Small Rant

I’m over it. It’s been one week since surgery and my tolerance for the suboptimal is going down. Cumulative frustration is starting to get the better of me. 

I’m so tired. Why does everything have to be out of reach? Why does everything have to hurt? Why do I have to fight so much for adequate care? I guess the answer is, because you don’t have enough money. Okay, I know, I know. I know I chose this life. But damn, just for now, the smile is crooked.

First there was the lack of nursing care at the cheap hospital. In pain? Need to throw up? Nobody cares, enjoy lying in your bodily fluids.

Then there was the terrible “physical therapy” provided before discharge. The nurse gave me a new set of crutches, adjusted for someone five inches taller than me, and suggested that I do exercises which will stretch my ligament graft and result in me needing further surgery. 

Then I went to the hospital to have my dressing changed for the first time, and they tried to put the old dirty bandages back on my leg. Apparently there’s an extra charge if you want clean bandages after a wound cleaning. So the next time I went to a different, fancier hospital, and the nurse thoroughly bandaged my ankle three times. There is nothing wrong with my ankle, but there are three holes and seven stitches in my knee. It’s kind of hard to miss, but okay. 

At the second, fancier hospital, they offered to push me a wheelchair, which I thought would be great since I’d started getting blisters from the crutches. However, after my injured leg had been run into walls, lift doors, counters and people, I gave up and went back to hobbling around on the crutches. At least this way I can protect my leg.

Ever since the surgery I’ve been asking the doctors and nurses, what exercises can I do? How can I protect my graft? What movements should I NOT do? And it wasn’t until yesterday that I was finally connected with a rehabilitation doctor who gave me all the information I needed. I am very grateful to now have that information, but really I’m quite upset that it took a week to access the resources I needed to make sure that my recovery was not compromised.

Add to that stabbing pains, muscle cramps plus sheer exhaustion from cumulatively hobbling about 1.5km on crutches across dodgy Vietnamese foot paths yesterday, and I’m just done.

Today, I am not getting out of bed. Fuck it.

Tomorrow, will be a better day.

* * *

On the upside, right now, I do have a nice clean bed to refuse to get out of. It could definitely be worse.