Colouring and a not so pretty picture

Unfortunately, the pain that I experienced yesterday did not go away as I hoped it would. Although the nerve pain and discomfort I was having have mostly gone away, my pin sites continue to hurt and sting. On top of that, it looks like some of the pin sites are red and puffy, and the redness seems to have spread along the scar left by my latest surgery (last November). Like many times in the past decade, I am nervous about every sting and throb and am therefore keeping a close eye on my leg. I don't want to be too easy going only to deal with a much larger problem later one. On the other hand, perhaps there is nothing to worry about at all. And that is what bone infections and external fixators due to you - you worry all the time about the slightest things; as hopeful as you get that everything will be okay, there is always that little thought nudging you: "What if the infection is back?"

Despite the pain in my leg, my day started off on a good note. I got a lovely card from my opa's sister in law. It has taken pride of place on my bookshelf.

To counteract my worries about my leg, I have spent a quiet day colouring, which is something I find quite soothing. Last fall I bought a book of postcards by Johanna Basford, the artist behind the ever popular Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest colouring books. There is so much detail in her artwork that the amount of concentration necessary to colour within the lines trumps most of my thoughts about my leg. This is good! Plus, I have some news things to decorate my room with!

Perhaps I will spend the next however many months colouring while I wait for my bone to regrow and my fixator to come off. I have a good selection of colouring books: Johanna Bradford's Secret Garden, Enchanted Forest, Lost Ocan, Enchanted Forest postcards and Secrete Garden Calender; Millie Marotta's Tropical World; an anatomy colouring book by Kaplan; Magic Garden: Fantastic Flowers to Colour; a bird colouring book; and several magazines with flowers and mandalas. Obviously, when it comes to colouring books I am well stocked; between colouring, cross stitching and reading (and perhaps some Latin review), I will have plenty to do over the coming months!

Rereading what I wrote, I make it sound as everything is a-ok, as if there is nothing to worry about and that I can casually sit at home doing nothing but colour for the foreseeable future. If I am honest with my self, and everyone reading this, it is not okay. But more than no okay. It sucks and it's scary and horrible. There is so much worry and even a touch of desperation. I need the fixator/distraction osteogenesis thing to work properly because I don't know how I could keep on coping if things didn't work. There is an unspoken air hanging around the house - the thought that this could not work and then I would be in an even worse scenerio. You start thinking about medical thing that you shouldn't. Obviously we all hope for the best but a decade of things going wrong greatly influences how we approach things now. My mum and I have discussed this, but choose for the most part to let it be. We say that things are okay, that I am okay, but we know that is not one-hundred percent true. But we go with it anyways, because there is little we can do to make it better. We just watch the x-rays and wait, silently hoping that everything works out in the end.

I thought I should mention this as I sit her talking about how much fun it is to sit at home colouring all day. I don't want to give people a wrong impression of the situation. This is not a relaxing holiday. I have doctor's appointments and x-rays, upon which so much is riding. There are metal pins sticking out of my shin, posing a constant risk for infection. I can't wear pants and it is winter (in Canada!). Both sitting comofrtably in the daytime and sleeping are difficult. There is pain and discomfort, worry and fear, stress... and if possible I would be anywhere and doing anything other than I am doing now. As a twenty three year old, an adult, with a university degree and half way into a nursing diploma, I dreamed of so much more at this stage of my life.

So I am sitting at home colouring and cross stitching, binge watching Netflix or reading. I try to relax, quiet thoughts about the future and forget the metal scaffolding attached to my leg. It plain old sucks. Things like colouring and displaying the cards I get make things a bit more fun and do-able. That is how I get through this, and it will be worth is when I can walk again!