How to Turn Disablement to Your Advantage and the Mysteries of Casts

I think I’m getting the hang of this disablement thing now. It is simply a question of role reversal. The trick is to use everyday ordinary phrases that usually come out of others’ mouths and make them come out of mine. And substitute the word ‘Mum’ for ‘daughter’ or ‘daughter’s boyfriend’. Here are a few successful examples that occurred today:

Daughter, can I have a bagel please, and some orange juice and can you bring it to my room?

Daughter, we have run out of milk, can you go to the coop, and whilst you’re there get some bread and croissants and smoothies and biscuits and cake and a weeks shopping and a small kitchen sink?

Daughter’s boyfriend, my computer is broken can you come and fix it and install some programs and bring me a cup of coffee, and wash the car too?

Daughter, where are my favourite jeans and my blue t-shirt? If they are in the wash can you get them clean by an hour ago?

See, easy. Just a matter of mindset. Why didn’t I think of breaking my foot years ago? The house is running like a well oiled machine, without the mess of the oil or the noise of a machine. And I am sitting in bed. Doing fuck all. It is my intention never to have this cast removed. Ever.

The cast is still a bit of a mystery to me though. On one level it is familiar as an old, hot, heavy and stupidly large sock. On another level I can’t help but think - why? Is this not severe overkill? I have broken a bone in my foot. I saw the x-ray: 4th metatarsal. I have a cast that covers most of the western hemisphere. And weighs as much as the eastern hemisphere. And is as hot as the upper hemisphere. And as itchy as the lower hemisphere. By my calculations now this cast covers two earths.

And here’s another mysterious thing. (look away now if you are a bit squeamish). The two ends of the bones had managed to separate themselves rather in the fashion of Tower Bridge. Without the towers and the tourists. Well there might have been tourists but they are invisible to NHS x-ray. Probably Japanese and therefore quite nano and compact. So how is it supposed to work that by encasing most of my body in plaster of Paris these bones magically realign themselves? Out of protest? Because they have read the reports of famous footballers’ injuries and are followers of celeb fashion? Because they empathise with the plight of Japanese tourists unable to cross bridges?

Meanwhile, due to the highly technologically advanced nature of this thing adhering to my leg I am leaving white smudges all around the house. I’m like snotty-cat on a very bad shedding day. Visitors proffering chocolates have been able to discover my location by following the trail of plaster debris. Scientists looking for the answer to the missing matter in the universe have been crowding the house taking samples. NHS managers have been out in force with dustpans and brushes collecting the stuff in order to recycle it for the next unfortunate sauna accidentee.

And I have a confession, but please don’t tell anyone at the hospital, or my family, or anyone really – I’ve broken the world’s largest cast already. The bit that is under my foot, probably the crucial bit that is actually attempting to do something for the divorced metatarsal. Oops.

Why Disabled People Deserve a Refund On Life and More of the Purple Foot

The purple foot saga still continues. Am I becoming obsessed? Probably.

Firstly though I would like to put in an important word for all disabled people, whether of a temporary nature or not. Because this is what I’ve discovered:

When lacking the use of the usual number of limbs, things take longer. Ordinary things take very much longer. Things I used to take for granted, like having a wee, or making a cup of tea (obviously important not to get those to confused no matter how limb-challenged one is) take very very much longer. Here is a simple but illustrative example –

Doing the Laundry Whilst on Crutches

Clothes on the floor cannot be picked up by the usual method. Therefore any stray knicker must be lifted chopstick-style with the crutches. This leads to a balancing-on-one-leg-bending-over-at-the-same-time situation. Dangerous. And I’m a yoga teacher, trained for years in the art of balancing-on-one-leg-bending-over-at-the-same-time situations. Nevertheless I fall. Risking further purple appendages.

Having put clothes in basket it turns out that it is impossible to carry aforementioned wicker receptacle. It must be pushed curling style (that Scottish ice game not the hair fashion) along the floors until it reaches the machine. This is especially fun down the stairs. Again risking further purple appendage situations.

