How About Lets Just Talk

Sorry for the suspense regarding my new legs (gosh, “legs” is so much easier than trying and failing to spell “prostheses” – but let me make a quick point. I have legs still. I hate it when people call my legs “stumps.” I find this dehumanizing. True, my legs are much, much shorter than they used to be, but when medical professionals start calling my legs “stumps,” they can easily rationalize touching them in ways that are frankly inappropriate. It is incredibly uncomfortable when Dave thinks it’s okay for him to remove my liners, which encompass all of my legs and reach up to my groin and my butt. I most certainly caught a evil twinkle in my primary outpatient doctor as he grinned and roughly caressed my legs to check… something unspecified. No one asked me if they could call my legs “stumps,” just like no one asked if they could feel me up. They just went ahead and did it. I do accept “residual limb,” though, because that’s a darn accurate phrase, or at least, a decent alternative to “stump.” The point of this paragraph being, thinks have power when they are named, right? Keeping the names right can be important, especially when the doodads named are an integral part of your existence. In this case, “legs” can mean so many things here, and in an effort to get my names right, I sometimes shit a brick over five letter words. Bite me.).

Lets try for a non-parenthetical thought now, huh? Sorry for the suspense regarding my new legs prostheses, but you’re just going to have to deal with it, because I’m still not directly addressing them yet. Snaps.

It’s mostly because I’m too tired, though. I had a scant three hours of sleep last night, and my body demands 12 now. It’s something with the pain and the drugs, I think. The nerve pain, which still persists, responds well to extended periods of sleep. The brain is a strange and excellent device, but I have to leave for rehab before 8am tomorrow. I had the luxery of waiting until 8:20 today.

And ah crap, I just saw a spider out of the corner of my eye. It looks like this. I’m going to bed. But I miss you guys, I really do. I’ll write about why writing has gotten so much harder soon. After you get a low-down on the prostheses, hopefully.

(Someone else who has it worse than I do: this poor kid [warning: somewhat graphic photo of "stump revision" surgery. Looks a bit like mine, though.] ‘Cept, he lives in the backwater country where he got his legs ripped off above the knees by a railroad-based machine. Man.)