I finally got in to see the specialist yesterday about my leg. After-hour clinics are basically equipped to evaluate whether you are dying (in which case they send you off immediately to a hospital with real doctors) or not dying (in which case they tell you that you are not dying and give you a referral to see real doctors at a later date). In my case, I was very much not dying, but only in excruciating pain. Which means that they didn’t get my referral until a full three days later, with a total of five days between the time of the injury and actually being seen by the real doctor.

The real doctor, an orthopedist in my case, confirmed that, yes, I had indeed broken my leg. As leg breaks go, if you really have to have one, mine isn’t the bad way to go. The fracture is in the fibula, the thin bone at the outside of the shin involved in stabilizing the ankle. It isn’t a simple break, however, since it spirals around the bone and there is some splintering involved.

The short version of this evaluation is that:

Good news – I get to have a boot, not a cast. Which means I can take it off to wash. For a person with a pathological aversion to being dirty who bathes twice a day, this was very good news.

Bad news – Even though the fibula is “not weight-bearing”, I apparently may NOT put any weight on it. Yeah. Scratched my head on that one, too. But in practical terms, this means I can ONLY take the boot off to wash, and it must stay on at all other times. And that I cannot actually walk on my “walking cast”. In fact, in an ideal world, I should be laying down “with my shin above my knee and my knee above my heart” when I am not answering the call of nature.

Riiiiiigggghhhht. I can see myself doing THAT for four weeks.

In the real world, the world I can actually live and work in, this translates to: “No walking except on crutches, no driving, and oh-by-the-way those waterpark season passes? Useless.”

I do not do helpless well. I must be the world’s shittiest patient. I see dishes on the sink or my son’s toys littering the floor and I go almost completely spastic with the need to clean them up. I do not like to ask my coworkers to fill my water bottle or get my document off the printer. I would rather put blisters under my arms from the crutches or become a slave to my office chair. I am becoming a contortionist from the complex act of putting my underwear on in the morning around the boot, because I cannot STAND the humiliation of asking for help with that most basic of personal care issues.

I have no doubt that this bone is going to be just fine in a couple of months.

But I may very well be batshit crazy by then.