The past two weeks have left me a little worn out. I have a lot of anger and frustration, and yet I can feel my feelings and usually get back to my default position of attempting to choose peace and try to view things with an emphasis on positive aspects of any situation. However, a few times recently I have experienced feeling better about things, only to hit another wall and feel like I'm crashing. I am loved and supported by family and friends and animals, and I am so blessed to be Aunt Erica to these three little adorable people in this picture, shown here in actual footage of them laughing at something I said, other than Frida who was responding to my saying "Smile!" while her sisters giggled.
You guys have been with me over the past three weeks as I lived in denial of having broken my foot, as I hopped across rooms and crawled across parking lots. The damage to my foot is much worse than I initially thought that first night in Part 1, as I sat on my couch holding a bag of frozen peas on my foot (because frozen peas cure broken feet. It's the protein). Come to think of it, I may have left that part out of Part 1, or perhaps it ended up on the cutting room floor of my edits.
But, I digress.
A Hop, Scoot, and a Jump
In the past, I may have had the fleeting flash of a thought in which I wondered what it would be like to be on crutches. They certainly looked easy enough, or at least I saw people that made them look easy. But not for me, as I fell repeatedly when I wasn't giving myself an asthma attack. The scooter my friend lent me and the scooter of lesser quality that I got cheap on Amazon (that one lives in my car and stays available for me to use while out) are wonderful, and I am so grateful for them, but even they take more work than sometimes my lungs have.
When I returned to work, it was with my scooter at the ready, ready to make an entrance with me. But then I came upon the first of the many mortal enemies I have made since the breaking of my foot: The parking lot at work. Uneven, rickety, scary, and almost impossible for me to control the scooter on. Not to mention the drama of getting it in and out of the car while leaning on the car, standing on one foot.
Have we discussed how much I hate elevators? I'm claustrophobic. Elevators are not my friend. Though it is only one floor up, I give the elevator a stern talking to every morning. "Now, look," I say, "You just do what you're supposed to do, are we clear? Thank you." It deposits me on the second floor, never having given me any trouble really, so I suppose I should ease up on hating it. And I certainly shouldn't complain about elevators when I live on the top floor of a building without one.
Being at work is hard. I could not find a comfortable position to sit. Even when I was brought the bottom of a chair to use as a foot rest, I couldn't find a comfortable place to put it. The bathrooms are all a journey away. The disability bathroom has this horrible ledge that I have to haul the scooter over, so I go to the other one that's across the building because the one near me is too small for me to fit the scooter in. I had to hop to the printer or try to reach over using my scooter as a crutch. The scanner is not near me, the lobby is not near me, the little room that has the corporate seals is not near me, HR is not near me. Nothing I needed is near me and half of my day was spent scooting awkwardly or slumped in my chair recovering from being worn out from scooting and also in pain.
On top of all of this is the fact that my job seemed to have gone as far as it could. I make quite a bit less money than someone with my age and education and experience should, but that didn't matter to me when I took the job; however, my debt has basically doubled since then, and now, what I make at work is not nearly enough, which is why I have to work the other job as well, I can't say all of the details here because I care a lot about these particular powers that be and that is why I am still there, but I will say, I knew I needed to have a conversation with my boss, which I kept asking for and which had not yet come.
I went to Penn Medicine and found I was blessed with a wonderful and kind orthopedic doctor. An opposite to the doctor at Big Ortho in Part 1. However, she did say he was right about one thing, this injury does suck, and the healing is going to suck, but that I could do it and she would help me. She arranged for me to have a CAT scan and see her immediately after.
In the days that followed between the first appointment and the second, I tried to get my work done, went home and collapsed, struggled to put the dishes away and take the trash out and to do laundry, struggled to figure out how I was going to ever catch up from being a month behind, struggled to figure out a way in which I could stop worrying so much and feel better. Thanksgiving Day brought a break from that. My mother was the best cook in the world, and so it was difficult after her death to think of anything else but my mother on Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving was the first without my stepfather, and we were going to start a new tradition to distract us: Going to the movies. Or one movie in particular that was the inspiration for this idea: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, because Mister Rogers and Tom Hanks make it all better.
"Is That Tom Hanks?"
Thanksgiving was fun, but since moving around was such a challenge, I was nervous about going to the movie. It had been my idea, something fun to get us through the potential sadness of this holiday, but I was so scared and overwhelmed about going out with one foot, that I suggested to my sister that she and the girls go without me. "You are seeing this movie!" she said emphatically. My sister spends a lot of time keeping me positive and knew how much I had been looking forward to this. However, my worries were for nothing because as I put the recliner back in the theater, I realized that was the most comfortable I had been since I broke my foot. Frida crawled across the seats and sat on my lap, and anytime anyone came on the screen, she said, "Is that Tom Hanks? And that's the real Mister Rogers? Is that Tom Hanks?"
Frida asked a couple of questions about what was happening on screen before falling asleep on me for most of the movie. Then she woke up when there was a baby on the screen and said, "Oh, I just love little babies!"
And then she ate the rest of my KitKat.
The movie was perfect, being with my family was perfect, the food was perfect.
No Mountain Too Tall
I did not have off the next day so I schlepped myself to work and continued to try. Only to realize that there was no way I could continue to come in to work. I was in so much pain. And everything was so uncomfortable. It had been one medical crisis for me after another this year. I worried about being perceived as not dependable. I also worried about putting myself back in the hospital again. With every minute that passed by, my job became a mountain that was in fact too tall for me to climb. And impossible for me to hop over.
