Day 194

An interesting day thus far.


This morning I noticed that my good buddy Toradol was only cutting my pain by about half to two-thirds, not all the way down to "damned near nuthin'." That was odd but hey, tendinitis is a bitch, right?


I went for my "just to be safe rule-out" X-ray and after it was done the X-ray tech weirdly asked me if I could wait in the waiting area for a few minutes "to make sure the doctor sees the films" and then after a while she said I could go ahead and leave "but you're going to be in the building today, right?" That was odd too...but I forgot all about it once I got back to my office.


After a meeting I went to the ZOO of a surgical clinic where I learned that "orthopedic boot" is code for "removable walking cast" and shortly thereafter learned that the freaking thing made it hurt -far- worse than nothing at all.  I wore it for about ten minutes till I could get back down to my office and take it off with thoughts of stopping at the drugstore for a good old-fashioned ACE wrap or some kind of elastic brace and I was mad my Toradol seemed to have worn all the way off a little before its six-hour mark.  I was in the middle of a whiny email rant to a friend of mine about the cost in both dollars and aggravation of finding out I had the same peroneal tendinitis I had diagnosed the day the pain started when the attending from last night called me with X-ray results: Acute fracture of the distal left fibular metadiaphysis. This would be fancy-talk for "freaking broken, is what." 


That explains the lousy pain relief and the weird X-ray tech and the worsening not improving swelling...and also means my family was right to nag me to see someone. Pretty clearly reinforces "that's nuts, Mom" regarding my worrying about being thought a whiner or a baby....the doctor saod she was fooled and apologized not once but twice for the misdiagnosis! Obviously growing up with a crazylady whose best crazys involved sickness of varying kinds has totally warped my perspective, subsequent training notwithstanding.  Useful life lesson there.


Another useful life lesson: when the PrimeCare scheduler put me through to the Orthopedics scheduler I couldn't get an appointment till late Monday afternoon which probably wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things but was psychologically bothersome - it seemed wrong for my own healthcare system to say "now that we know it's broken it's still okay to walk on it another 4.5 days."  In an exceedingly rare burst of RHIP (rank hath its privilege) I had my secretary, who used to work in surgical scheduling, play the Insider card to move up the appointment to 10:15 tomorrow morning...and I don't even feel guilty about it.

-Much later-

It was a rough evening. Two days of poking and prodding plus that awful pain-inducing orthopedic boot caught up with me as I was getting dinner. It was like I hadn't even taken the damned Toradol and I couldn't get to the couch fast enough. Once there I couldn't find a position,  even lying down, that didn't hurt at least a little. Was a weepy angry whiny self pitying mess for a while but I remembered "reach out; don't isolate" and texting with family helped. Eventually the swelling went down enuogh that I was merely uncomfortable and not completely miserable. The pisser is that I didn't DO anything to it. No fall, no twist, not even stepping on a rock. Will probably have to get a bone density scan because "stress fracture at just barely 50" is considered abnormal. Especially with no actual injury. Freaking fibula just decided to break itself for no good reason.

Didn't want a drink through any of it so that was good.