Yesterday I went for my 3rd post-op checkup with the orthopaedic surgeon who put my ankle back together. God bless that man. Before seeing the doc however, you have to register at the main desk of the hospital where they ask you all the usual questions: name, date of birth, health card number, family doctor, primary next of kin. You would usually just sit in the chair and nod your head, while mumbling half incoherent positive responses so that you can speed through this part of the process and have so much fun waiting in the next office to which you are bound.

Not yesterday. A kind smiling woman asked me the primary next of kin question in this way: “I have {insert my husband’s name} as your PNOK, is that correct?” And a simple question like that instantly became a ton of bricks. Like I had never come to the full and complete realization that my husband, related to me by my own choice and NOT by blood, was the most important person in my life. I answered yes and sat there stunned out of the normal comfortable sanctuary of consciously knowing your world and what is in it. Suddenly, I had been dropped into a new one.

See, growing up there was a mantra amongst my nuclear and extended family – Family is all that you have, and they are most important. Only that what you might know as extended family – uncles, aunts, cousins, great-uncles, aunts, second cousins – were considered part of the nucleus to us, and loyalty was number one. Needless to say, blood is very thick in our parts.

But my husband, joined with me in the sacrament of matrimony, is closer than my mother, father, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins. Some part of me, loyal to the end even after all the betrayal, wants to believe in their high moral ground and feels guilty for disagreeing, feels guilty for siding with my husband against them. Heck, siding with myself against them!

But it doesn’t matter. Even if those named above weren’t dead, emotionally distant, half way across the world or power-hungry betrayers, liars and gossipers of the worst sort. Even if they were all the perfect model family, my husband would still be my primary next of kin. Most important. Numbero Uno. I think I understand something that I should have learned a long time ago. I think that is something they should have learned a long time ago.

The relationship between a husband and wife is thicker than blood – it is the foundation of blood.

The Wheel of Time turns and today I found myself staring at this ungodly x-ray of the screws and plates in my leg. Two plates and – from what we can count – nineteen screws!

After such a long wait through registration and imaging at the hospital, the reality of it was overwhelming. An assistant cut off the temporary cast made of gauze and ace bandage around a plastic shell a little too quickly for my taste. Then proceeds to have the nerve to ask me to pick up my own leg out of the decimated wrappings! Lying on a hospital bed and lifting my leg was never so terrifying.

The surgeon did indeed make two incisions to piece my leg bones back together, each at least six inches long. They seemed to be healing well and without infection, but the next torture was to remove the staples. About three dozen in all, and they came out one by one by one. Ouch.

My toe muscles… well the muscles just below the toes actually – like the ones you don’t ever normally know exist – have been aching for awhile now and I couldn’t figure out why. But now ooglling at my foot sans staples and cast, I figured it out. The temporary cast allowed my foot to dangle down a bit, too far actually, into plantar flexion or pointing of the toes and foot. I remember the warning they gave us about that in nursing last semester. The foot naturally relaxes into that position but left to its own devices and unsupported can be detrimental to rehabilitation.

The assistant was as aware of this fact as I was and slowly pressed my foot back into dorsiflexion or pointing the toes and foot back towards the body, keeping it that way as he wrapped my new red-colored plaster cast on.

We had not gotten to see the original x-ray of the break and so asked to see it today, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as this one. You could see a few of the splinters that were once my fibula, but an uneducated eye doesn’t immediately notice what was wrong with the tibia until shown.

When we inquired as to whether the apparatus holding my leg together would come out, they said probably not. I can just hear the bells and whistles going off at the next airport I visit. lol

The doc keeps sneakily lengthening the time I’m to be off my feet. Originally, the day of the surgery he said 6-8 weeks. When I saw him post-op, he said definitely 8 weeks with no weight. Today the tune changed yet again, as he said that it might be 8-10 weeks, depending on the healing process because “its not a usual ankle fracture, by any means.”

Before even seeing this x-ray, my husband had been teasing me with the infamous line from Star Wars referring to Darth Vadar, and we would laugh, but in reality I sort of am “more machine now than man.”

If only it were all an April Fool’s joke…