Having reached the washing machine it is best to sit on the floor in order to load the device. That’s ok. It’s getting back up that proves impossible.

Hence one is stuck for half an hour watching clothes spin their merry way around a small glass window. I used to park Daughter the Younger in front of the machine for just this purpose. I feel deeply guilty about that now.

On the up side one is in the right place to unload the machine. On the down side one is still on the floor turning one’s head from basket of wet clothes to window depicting washing line, back and forth in a bemused manner. One still cannot get up, or carry a washing basket so the only alternative is to crawl, pushing the laundry in front or towing it behind using one of the Beloved’s ties as a towrope.

Once in the garden it is actually possible to hoist oneself to standing using the pole of the washing line. And using a spare bit of line (should one have such a thing to hand) one can lash oneself to the pole and thus have a stable base from which to hang the laundry. Except it is now impossible to reach as one is lashed to pole and basket is on ground.

In a final exciting twist of ingenuity one kicks over the basket with good foot, sending clothes flying across the grass and thus allowing them to dry. Sadly one is now lashed to a pole being scraped down in a purple-back situation as good foot has disappeared from under one.

Laundry 1 – Disabled Person 0

And this is what I’m saying. Disabled people deserve a refund. If it takes them five times the amount of time to perform an ordinary task then I think they are entitled to a refund of 4 minutes for every one minute everyone else gets.

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So, I know you are all curious, how is the purple foot? Broken. Yes well and truly broken. I finally took the advice of a wise and noble friend.

She came to visit, took one look at the offending purpleness, shoved me into her car and shoved me out again at the hospital.
After only 3 hours I emerge with the most ridiculous plaster on my leg for one very broken metatarsal. I feel like someone from a 1950s hospital comedy. Look:

What Advice Not to Take If You Have a Purple Foot

The purple foot saga continues. After assuring myself that it would be better in the morning I awake to find that it is still getting worse. The swelling is more swelled. The purpling is more purple. The pain is more paining. This was not my plan.

I decide to seek advice.

Physicist says not to bother with 6 hours in casualty as they will only X-ray it, tell me whether it is broken and send me away with a pretty white tubigrip regardless of the style of injury. I know she is right because many many a time I have accompanied her on just such a journey of futility.

Beloved is very grumpy. He doesn’t like it if I don’t function properly. He tells me that it is broken and it will take six weeks to mend and that its tough shit but don’t worry he is off to Sweden in the morning to avoid the worst excesses of my non-functionality. Also he will use the car so it doesn’t get out of practice driving places as soon as he gets back.

Daughter the Younger tells me that it will get better sooner if I go to the hospital and succumb to plastering. I will however not be able to swim or wash for 6 weeks so I may prefer to wear a stylish tubigrip (she has several in her drawer as does the physicist). She emphasises however that really I should go and get a plaster as she doesn’t trust me to be sensible. True. Yesterday I crutched through the woods for an hour in order to cure a nasty case of stir-craziness. And today I risked life and foot by going swimming.

Dance partner, who kindly rung last night to ask me to dance and was hit with the bad news, (but it’s ok because he has lots of people to dance with. Boo Hoo) advised ice, rest and elevation. And no dancing. Oh oh oh.

Ex-casualty nurse and sauna builder advised that it would be all right in the end.

Cat had no comment. Except to emphasise that he was still hungry.

If anyone more qualified than the above contributors would care to just reassure me that I will be back tangoing on Thursday please do so asap. If you are less qualified please do the same.

I have taken a picture of the offending article to aid amateur diagnosis so if you are of a squeamish nature look away now.

How to Survive of Disablement with a Modicum of Sanity

So that’s it. I’m officially, albeit temporarily, disabled. Why did no one warn me that this might happen? Why didn’t my horoscope yesterday tell me to beware of small saunas containing naked people? I would have taken heed. Honestly. Why didn’t my horoscope last month warn me to install such handy features in my house as a Stannah Stairlift, those big rails around the toilet, a bungalow, a nurse, a stasis chamber?

