Gardening on the Moon ( GOTM )

Written by Jeff

Non-GOTM pictures credited by hover notes – move cursor over image

Suddenly…crutches

Approaching my mid-60’s, I am trying to take all the necessary steps to ward of the infirmities of aging. I have a very healthy low-fat diet. I don’t eat candy, ice cream, sugared items, etc. except on Saturdays when I do treat myself. I also do some strength and cardio-vascular exercises. My health has basically been very good. The one problem is that my LDL isn’t as low as it should be and my HDL isn’t as high as my doctors would like. My total cholesterol is very good and all other heart indicators have been positive.

I was determined to do even more exercise to address the HDL/LDL issue so I added five extra minutes to my cardio routine which found me jogging two of the thirty minutes when heretofore I had just been walking vigorously. The last minute before cool-down, I really try to jog as hard as I can to get my heart rate up there. And so it was that Sunday morning just before the NFL playoffs when I headed out on a wonderful winter day in Cave Creek, AZ. The jog was absolutely fine. I was in the last seconds of the last jogged minute when I put forth a burst and in my eagerness, my foot went too near the edge of the road and hit the desert several inches below. I stumbled a bit and almost caught myself, but then there I was – on the ground trying to figure what had happened. The first thing I checked was my hip which was fine. My legs, arms and head were fine as well. My foot was numb, but I figured it was just a bad twist. What is a 60-something like me doing out here laying on the ground? I quickly scanned the area to see how embarrassed I should be. Nobody was outside; good!

I hobbled the twenty feet or so to the garage and then made my way inside where I calmly explained to my wife what happened. I sat myself down in my easychair, we took a good look at my swollen foot which, by this time, was vying for a place in to the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade as a balloon. My wife is an RN so immediately, the foot was elevated, the icepacks were dutifully applied and I was carving a space in my favorite spot on the couch to watch the afternoon games. In actuality, my foot didn’t hurt too much. It was numb and swollen, but the pain was only moderate and after all, I had some good playoff games to watch. I could still hobble around so all-in-all I didn’t feel too pessimistic.

Monday morning when I tried to get out of bed, I knew I was in trouble. The pain in my right foot was much worse. I couldn’t put significant weight on it so off we went to visit my primary care physician who took one look and said: “I would be very surprised if it isn’t broken.” He suggested seeing a podiatrist so off we went to the next doctor’s office. Sure enough, the fifth metatarsal was broken only a short distance from a nearby tendon. I was very lucky at this point that there was no tendon involvement. I was fitted with a walking air cast (Finally, Air Jordan at 60 plus). My life was inconvenienced, but I had a special driving shoe and I didn’t have to sleep with the air cast. All seemed on-track.

I was waiting for early spring all year because that is planting season in the Sonoran Desert. I had seeds to start, roses to groom and things that had to be maintained in the garden. I knew I would be delayed with some of this, but at least it would get done on time. I could also supervise the installation of rain gutters in the courtyard and the installation of the new door in the casita. Things would be OK.

My day-to-day life with the air cast was fairly routine. There wasn’t much that I had to do differently or forget altogether. At the two-week mark, the doctor seemed satisfied with the progress and asked to see me in three weeks. As we headed back to the podiatrist’s office for my week five check up, I thought this would be just another episodic check and perhaps this would be the end of it. I wasn’t prepared for the doctor to take a look at the x-ray and point to a space at the base of the metatarsal that was a triangular gap as well as less than perfect mending of the upper part of the bone. This was disheartening, but even more problematic was the remedy he seemed to be offering the following week when he suggested we take another look and if things haven’t improved, we would “manipulate” the bone back into place. This is the code they use for injecting a numbing substance into the foot and breaking the bone again so it can be realigned. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that I would then be back to square one. So when I was anticipating being out of my walking boot in four to six weeks, I would need another four to six weeks. I left the office very disappointed.

Read A Broken Bone in the Desert – Part II

Gardening on the Moon, www.gardeningonthemoon.com, originally published this post