Cast

This time around, I was pretty lucky: no plaster cast. Last time, I had a big, heavy, itchy plaster cast up to my knee. It was small enough to slip bootleg jeans over it, but still bulky, still unmanageable, and by the end of the 2 months, completely filthy. When they removed it, my skin was pale, pale, and my calf was jell-o, atrophied and sickly, decorated with spindly leg hairs that hadn't been shaved in weeks. My foot was alarmingly skinny and boney--but healed--and there was two months worth of dead skin sloughing off at the slightest touch. I remember sitting in the shower for at least an hour, scrubbing and scrubbing, shaving and re-shaving, massaging and marveling at the appendage I hardly recognised.

Now I have a walking cast, a big black boot with five thick velcro straps, room enough to wiggle my painted toes. I can take it off when I bathe, when I sleep, when I get home from crutching up from Dupont Circle in the sweltering 90 degree humidity. The heavy support of foam and bandage and long cotton sock feel good on my fragile foot, but not on the rest of my sweating body. I am grateful to not have to scrape off two months of debris, for being able to shave and massage my weakened calf, for the stability of a wide, flat surface that I can balance my left foot on without putting pressure on it.

Crutches chafe under your arms, they make your triceps, pecs, and deltoids sore, sore, sore. After a few weeks of sweaty palms, the handles feel positively grimy. You can't carry anything that doesn't strap on your back. (Although yesterday I did make it home with two pints of Ben and Jerrys in my right hand.) A three-block walk is daunting, and your knee feels heavy and strained from holding your bum foot up.

But at least I don't have a plaster cast.