The origins of Frankenleg

I do a lot of things very well. I'm an excellent cook. I bake a mean loaf of homemade bread. I can craft like nobody's business. And the parties I plan rock. However, one thing I am most definitely not skilled at is walking.

Yes, walking.

You'd think after 38 years, 37 of which have been spent in a (mostly) upright position, I'd have gotten this whole walking thing under control. Well, you'd be wrong. For some odd reason, I can't seem to make it from Point A to Point B without injuring myself on a regular basis.

Some examples of my possibly-world-record-breaking-klutziness:

Four years ago, I was sitting on the side of the bathtub, running water for a bath. There was a rubber duck in there, and as I reached behind me to get it out, I somehow managed to fall into the tub and break my tailbone. That took over a year to finally heal completely. Nothing like not being able to sit without being in excruciating pain to put you in a cheerful mood.

Six months after the destruction of my coccyx, I severely sprained my right ankle. I was getting a box out of the attic, and as I backed down the attic steps (those horrible, narrow, ridiculously steep, evil things), I mistakenly thought I was on the bottom step and stepped down, only to find that I was TWO steps up. So instead of the six-inch gap between the step and the floor, there was an eighteen-inch gap. Of course, I lost my balance, came down hard on my ankle, and heard a loud crunching noise as my poor foot finally hit the floor. That one bought me an aircast, crutches, and the inability to wear closed-back shoes for nearly two months. I also now have a weird lump on my Achilles tendon and my foot makes a cool creaking/crunching noise when I move it side to side.

More recently, I sprained my left ankle and scraped the dickens out of my right knee and both hands when I stepped on a large piece of gravel and lost my balance, wiping out right in the middle of Main Street on the way into my daughter's preschool. The ankle swelled to three times its normal size, and turned into a lovely palette of black, blue, purple and green. I've still got scars from the scrapes on my other knee. Oh, and let's not forget the never-ending humiliation of walking into the school, limping, bloody and bruised, all because I STEPPED ON A ROCK.

See? Walking is definitely NOT my strong suit.

I'm sure you're wondering what in the world "Frankenleg" refers to. If you guessed that I have somehow managed to injure myself yet again, you win a Kewpie doll! Four weeks ago, I went to perform the mundane (and normally safe) task of sitting down on my desk chair. For some reason (and I'm still not quite convinced that my darling daughter didn't push the chair for poops and giggles) the chair slid away from my butt and I went crashing to the floor, with my right leg splayed out to the side. No pain in the leg at first, but about four days later, WOWZA! Welcome to Painville, population: Me. I let it go, thinking that it would eventually start to heal. That's been how it worked in the past. Ahhh, not so this time! After more than three weeks of excruciating pain, the inability to walk up steps quicker than a Galapagos tortoise, and no sleep for several nights in a row, I finally went to the doctor. Several x-rays and an orthopedist referral later, I was told that I probably knocked my patella (kneecap) out of place and it's been bouncing around in there like a marble, bruising and causing me pain ever since. My souvenir from what I can only imagine will be an exorbitant set of bills was a ridiculously fancy-and complicated--knee brace. My husband has dubbed it "Frankenleg", because I definitely have a monster-like gait now when I'm wearing it. Sometimes it hurts more when I'm wearing it, but I just keep telling myself that if it didn't hurt, then it wouldn't be working. Sometimes I even believe myself.

Oh well. At least it came in black, which is always slimming, right? Maybe I can get a matching one for the left leg so they'll both look slim and svelte. Or maybe I should shut up now before I jinx myself and end up on the x-ray table yet again...

Poor, painful Frankenleg. I really hope to get rid of it soon!