The summer before my junior year of high school I had surgery to repair the meniscus cartilage in my left knee. It was minorly tragic for some random reasons.
One of those reasons was that when I got home and was obviously still under the influence of some pretty heavy sedation, I walked past Bunner and he said, "Chipper died." (Chipper was my dog at the time and I loved him dearly.) I started crying. I couldn't even function properly.
Another reason was that Match.mom only gave me prescription pain killers the day of the surgery. The next day, she made me switch to Advil. Oh yeah, I'm serious - I had a hip-to-ankle brace on my leg that couldn't be removed, I had to shower sitting on a lawn chair with my left leg stuck out of the tub, and I was on crutches; but Match.mom didn't think the pain warranted prescription medication. (I think secretly she wanted it for herself...)
At the time of the surgery, the house that we lived in was a strange shape and my bedroom was not near the kitchen. Match.mom pretty much set me up in my bedroom for recovery, but when people would come to visit, the kitchen was where they wanted to hang out. So my friends would be in the kitchen hanging out with my family and I would be laying in my bed with a dull pain pulsing through my leg. When I would have enough of that, I would get up and hobble my way to the kitchen and Match.mom would yell at me for not resting.
After a week (maybe two) of the hip-to-ankle brace, I went back to the doctor to get a new adjustable hinge brace that would limit my range of motion as set by the doc.
During this particular time in my life I spent A LOT of time with two of my cousins, Rejuba* and Freckles*. When I say "a lot," I mean it. We were together nearly every minute that we weren't working or in school. And we had some good times!
So, it wasn't odd that when I went to the doctor to get my brace switched, these girls drove me. The surgery took place not long before school started so our plan was to go to the doctor and then to the mall to do a little back-to-school shopping. When we mentioned this to the doc, he recommended that I use a wheelchair to get around the mall. He didn't think that my leg would be ready for walking around, and it was hard to get used to walking with the limited range of motion.
Of course we thought that this was hilarious - and when we got to the mall, the first thing we did was get a wheelchair (or maybe we brought one with us, but I don't know where we would have gotten it.)
Picture this: I'm sitting in a wheelchair, in a dress (because it was hard to get pants/shorts over the previous brace), with my left leg sticking straight out; and Rejuba and Freckles are taking turns pushing me around the mall.
Now, if you know the three of us, or spent any time with us together during this time of our lives, you know that we laughed a lot and didn't always pay attention. This was the case all the way through the mall. We already couldn't stop laughing because we had a wheelchair, and then the two of them would start looking in stores and run my bad leg into things. It was a gong show!
So, the other day I was cleaning out my closet and I found an old picture frame and one of the pictures was of Freckles. She was all done up with lots of makeup and hair spray, wearing a Dallas Cowboys jersey. I immediately started laughing.
As a show of moral support during the time that I had my brace on my knee and couldn't partake in all activities, the three of us spent one night at Rejuba's house, putting makeup on, doing our hair all crazy, and dressing up in really strange clothes - and then holding our own photo shoot.
I am going to have to go through some old pictures and see if I can find more of those...
Hilarious!
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