Hip Hip Hooray!

(Just a little point of irony: Just as I was finishing the post above, I realized I was listening to the song Thunder, by Boys Like Girls. Haha.)

Tuesday morning:
I awoke on the cot in Witchita. For a while I lay half awake, half asleep, and half listening to the talk in the kitchen. After a while, I realized I should probably get up. After all, there was coffee just waiting for me in the other room. I half took off my covers so that I may roll over and look at the floor. My crutches, Doppleganger, were laying there, quite innocently, in the little aisle between my cot and the bed. And then I half smiled. Because today was the day that I could stand without them. So I stood up. Going down the hallway, I half clutched the walls, at least as far as it is possible to clutch walls, because I was so unsteady. But hey! I was walking! Okay, half walking. Limping in fact. But I walked into the kitchen, where I was received with joy at my new found freedom. And then I limped over to my coffee. After my coffee, I can stop half doing things, and actually do them. But the limp remained. I think I'm uneven, which is really weird. And I move really slow. But Tuesday, I just walked around just to feel it. It felt so good.

YAY!!!!!!!

Ditching crutches, yeah

On that Tuesday morning, yeah

It felt so good, yeah

Becoming Helen Hunt

For (half of) spring break, I went to Witchita, Kansas. That's where my Grandparents on my mother's side live. Waiting for us were mis tios, my uncles and aunts on that side. Along with my cousin. Witchita hadn't had any wet weather in a couple months, so it was quite due by the time we were rolling in. On this trip, I drove quite a bit. The ten hour trip was divided about 40/60 between my mother and I. On the way into Wichita, I was driving. To the northwest of us (I think), storm clouds were brewing, with occasional bursts of bright thunder looking like scribbles coming out of those dark clouds. Of course, I just thought We would never quite hit that mass of darkness and if we did, it wouldn't really affect us, right? It would just be some rain. Wrong. Coming straight toward Wichita was a tornado.



...or at least the possibility of one. My grandfather called us to warn us. Suddenly, every flash of lightening frightened the hooey out of me. My eyes opened wider and my hands gripped the wheel just a little tighter. As we entered the city, th storm was right above us, even though they had called off the tornado warning. Gack. I really did feel like Helen Hunt. But we survived it! I spent a lovely weekend+ with my family. I even got to go shooting for the first time. I got to shoot Grandpa's legendary pearl handled pistol! As anyone could guess if they just hung out around me for a while, my aim was definitely not static. My shots were all over the board, or paper, rather. But I got a wicked -sorry- filthy bullseye. That's the word with the new connotation that Uncle Joe taught me. Yes, I shot a bullseye. I shot a rifle and a .357 along with the pistol. Unfortunately, the .357 shares something with the lovely tornado lightning, in that they both scared the ness out of me. Wow, that gun packs some punch, like Tang! So let's get down to the part that's actually relevant: my hips. Yay!



~Keep reading for more episodes from Melora's Dysplastic Life at 8/7 Central~

The Allusion of Life (can you find it?)

Points to Melora for keeping her blog updated at a critical time in her progress!

Not.

Sorry. I guess I've meant to update. And now I'm here! The day before I depart to into an undiscovered country. Namely, Witchita.

So what's new? I can walk! Kind of. I am allowed to put 50% of my weight on my left leg. Only several more days now till Tuesday, and then I can put my full weight on it. Right now, I'm hobbling around at school with crutches. And they do have a name! Their name is Dopple/ganger, though it is often difficult to distinguish one from the other. I will admit, I did have help coming up with the genius name Doppleganger. I owe that one to Jasper Fforde, a wonderful writer who writes about...literature. But not in a dry way.

Back to subject!
I have a triumph! I have moved back upstairs to the lighter colored realms. Those of you who have witnessed the happiness of my room know what I am talking about. For those of you who haven't...
My room is a burst of sunshine. The walls are covered with blue, orange, and pink paint, alternately and the walls also slant up at the top. There are even little alcoves that wander off with windows at the end. A pink shag rug adorns the floor while and almost identical blue coverlet reclines on my bed. My bookshelves are stuffed with books which lay haphazard because there isn't enough room. My CDs are in a similar state. In all, my room is an oasis of brightness and happiness and cherrfulness and nicety. And especially since it is smelling like spring outside, my room now smells like nothing is impossible. But then I return to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" as life sometimes feels. But my room is always a reprieve, an escape, to these feelings. So moving back upstairs has been feeling like a kind of heaven for me. I can drive now, by the way. I'm a fairly good driver, so this has been such a lovely thing for me.

By the way, not to damper the feeling, but yes, to damper the feeling, my next surgery is already scheduled for June11. yay.

Hoy es el dia!

