Reunited

"Reunited and it feeeeeels so goooooood......" Ummmm, not really. Yesterday, dear bloggy friends, I reunited with an old friend. It wasn't my recess buddy in grade school or my BFF from high school. It wasn't my college confidante or one of my sorority sisters (yeah, I was one of those). It was....dun, dun, dunh....The Mart Kart.

Yeah, I know. These things are great, making it possible for the infirm and extremely elderly and handi-capable all to go buy important things like food. And medicine. And their Depends. Well, they're great and wonderful and convenient...until you have to be the one on it.

Let's start with how I became an expert driver of the Mart Kart (yes, that really is the brand name of the cart Wally World uses. (Thanks to Evan, whose young and agile brain is able to store vast amounts of such useless info.) I became an expert while preggers, when I was on either bedrest or modified bedrest, and John would shout out, "Honey, I'm going to the store!" And I would yell, "Oh hells no, I'm COMIN'!" And most times I would just waddle to the car and ride along for some scenery, windows down for some fresh air and sunshine. And sometimes, depending what was needed, I would actually go in. But aside from my team of doctors' orders, I was physically incapable of walking through any store, especially the huge box stores like Wally World, Target, BRU. He would drop me off in front before parking the car, and I would be moving so slow that people passing me on all sides would literally create a breeze effect. Because I had been in bed for months and also because as soon as I tried to stand upright, the contractions would pull my belly so tight that it automatically had me walking stooped over. I would hunch and hobble and waddle my way to the electric scooters and hop on. I had so many misadventures on those damned things and became an expert.

Target's sucked. They had the big bumper thing on the bottom to keep you from getting too close to anything in the store. But this bumper thing is what caused me to crash into everything. It is what put the feat of God in the people working the electronics and how I got the best service as they brought different cameras to me so I could look and decide on one. There was no way they were going to let me get that close to a glass case. This was, of course, the same day I took out an entire rack of newborn clothing, and I am not even going there. Click the link if you want to read about Mach 5 embarrassment like no other. It was also the week before Zach's birth.

And then there was the time I thought for sure that I had been busted by the very one from my practice who finally told me, "No more, Andrea. You are to be on bedrest until you deliver. You're done." (I later 'fessed up and discovered that while he didn't see me that day, that according to him, he has busted many a bedrester that way.)

Or the day someone accused me of being on one out of laziness. Yep, I hate the things.

So here's what went down: I woke up just a couple of hours after falling asleep on Wednesday morning with my left foot filled with this intense ache in very localized places, yet still radiating up my leg, if that makes any sense at all. I honestly thought it was the weather because it was sunny and 70 here one day and literally 34 degrees and cloudy the very next day. And trying to storm on top of that. I have a bit of arthritis in that leg after having ACL surgery in 2003, so I thought maybe it was the beginning of that type of pain. I took some ibuprofen and went back to sleep. It got worse, but I went to work that evening as planned. Within 2 hours of starting work, I had no idea how I was going to make it through the full 12 hours. It was that bad. I did make it until all of my patients had been seen, though, and I handed off my pager to one of the other therapists. I had to make J0hn come and get me, and went home to ice and elevate my foot. Which helped. Until I tried to stand on it again. I ended up in the ER, getting it x-rayed. I felt silly and stupid and was seriously worried that they would think I was drug-seeking because there is nothing visibly wrong with my foot. Nada. Except I have the ugliest feet. Bunions, ingrown toenails, calluses. Because what I do for a living doesn't go hand-in-hand with sandal season. But I got people who knew me. And I turned down the pain shot I was offered and requested an anti-inflammatory injection instead. And they said it is bad tendonitis, that they could see hazy areas of inflammation on the x-ray, and that I may have some underlying stress fractures as well, but I won't know that until it fails to get better. But I am on crutches now. And spent last night drugged up enough that I slept through the entire season finale of Jersey Shore....Erm, I mean another show--a more high-brow show that isn't so embarrassing. Sucky sucky sucky. Because I apparently work too much. (In fact, it was Wednesday and I had already worked 48 hours this week....They may have been on to something!)

And so I am grounded for a couple of days. But Zach needed diapers because I never did manage to make the switch to cloth. And he needed formula. (Completely random tidbit and silver lining in all of this? That last night, I bought either the last or second-to-last bit of infant formula I have to buy for Zach! That crap is so expensive! And I have yet to decide if I am going to use the toddler formulas they make now.) And the fridge was bare here. And so I had to use the damned scooter. Again. And John laughed at me through the entire store, though Zach watched me from his perch in the cart and seemed to be fascinated that Mommy was motorized.

Such is life.