All I can be grateful for is that my horoscope of about six months ago warned me against returning the NHS crutches to the relevant NHS establishment after Daughter the Younger put pitch fork through her foot. So, I have crutches. And beer. Perhaps not a good combination. But since I haven’t been warned I shall continue to mix the two.

Adaptation, as Darwin put it so well, is the name of the game. Life as a temporarily disabled person simply requires a modicum of adjustment. Should your find yourself in this position (possibly also due to lack of correct astral readings) here are some handy tips:

Crutches can be used for more than just crutching. You can use them –
As giant chopsticks to pick up sundry items from the floor
As mops by simply putting a damp rag underneath
As removers of cobwebs from unlikely places
As weapons of mass destruction in the case of severe anger. Which may happen. Life with crutches tends to develop those tendencies.

If you are on crutches you cannot –
Carry things upstairs
Carry things downstairs
Go upstairs
Go downstairs
Dance tango

If you are on crutches allow that little bit of extra time for –
Moving from one location to another
Going to the toilet (remember, disentangle before sitting)
Washing of any part of the body
Everything

You may discover that being temporarily disabled alters your relationship with people. This can be telling and perhaps it is worth making a note of. This is my personal experience –
Physicist comes over very helpful and drives to coop for emergency croissants
Daughter the Younger finds situation most amusing and demonstrates tricks to do on crutches that she perfected after the pitch-fork incident
Friends send cyber-hugs via email and MSN (thank you)
Sauna builders come round to apologise
Sauna builder’s dog comes round to apologise and eat anything she finds on the floor
Beloved becomes extremely grumpy and offers no hugs at all
Cat doesn’t notice and remains as hungry as ever

A final word of advice – beware false horoscopes, small saunas and remember, we are all just a slip away from purple feet that look like balloons.

What Not to do in the Sauna

My friends have a sauna in their garden. Which turns out to be very dangerous. Not usually. Just tonight. Usually it’s just hot. But tonight it was out to get me.

It is an usual sauna, as saunas go. Because it used to be the outside toilet. Then it was a chicken shed. Then my friend thought ‘now what could be handier than an outside toilet or a chicken shed? I know - a sauna.’ So he dedicated himself to sauna building. All summer he toiled, avoiding irate chickens and indignant cisterns. Until, lo and behold the small brick edifice located half way up their steep and unlikely garden was a haven for naked people getting hot and sweaty.

There was a problem though. As saunas go it is small. Very small. Well, the original designers of the Welsh outhouse had failed to understand that in days to come people might require such a building to fulfil a function that only lesser known Swedes had heard of. Hard to believe I know. But there you go.

And, for reasons unfathomable to mortals of a lesser intellect and lesser clothing the bench is very high up. So the aforementioned naked folk have to do a certain amount of technical climbing in order to perch themselves.

Now my foot is mostly broken. This is what happened:

There were four of us. That’s a lot for an ex-shithouse. I was the last one in. There was a small space. I went for it. I failed to take the usual safety precautions of ropes, hardhats and those little round clampy things. I fell. I attempted to grab onto naked form of friend. She tried to save me. I wasn’t saved.

So now I have a dramatic sauna injury consisting of a very swollen foot and very hurt pride and very cursing myself as this could put pay to my tango career that was looking so very promising.

Luckily one of the naked bodies (and the very person responsible for high bench design fault) was a casualty nurse in another lifetime (prior to becoming sauna builder). I showed him my foot. He said I would live and offered me a beer. NHS training is a wonderful thing.

Red Letter Day – or How I Won for the First Time Ever

Yesterday was a red-letter day.

I just Googled that to find out why it was thus called:

"We wryte yet in oure kalenders the hyghe festes wyth rede lettres of coloure of purpre."

