Monday, June 09, 2008

I’m Healed!

Today was my last appointment -- and best -- appointment to check on how well broken leg has healed. And it was nothing but good news -- a wonderful, and often rare, occurrence for someone who lives in this unreliable body!

The whole experience started out better than ever before -- we actually got called into the exam room only 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment time. For this doctor, that is nothing short of light speed relative to our past experiences -- we’ve never made it out of the waiting room in under an hour, even when we were one of the first appointments of the day. It’s nice to know that the doctor takes his time with every patient, but you’d think they’d be able to schedule to better accommodate that.

Of course, as soon as I was called in I was shuffled into their teeny, tiny x-ray room for films. Usually getting x-rays is torture for me and the tech due to the limitations on how my leg can move and the fact that the films need to be shot from my chair. But the tech at this office is a creative genius. So getting x-rays taken at this office can even be fun. Today was definitely a good time because they were training a new x-ray tech, and I *love* being a teaching tool -- if someone can survive working with me, they can cope with darn near anything. I’m pleased to say that not only did the new guy cope, he nailed both films on his first try. And he was fun. I can’t ask for much more.

The x-rays look fantastic. The bones have continued to knit since my cast came off six weeks ago. You can barely see the original fracture lines, and the new bone looks nice and solid, instead of the fluffy little wisps that appeared on the first x-ray, taken only four weeks after I broke it.

The best part of the appointment, though, was getting the news from my doctor that I had healed extraordinarily well for any patient, and beyond his wildest expectations for a wheelchair user with osteoporosis. The bones have aligned perfectly on one of the two planes, and the alignment is only five percent out of whack on the others -- something he never thought possible without putting my leg in a full cast (which is what should have been done if he treated me by the book and thereby left me incapacitated), let alone without the surgery he was certain I needed. He even admitted that I was doing everything right for my bones with diet and whatnot, and that I shouldn’t change a thing. That, my friends, felt good, and I cannot tell you how glad I am that I refused the surgery.

So as of today, I can officially declare my broken tibia and fibula part of my past. Hallelujah -- I am healed!

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