A post card from an angry toe

Dear readers:

Here’s a funny story.

Yesterday, I had surgery on my foot to stick a pin in my toe and pull a pretty badly fractured bone together. I had to go under stupid general anesthesia for the whole thing and spend the better part of the day at the hospital getting prepped, sliced and diced, and then recovering.

Right before the nurses finally wheeled me out to my mom’s car, I asked if someone would go over my discharge information with me, since I hadn’t seen the doctor post-op and I wasn’t sure if he had spoken to my mom (who came up for the weekend to help out). No, no, the nurses assured me, since I am an adult, the doctor will speak to me, not my mom (you know, HIPAA).

The doctor never spoke to me. Fortunately, the nurses were wrong about him not talking to my mom; if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t know how the surgery went.

And I wouldn’t know this funny little piece of information (and by funny, I mean absolutely ridiculous and irritating). Apparently, somehow in the past week, my bone had magically healed itself and no pin was necessary. Which means yesterday, I had my toe peeled apart like a banana for FUN TIMES at the local Hospital for Sadism.

At least I have the comforting knowledge that some med student perhaps had the opportunity to watch and learn why x-ray machines are our friends. And could maybe be used before (and in my case instead of) opening up a body part to see the bone directly.

Yours (in a clunky shoe, whilst hobbling around on crutches on a foot that positively hates me right now),
Correspondent E