I went to the orthopedic surgeon this week to have a conversation about my ankle. It’s been not quite two years since I broke it, but I still have a lot of referral pain (which means if I bang my ankle on something, pain shoots in various parts of my foot), and the top of my foot and some of my toes have very little feeling. It’s pretty sturdy in other ways: I can walk for miles and miles now, though I’d prefer not to jump up and down on it. But I have these extremely painful quirks that bother me constantly, and I was almost one hundred percent certain it was because I still had eight pins and a plate in my ankle. There was also a possibility that my ankle had just healed in a totally crazy way, and that’s why I have such weird pain. But how would I ever know if I didn’t ask?
I am not ashamed to tell you that when that doctor told me that my ankle was healed perfectly and it was most likely that plate in my ankle, and that he could take it out and make it go away, I started to cry a little bit. I have had so much wrapped up in this ankle emotionally. The whole experience was the end and the beginning for so many things for me. Two months without regular sunlight and conversation, two months of pain and discomfort, two months of painkillers. But also two months without drinking, and two months of reading everything in sight. Two months of checking my bullshit and being grateful for the relationships I had that were still intact after the worst breakup of my life, which had been accompanied by some not-very-nice behavior on my part.
I’ve had a strange relationship (perhaps attachment?) to that lingering pain. It made me feel like I was going to be punished in a very tiny way for the rest of my life. That I had fucked myself up, because I had fucked up, and I would be reminded of it, daily, forever, even if it was only slightly perceptible. Sometimes I would massage my ankle just to see if it were still there.
Yes, it’s still there. Yes, you still kind of suck.
But it was the plate! Man-made pain. I had to have that pain for a while, while the ankle healed, but as it turns out its removal is long overdue. So this fall I’m having surgery. My mom will come and take care of me once again, though I’ve promised her I will be on much better behavior. And this time I’ll be in an apartment with big windows and lots of light and more friends to come and visit me, and I’ll be all better in three weeks instead of eight. And I’ll be way happier in general because when it’s all over, it’s really over.
