I leave for Los Angeles and Orange Country tomorrow to visit friends and family (thanks to Knitgrrl for the hook-up!) and it couldn’t come at a better time.
After a follow-up oncology appointment I was informed that thanks to the radiation and scar tissue, my leg is pretty much as good as it is ever going to get. I have a horrible peg-leg wooden feeling, it keeps shifting shape, and my knee will never bend past what I can do now. No yoga for me it seems. This is on top of the fact I have to treat it delicate and make sure I’m not clumsy or let things slam into it. The problem I have going up and down stairs and pain it induces will also continue — always. When you have muscle and tissue removed, as well as rearranged and transplanted veins and such, on top of radiation, well, I guess nothing will ever feel, work, or look the same. My legs used to be one of my main assets (can’t tell you how many times even gay men have said they wanted me to wrap my legs around them!), and now that’s been taken from me too. Of course my doctor thinks I’m doing great and it was better than they had hoped it would turn out, but to me it is plain terrible and limiting. There are also other fun repercussions that I won’t get into, but you get the point.
So now I’ve become that person — yes that person — who gives YOU the stink eye when you take the last handicapped parking spot (I swear everyone in Ohio has a handicapped parking permit because they eat too much pie!) and strut out with your able bodied self because you borrowed your mother’s SUV and are a lazy piece of crap that you can’t walk 20 extra feet. I’m also now the jerk that stands there giving you the stink eye when you use the handicapped bathroom stall when others are free. Because yes, I sadly have trouble with normal toilet stalls. So there you go.
I hope someone like Daphne Guinness makes having a walking stick the new accessory. I really hate Edwardian clothing but perhaps that aspect could come back into fashion? Because really the rest is rather awful…
I’ve gotten very good at pointing at things and people with my cane. “You there!” and “What’s all this then?” have also been added to my lexicon. Now I have to practice being even snarkier and completely domineering. By the time I’m an old lady I’ll be as good as Dr. House, or perhaps Charlotte’s mother in “Now Voyager”.
Arty Farty 
“I swear everyone in Ohio has a handicapped parking permit because they eat too much pie!”
That is EXACTLY why. 😉
With that in mind, your cane not only makes an excellent pointing stick, it makes an excellent POKING stick!
I learned recently I can sharpen my rapier with a regular kitchen knife sharpener. How very Addams Family.
Walking sticks indeed! I have one that I use any time my back/neck are wonked, a perfect companion for a lady I say.
Perhaps something stiffer than HH this weekend?
I remember there’s a dive bar in San Clemente that has really strong Gin and Tonics, at least they did when I was in college and dumb enough to drink those.
Honestly, the cane can only make you sexier. You were going to get old at some point anyway, but now when you get old it will be like you are a hot Disney villain.
[…] I am staying off the leg as much as possible (I knew it was fragile, but Jeez) and am prepping for a procedure to have them go in and see what the white dot is. A biopsy-like thing, but not quite, since there is nothing that they can take to put under a microscope. I’ll get put under while they poke through my bone and see what this thing is. I was told it would be benign, but I heard that before, remember? […]