Which is a tad confusing. So perhaps it was a purple letter day. But a day of festival and celebration none the less. And June 3 will be forever thus write in the scriptures and kalenders of Aardarkism (which I have yet to write), (but at least there is now a hyghe feste)

And why such cause for celebration and hyghe feste? I won my first ever argument with the Beloved. This is what happened:

We were awarded M&S vouchers for the great good deed of renewing our car insurance. £25 each. A haul if there ever was one in these days of financial pecuniary and lack of decent attire with which to attire ourselves.

Beloved: ‘I’m off to M&S to spend this voucher which is burning a hole in my holey pocket.’ He was attired in a spectacularly holey pair of jeans.

Me: ‘They don’t have anything nice in M&S for men.’ The subtext here being fairly obvious to one as used to reading between lines as the Beloved.

Beloved: ‘I need new jeans.’ Indicating the aforementioned garment, or rather the large expanse of hairy leg that was revealed by the aforementioned garment.

Me: ‘You waste your time and voucher buying jeans from M&S. They have nice skirts though, but they cost more than £25.’ Subtext galore.

Beloved: ‘I need new jeans.’

Me: ‘Try ASDA’

Beloved: ‘Ok then, let’s spend all the M&S vouchers on something for you.’

Essentially, then, the bottom dropped out of my world. I felt very like one of those cartoon characters who has just run off the side of a cliff only to look down and discover that there is no longer anything of a substantial nature under their feet/paws/whatever passes for their lower limbs.

This had never happened to me before. I barely understood the phrase ‘Ok then,’ when arriving out of the lips of the Beloved. I searched his countenance for the usual signs of sarcasm. I poked him to ensure that he was actually real. I asked him a few tricky questions to ensure he hadn’t been replaced by an alien.

So, we went to the great emporium and bought an expensive and particularly gorgeous skirt. Which I will now wear on all hyghe festes that come my way.

I think he is probably ill. But I don’t like to mention it. Because he might agree. And that would be proof of serious illness, if not something fatal.

I am still in shock.

My Birthday Night Out

It was my birthday. It happens to me. Every year. Without fail. Come rain or shine. And it’s usually rain.

It can be a bit depressing, getting older. But I was saved from feeling old by spending the evening with people a lot older than me. This is what happened:

I was going to have a party. But then didn’t invite anyone. So that didn’t work. At all.

The physicist came to my rescue.

‘There’s a Beach Boys tribute band on in the golf club.’ She works as a waitress at the aforementioned establishment. Physicists have to get their money from somewhere as experiments with custard don’t pay as well as they used to.

‘I’ll smuggle you in. You can dance.’

‘Hoooray!’ (that was me that said that)

The beloved and I arrive at the back door covered in an invisibility cloak borrowed from the local Potter fan club. We are duly smuggled in. The entire audience was made up of people over the age that I have now reached.

‘Hoooray!’ (that was me again)

The band is APPAULING. Hilariously so. I dance and try not to laugh at the terrible singing and the attempts at harmony. I find myself grinning inanely at the lead singer. Or should I say the person fronting the band who is making some noises into the microphone.

He grins back.

I grin back.

He thinks I fancy him.

I don’t. I’m still trying not to laugh.

He fancies me because I’m dancing Reggaeton to old Beach Boy songs. It is very sexy.

We both thoroughly enjoy ourselves.

All the other people are dancing proper old-fashioned dancing.

The band, although supposed to be a Beach Boys tribute band, have run out of Beach Boys songs to play and revert to the Bay City Rollers. Or perhaps they have come to the realisation that they are incapable of Beach Boys harmonies and have sunk to the lowest common denominator of the pop world. They are still APPAULING.

I’m still grinning and dancing Reggaeton. It is very sexy.

The beloved has failed to notice how sexy I am.

The band finishes and, Cinderella-like, so as not to blow the physicists’ cover, we disappear into the night.

The lead singer is very sad and misses me and gives up being in the Beach Boys tribute band in favour of a job as a lighthouse keeper where no one can hear him sing.

I made up that last bit.