Today is the day! In roughly 1 hour I walk into Dr. Guyton's office to see if he deems me worthy of that lovely blessing, walking. A blessing which I will probably take for granted again, but not for a very long while.

'Count your blessings' is all I'm saying.

I'm very excited. I've had a countdown, oddly enough not on here, but other places to this day. Finally, walking. Putting weight on that leg. I get to go upstairs so I won't fail out of my classes. I used to say pre-cal, but since I aced my last test, I'm more concerned with AP English. Anyways, interesting news which calls attention to my bum leg even though it sounds weird: my left thigh grew a half inch! This is good, because it means I'm not atrophying or anything. The pool work has payed off. Possibly the hydrotrack would've been better, but I'm too stinking tall. Alas, my long, impossibly troublesome legs!

Well, there it is: I might be able to soar on 1 1/4 leg in a couple of hours! Wish me luck!

Deviating from the norm

This has really nothing to do with hips. Unless you construe it in some weird, unseemly way. These are about recommendations, you could say.

The first is a recommendation of - drumroll, please - cartoon (ism?). Yes. Me, getting into cartoons. Unlikely, you think. But really, this guy who does them is a friend of my sister. AKA, I don't know him personally. But funny enough, I like most of his work. Especially his space/time continuum comic. The outlay is not very professional (or so I've been told), but I like his stuff.
So here it is!:
http://lewis.comicdish.com/?pageID=56

The other is for creative people, you might say. People who like to get inspired occasionally and would like to have a nice place to do it. It's full of arts and crafts and ideas and ...well....pretty much everything. Here goes!:
http://blog.freepeople.com/

Yay! And yes, this is the third post today. I am breaking records all over the place!

Plans for the future.

Guess what arrived in the mail today!


This did!:

Ok. Not Dr. Gregory House, but his cane did! For several weeks, I shall be needing a cane, and so I ordered this one! Isn't it pretty! I got home and it was just there waiting for me. Aww....
I need to give it a name. Like Elsa, my walker, and Tracy, my wheelchair. Funny enough, I haven't named my crutches, even though I got primer all over them the other day. Now that was a chilly day.

So I know have a cane with flame decals up the bottom! I'm keeping it till I die, pretty much.

It's Free Hug Day, by the way! I posted a piece of paper on myself to day that said "Free Hugs", but I made the H too wide so a lot of people thought it said "Free Mugs" instead. It's funny. I hardly got any hugs at all, except from my close friends during the day. When I came into the band room, everybody hugged me. It was so much fun! If you aren't familiar with the Free Hugs Campaign, watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4&feature=related

Yay!

I have a dream...

...that one day...
Just kidding. To quote MLK Jr. is not the purpose of this post. To relay a dream I had, however, is.

I had a vivid dream the other night. No, it did not concern Goodwill in outer space, but it did concern something with my "situation". Even though there were a whole lot of other things that happened in the dream-something that had to do with a hotel or motel where 1100 Cherry road should be and a lot of....emotion- I still retain the part of my dream that pertains to walking. You see, I was charged with some emotion, and whether that was anger, fear, disappointment, grief, or anything else, I don't know. All I know is that it was a negative emotion. And when I feel like that in real life, I just want to fly away, or more accurately, run. But I never do, in real life.

But in this dream, I did just that. I ran away. I started walking up Cherry Road as hard and as fast as I could, digging my heels into the concrete like I usually do when I'm passionate about something. And then I tried to run. But every time I started to run, my left leg would crumple under me and I would fall to the ground. So I was forced to walk. And then I tried to run again and I still couldn't do it. So I turned around and started back to where I had come from, alternately walking and then falling on my face.

In real life, I have only once or twice encountered that terrible feeling that my body was abandoning me. A couple times when I tried to do something before my surgery, and my left hip fell out from under me. And then in the hospital the few days after my surgery, when my leg wouldn't move. I was exerting a force that would have normall kicked my leg like a can can dancer's, but all the ground I was attaining was a few inches.

I don't know why this terror visited me in my sleep. Some might read this account of a dream and say that it is pathetic and feel sorry for me. Some might read it as a longing to get a way. Some would probably get metaphorical with it. Some might think it is funny, in a light moment with a light telling of the tale. I see it as desperation. I've had dreams like it before, is the funny part. I had a dream where I was walking with a huge tray of fruit-don't ask why, even I don't know- and I suddenly remembered in the middle that I was quasi-disabled, so I would start limping in the middle of the dream. Then I gave it up and started walking normal.

Food for subconcious thought.

By the way, anyone, from my sister to Mrs. Pinkerton, to any other friends who are not commenting, are free to comment. I'm pretty sure I have it opened to all people.