Free at Last

This picture was taken just after I put a shoe on my right foot for the first time since October 13th. Hallelujah, I'm out of the boot!

I went for one last round of x-rays on Friday and the fracture had healed so well that the doctor told me that staying in the boot was no longer necessary and would even be detrimental, since it limits the range of motion of my foot as it continues to heal. I was soooooo ready to get out of that boot for so many reasons. It's designers obviously didn't have a Michigan winter in mind when they crafted that open-toe look, and despite a wool sock, fleece booty, and plastic bag wrapped around it, my foot was still getting soaked everyday. And my foot was still aching at the end of the day, but it seemed like it more due to the boot that the fracture.

My unbooted foot made its debut at Maggie's flute recital on Friday night. It felt so strange and small to have a shoe on my right foot, and I had no feel for walking on it at all. You see, the boot has a rounded heel and to walk in it you step on the heel and it rolls forward to the toe. So at the recital I was stepping onto the heel and trying to roll my foot forward with marginally successful results. Plus the boot made my right leg an inch or so taller than my other leg, so I had gotten used to keeping my knee slightly bent at an odd angle and it took me a while to get used to straightening out my leg in stride. Needless to say I was getting plenty of weird looks from strangers and laughs from my (so-called) friends (it's okay, I'm over it now). It looked something like this:



But I've been out of the boot for three full days now and I'm walking normally again, and more importantly, pain-free. Even though I'm not in the boot, I've still got a fracture in my metatarsal, so I've got to take it easy for several weeks.

Nevertheless, I can't believe how well this whole broken bone experience has gone. When I first heard the doctor say the word "broken" I thought that my life would be completely upended and I would be out of commission for quite a while. Yet here I am less than two months later and I'm pretty much back to normal again. That's a tremendous blessing.

P.S. - I think it is no mere coincidence that Deron Williams looked like his old, pre-foot injury self on Friday night as the Jazz completely destroyed the Raptors on ESPN. Our foot injuries have somehow been cosmically linked, and I knew that D-Will would have a monster game on the day that I finally got my boot off. I hope that I don't have to suffer/recover from a quad injury so that we can finally get Boozer back.