Stacie's Adventures With Needles

Deja vu all over again

I have been knitting while recovering. I have frogged almost as much as I've knitted due to mistakes, for which I blame my pain meds. But I now have two scarves underway, one the Irish Hiking Scarf and another a Cascades Pastaza twin rib. I'm so proud of my cables! I feel like a big girl now.

Unfortunately, I am in the midst of a reaction to something that was put on my foot after surgery, which happened when I had this surgery on the other foot in '99. At the time, the doctor and I surmised that it was Polysporin ointment, as I react to Neosporin and an eye ointment that is used for infections. But even with the red armband I was fitted with before the procedure, ("Danger, Will Robinson! No topical antibiotic ointments!!") three days into recovery, I am right back in that itchy hell again.

This time, the doc was willing to take off the bandages and scrub off every last bit of the Betadine that had dried thereon, and considering the huge itch factor and no way to scratch it before, I was in heaven as he scrubbed my foot with alcohol on a gauze pad. Finally! I bet he never thought he spent all that time in podiatry school to scrub some middle aged woman's swollen, monstrous looking foot, while she purred and sighed. But I digress.

So since then, I have been given permission to slather it three times a day with a strong cortisone cream, as well as to apply the medicine to a patch that broke out on my back last night. Now the patch is about twice the size it was and is all across my back. The affliction on the foot is moving upward toward my ankle bone.

Did I mention that I've been taking Benadryl every four hours and being a zombie, with still no improvement and actual worsening of the situation?

So it may be time to go for the big guns (or should I say the big scrub brush??) and have a steroid shot. Both sound really perfect right about now!

In other related news, my foot doesn't hurt that much and is healing fine. The swelling is around it but not in the stitches, and I hope it stays that way!

Sorry if this is TMI, I hope you stopped before you got too nauseated!

I'll just sit here and keep knitting and trying NOT to scratch.

On the other side of the surgery

Yep, I am home getting a lot of rest and keeping the foot up. So far the local is still not worn off, ten hours after the surgery, but it is starting to. I feel a little aching in a spot I didn't expect to, so -- ?? I guess I'll take the pain meds religiously (the only kind of religiosity I can manage) and see if it doesn't get too intense.

With all this time to noodle, I have been finding fascinating recommended links on other people's blogs, resulting in several promising patterns and some other nonknitting blogs too. I got to Yarn Harlot's site today and read her long treatise on how hard writing really is, which is some truly inspired writing, of course, by someone we all think of as having no trouble writing easily. Not so--she struggles too. I hope blogging it out of her system will make the task less onerous when she comes back from her book tour. Anyway, check it out if you haven't. I gathered a ton of good quotes on writing (I'm a writing teacher when I'm not momming, wifing, and knitting), both hers and others that people shared in her huge comments section. Wow, to be that famous!

I also found a hilarious link from those comments that I have to share with you. A Stanford professor wrote this piece on a concept he pioneered called Structured Procrastination, and it is quite amusing. Perhaps there is a grain of truth in his explanations and suggestions. But read it with care! He may be quantifying a real system with smaller payoffs, but I'm not sure it will get me where I need to go on the biggies.

I know exactly what Stephanie P-M and the professor are both talking about, though, because this is what I do when I have papers to grade. I have been making progress on it, but I never set real deadlines, even though there is a seemly period of time that should elapse, and no more, before papers are given back to students. I need more accountability I guess. I must develop a bossy persona who tells the lazy-ass me to get those papers done tonight--at least one class period!

I did not knit a stitch today because of pain meds and some general malaise left over from the surgery. But I think it's time to start the Irish Hiker's Scarf tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Oh! A few posts back, when I shared a photo of my gorgeous Lake Tahoe yarn splurge, I got the question what brand was it? It is Noro. And I would use it for the IHS, but I hear that when cabling, the stitches need a solid color yarn I fear, so it will have to wait to turn into something luscious later.