navigate:
Wednesday 2004-11-17 - Amsterdam, the Netherlands
So has it healed now?
Today is the big day - back to the hospital here3 in Amsterdam. I’m very optimistic after last Sunday’s experience. For some reason it’s extremely crowded today at the surgical department, so I have to wait for a long time. At last I can talk to the surgeon himself, and I tell him it feels a lot better now, and how I walked for hours last Sunday. He sends me back to radiology again, for a new X-ray, then back here.
Another long wait … then he calls me into his office to look at the X-ray. Good news and bad news: the good news is that it’s now “fixed” at one side of the bone. The bad new is that not only is there still a gap at the other side, but that some osteoporosis has set in in my foot: “it looks like a foot of a bedridden patient,” he tells me. It turns out I’ve been too careful, and actually haven’t put enough weight on it! And if it breaks again, he’ll want to operate, he adds. Darn — if only that assistant two months ago had told me to ignore it when it hurts and walk anyway… I’m getting orders now to put full weight on it: give it six weeks, then I should be in the clear. No new appointment; but of course I can make one if it doesn’t feel good by the start of next year. But with the half-bad news, my good mood has disappeared. Knowing that the prospect of an operation still hasn’t gone doesn’t help.
Suddenly walking feels tricky again. On the one hand I’m very aware again that it hasn’t healed completely, and — especially with that osteoporosis — there is a real risk it’ll break again; and I’m not exactly looking forward to an operation with the associated risks. But on the other hand I have to walk on it now, or it won’t heal. So, OK. I walk home from hospital instead of taking the tram, stopping along the way for a tasty Turkish lamacun to cheer myself up a little and have a rest at the same time.