After a few quick Google sessions about leave, praying, pulling some Tarot cards, and confiding in one or two friends and my sister, by Monday I realized what I had to do. I went to HR and inquired about taking unpaid leave. Then I wrote to my boss and told her that's what I had to do. She wrote me and said we should have a conversation, and the next day we had one and it was not the conversation I expected to have with her.
She's been wonderful to me since she first contacted me, after finding my resume on careerbuilder in 2016. And she honestly told me that I deserved better than what I could get at this company, and that she thought I should find something that would pay me what I'm worth.
She was right, but it still left me disappointed and sad. But at least she cared enough about me to say something.
A Hop, Skip, Scoot, Jump, Prayer, and Rock-Climbing Expedition
I love Penn Medical, forever. However, a part of Penn Medical that I don't love so much is Pennsylvania Hospital which was founded in 1534 by Ben Franklin or whatever. I mean, it's old, is what I'm saying. It is a literal institution. And its parking is subcontracted to Hades, the Underworld, doing business as the Philadelphia Parking Authority.
That's right, I said it. Get off my lawn, Philadelphia Parking Authority!
Picture it: Philadelphia, 2019. A middle-aged woman in denial that gets away with it because she looks younger than her age has a broken foot and drives her Toyota Camry as she looks for parking in this, the big city. The valet parking was unavailable due to construction, so she drives an extra block past her destination and goes to park. Due to the unavailability of spaces, this process took upwards of an hour. She parks, calls the radiologist, is told to hurry, then she stumbles to pull out her scooter, and then searches for ten minutes for the elevator. Once she finds it, she comes to a FREAKIN BRICK AND COBBLESTONE STREET that she can barely control the scooter on and gives up, breaking down in tears because she left her coat in the car and also she has asthma and doesn't have her inhaler.
That woman was me.
"Oh, goodness, are you okay?" A kindly woman in a nurse's uniform stood outside. I proceeded to very maturely have a breakdown and tell her all my problems the biggest of which being I was having trouble getting to the radiologist and that my doctor appointment was very shortly after and how was I going to make it. She walked with me, holding me up, telling me it was going to be okay, saying she would get me a wheelchair and she would stay with me. I asked her if she needed to be somewhere, and she told me not to worry about it.
An angel. She took me to radiology, they got me checked in, and the doctor's office told me to get there in ten minutes or I would lose the appointment. They rushed me to get the CAT scan. Well, I was rushed to get the CAT scan, the woman who would perform the scan said I had ten minutes until 11 and what was I worried about, we didn't have to hurry, but I basically wasn't having that, so she reluctantly did me a favor by doing the scan, then the front desk directed me to Orthopedics.
Except, it was the wrong orthopedics. It was Back and Arms. I needed Foot and Ankle. And of course, those who needed Foot and Ankle had to walk two blocks away.
I cried again.
A wheelchair showed up, I was put in it, and wheeled two blocks away, promising my scooter that I would return to it. I was brought into the actual doctor's office. As the guy pushing my wheel chair greeted the woman behind the desk enthusiastically, he wheeled my broken foot right into the wall.
Then he felt bad. I almost laughed at how ridiculous the day was, but I was in too much pain and too exhausted. They wheeled me to the waiting room, and I had a flashback to being dumped in the waiting room by the mean receptionist at Big Ortho. But in this waiting room, they were nice.
Then they took me to the examination room, and a few minutes later my doctor was in there with me, going over the scans, showing me all the fractures. 1, 2, 3, 4 here. Oh, look here, there's another one. And one more. And one more.
Seven fractures. She said that I would be non-weight bearing for another month, and then come back for the weight-bearing X-Ray. Then, as if in a Cinderella story, the non-weight bearing boot I am currently sporting would magically become a walking boot. But that it would take me four months after that to be okay with walking, and that it could take up to a year to be out of pain from this. If after a year I am still in severe pain, there is a surgery they can do to fuse the toes or something but I stopped listening because, you know, ew.
I left the paperwork, and it took me another hour to get to my scooter and then to my car. I was exhausted. But, I still had to go to work. So I eventually pulled out of the garage and headed to work, swearing I would never come to Pennsylvania Hospital again, and wondering how in the name of God people who were older than me and in worse condition and couldn't drive were expected to get themselves to this hospital.
Viva Le University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.
Um.... So.... Now What?
My doctor and her PA told me they would complete my leave paperwork, and that an injury of this type usually required four months of leave, so that I shouldn't feel bad for wanting that.
Still, I did. I am feeling so weird about work, sad, like I failed even though I know I didn't. There are lots of things that I wanted to do this year that didn't happen. That's okay, they can still happen. I miss, you know, walking. But, my foot will work again someday. I am still here in my apartment with my cats, knowing I am safe even if I am feeling sad.
Sometimes when people talk to me on the phone, they say that I am "peppy." I would not define myself as peppy. But I am also not morose, I suppose. I try to look for the positive, but I still try to acknowledge when I feel bad because if I don't, it takes over. My natural inclination is to look for something that comes out of everything. For example, this happened, yet because of this happening, this other thing also happened. Or, this happened, and because of that, I learned this thing, etc.
So when I was hospitalized back in June, I wondered, why did this happen? What is supposed to come out of this? And I missed the answer that was perhaps obvious to other people.
I didn't want to leave my job, I don't want to leave my job, but I also don't want to struggle anymore. So I have to see what else is out there. But I am not going to settle. I am going to build up my freelancing business, see what's out there, work as hard as I am able to at my job once the leave is done, and see what happens.
It's a real pain in the ass not to be psychic for myself. Speaking of, next post I'll complain to you about all the nerve pain I have from putting all my weight side. Oops, looks like I just did that. Okay, next time, I'll tell you some other stuff, then.
Thank you for listening; you guys always make me feel better!
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