Splat! Part 3

It was Thursday morning, and I awoke in my trusty-but-now-hated chair to the prospect of working from home for an entire day. Since this seemed like an awfully daunting task, I decided to put it off for a while and instead make coffee. Of course, this was much easier said than done. (Believe me, I first tried saying, “coffee, make thyself and then delivery thyself to me!” but it didn’t work.) Getting out of my chair, crutching over to the kitchen, and making a pot turned out to be an endeavor in itself, but I then realized I had to somehow carry my full cup back to my chair with both of my arms occupied by crutch duty.

My solution was less than elegant. I won’t go into any details, but I will say that it employed two stools as portable islands and took so much time that when I finally arrived at my chair, the coffee had grown cold. Sigh.

Luckily, working from home on my laptop turned out to be not nearly as bad as I thought, mainly because I was able to accomplish useful things, which was the exact opposite of life at home on crutches. Still, it was just my job, so when quitting time rolled around, I was ready to call it a day. I’d been sitting in my chair for basically nine straight hours, and it was time for a break in the monotony!! I happily closed my laptop with a satisfying 'click.' I could now do anything I wanted!! Of course, since I could still barely move around, “anything” basically meant sitting around in the same chair with my legs elevated for another six or so hours before it would be time to fall asleep in that very same chair!! Hooray!!! I mean, sigh.

I also worked from home on Friday, and as I logged off that afternoon, I swore to myself I’d make it into the office on Monday, even if I had to have my chair – with me strapped into it wearing a crash helmet – airlifted there. Luckily, I was seeing a bit of progress in terms of my mobility, as my crutching around was getting somewhat easier. My ultimate goal was to be walking by Monday, but I realized that might be overly-ambitious.

The first day of the weekend went well – I learned how to use the vacuum cleaner while on crutches – and by Sunday morning I discovered I could now move around with just a single crutch! This happily meant that carrying massive amounts of comfort food from my kitchen to my chair had just gotten exponentially easier. I celebrated by venturing out into the real world to restock at a grocery store. Predictably, I stressed out about looking foolish while hobbling around in public, not to mention falling over and having an entire display of canned goods topple down on top of me. Luckily, everything went well, and that night I was even able to sleep in my bed upstairs! (For the record, I did have to fight back the urge to light my chair on fire, as a sort of both a spiritual cleansing and a symbolic gesture of moving forward.)

I went into work on Monday with my single crutch, where I discovered that my helpful co-workers had been busy. Surrounding my desk was a living room chair, a walker – complete with the much-dreaded tennis balls – and a lamp. I could now recreate my Work From La-Z Boy experience of the previous week! Oh, and our team mascot – a plastic skeleton named Mr. Chill ‘n’ Bones – was also sitting in the living room chair with his feet up, complete with a neck brace and bandages on his left knee and right ankle. How thoughtful and caring! Showing that I was a good sport, I threw the walker across the room and said a few choice words, such as “I”, “hate”, “you”, and “all,” and then settled into my office chair to get to work. As the day progressed, however, I began to feel bad for being annoyed at the prank, and eventually I began to appreciate the thought and humor put into it, to the point of switching on the lamp and stopping in my attempts to swipe at people with my crutch as they walked by.

On Tuesday I again came into the office on one crutch, but I soon discovered I could hobble around without it, which was a major victory. (I’ve never been more proud of walking without assistance to the restroom.) On Wednesday I didn’t even bring the crutch in, and on Thursday it felt like things were finally getting back to normal. While still far from being healed, it felt like real progress was being made! I hadn’t realized how much I enjoyed going to work and interacting with my co-workers, and it really helped to lift my spirits and return a sense of normalcy to my life. Of course, it was on that same Thursday when it was announced that we would all be working from home indefinitely because of stupid COVID-19. Sigh.

Oh, and I also had my MRI scheduled for Friday, which was really beginning to stress me out. But that’s another story.