That's not a Toe; it's a Carrot!

I know I’ve been slacking off on the whole “blogging every day” thing. Ever since Savannah’s surgery two weeks ago, I’ve been getting up early to drive her to school. Oh yeah, I let Austin come along too. Although it would be pretty fun to make him run alongside the van as I speed up and then slow down as if to let him in, only to speed up again as he reaches the door, all while laughing maniacally. I’m really not inherently evil, but I figure this would be good payback for all the bruises on my arm thanks to the larger than average VW Beetle population around here and Austin’s need to punch me every time he sees one.

Anyway, getting up so early is doing me in. I’m drinking coffee and Coke nonstop. I hook up an IV drip of sugar-frosted caffeine around 3:00 every day. But still, when 11:00 PM rolls around, my brain turns off, my eyes glaze over, and I usually drool a bit. Charming, I know. I’m only getting up about an hour earlier than usual, yet I’m passing out asleep nearly four hours earlier. How is this possible?


I tried exercising because people say that gives you energy. People lie. Exercising makes you tired. And sore. And very angry at thin people who preach the merits of exercise. I tried taking a vitamin B supplement. It didn’t give me more energy, but it did turn my pee a pretty neon yellow which made me wonder, for several days, if I had some exotic pee disease.

I truly don’t understand how morning people survive. I feel tired and out-of-it all day. I firmly believe people are programmed as morning or night people and it’s just wrong and cruel to take them out of their natural element. It makes us all floopy. And some people would contend it makes us not-so-pleasant to be around as well. Ahem.

Back to Savannah’s knee and my reason for getting up with the stupid birds.

Yesterday, we met with Savannah’s surgeon, and his partner whose specialty is knee reconstruction. She needs to be on crutches with no weight bearing for at least another four weeks at which point she’ll have another post-op check. We have a choice for her treatment plan. She can go along, letting her knee heal, and take her chances that she’ll be pain-free despite the sizeable divot in her knee. Or she can opt to have surgery where a matching piece of cadaver cartilage will be screwed into the hole in her knee. However, the odds of this surgery being successful with the donor cartilage adhering to Savannah’s knee isn’t much higher than 50%. And if it doesn’t work, she’ll need yet another surgery to remove the loose piece again. Since trying to screw her own, live, loose piece of cartilage on last year didn’t work, I don’t feel too optimistic that screwing on a dead piece of cadaver cartilage would work. And either choice we make comes with a good chance she’ll develop arthritis in that knee. Overall, it was discouraging. I feel awful for Savannah who is stuck on crutches for several more weeks, and I feel even worse that there isn’t a magic cure for her.  I’m afraid she won’t be able to compete in her sports and that she’ll have pain and problems with that knee forever.

Although she almost managed to get herself a wheelchair for the next few weeks when she dropped a knife on her right foot and sliced her toe tonight.  It hadn’t stopped bleeding after half an hour, so I drove her to the ER, thinking she might need stitches. When we pulled into the parking lot, it finally stopped, so I just stuck a butterfly followed by a Phineas and Ferb bandage on it.  It could have been worse. The knife could have severed her toe and I could have messed up and instead of bringing her toe to the hospital to be reattached, I could’ve brought a carrot. (I may watch a little too much Friends.)