haven't been able to shave it in over a week.  Ew.  I'm also looking forward to finding out tomorrow what exactly was done to my knee.  Should be exciting!

Here are some pictures of my knee.  It's hard to really see anything since it's still covered, but it looks okay.  I don't think anything is too swollen.

This is the "Yes" that Dr. Cooley wrote on my leg before surgery.

One of my 3 incisions.  It's bigger than I thought it would be.
I think tomorrow they'll take the stitches out.

My knee.  You can kind of see the other 2 incisions at the top of the picture.  I can't pull up my bandage any further because my ice pack that's connected to my cooler is right there.  And there's a pretty sweet bruise.  :)

I'm not sure why my knee looks red in the pictures.  It's really not.  Maybe I should use my actual camera instead of my iPhone to take the pictures.

Resting

Yesterday exhausted me.  I slept today until about 2:45.  I woke up around 7:30am in pain and I took an oxycodone and fell back asleep.  Then I woke up at 10:45.  I took some neproxen, had some breakfast, and fell back asleep.  Then I woke up at 1:30, again in pain, thought about taking another oxycodone but instead I just adjusted my ice pack to hit the part of my knee that was bothering me.  It worked, and I fell back asleep.  Can you sense a pattern?  :)

It's a really nice day outside.  The weather has been soooo cold lately, and now that we finally have nice weather, I can't enjoy it.  :(  At least it's pretty from my window, though.  Let's just hope that the weather stays this way.

Ouch!

Today was fun, until around 8:30 tonight.

Connor got home from work and helped me shower.  (I love that I can't bathe by myself.)  We wrapped my leg in a trash bag, and then wrapped saran wrap over the top of the trash bag a whole bunch of times.  It worked pretty well and everything stayed dry.  Then we headed up to Layton to go to Krispy Kreme for National Donut Day because they were giving out free donuts.  We picked up Kari, Robin, and Liam and got some yummy donuts and then went back to their house and chatted for a bit.  It was really nice to get out of our apartment and socialize.

We headed home and stopped at In 'n Out on the way.  I took my meds with me just in case I'd need them (except the oxycodone).  Before we left Eric and Kari's I took some, but I had major issues on the way home.  I think it was just sitting in the car with this brace on.  My leg was in a strange position and I couldn't elevate it.  By the time we got home I was dying.  That was the most pain I've been in thus far.  I would say that on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, it was a 9.  I almost started crying.  I was deep breathing and doing everything I could to keep the pain under control.  Poor Connor was trying to help me feel better, but there wasn't anything he could do.

We finally got home and I got out of the car and immediately my leg felt immensely better.  It must have just been the way I was sitting, like I said.  Now I am happily lying on the couch with my brace hooked into my cooler, and my leg elevated.  I took another oxycodone when we got home, and now we're just hanging out.

Like I said, today was fun.  I just could have done without the immense pain on the way home.  Oh well.  At least it can only get better.  :)

Recovery!

Yesterday I was doing really well.  My friend Ami came over and took care of me.  She was so sweet.  Connor had to go back to work, and they told me that I needed someone to be with me for the first 24 hours after surgery.  Ami came over and saved the day.  She brought me lunch, and then her mom came down and they got us all dinner.  I'm so lucky to have such great friends.

Today I'm feeling a little worse.  My medicine is making me constipated.  I won't go into too much detail there, but it's not fun.  I woke up nauseous this morning so I took one of my anti-nausea drugs, and then I went back to bed.  I am trying to not take as much percocet today (it's not the only pain killer I have, but definitely the strongest).  I made it to about 1:30 and I had to take it.  But that's pretty good since I last took it at midnight last night.  

I can't complain too much, though.  I'm happy that I'm getting this knee thing taken care of.  I didn't mention before that it wasn't what they thought it was.  They thought that I had torn some cartilage, but actually it was a genetic issue where my knee cap is placed wrong.  I'm not exactly sure what he did and I go to the doctor on Wednesday so I'll have to ask then.  I asked Connor, but he couldn't remember well enough to really tell me.  I guess the doctor also said that I might have the same issue in my other knee, which makes sense because it's been bothering me a little bit too, but just not as much as my right knee.

Anyway, life is good.  I'm happy to be recovering.  And I'm happy for loved ones who are so kind to take time out of their lives and help take care of me.