An Anatomy Lesson

So, the foot doc guy with the Quebecois name explained it thusly: there is a big strong tendon (the peroneus brevis tendon, see above) that hooks onto the bump (tuberosity, see above) on the outside of your foot. It is so strong that when I dumped my ankle over in the parking lot the tendon jerked hard enough on the bone (fifth metatarsal, see above) that it broke it. It is barely a purple fracture, which are harder to heal than the red fractures (see above).



Therefore, since the tendon would be pulling on the bone every time I took a step, and breaking up any trying-to-heal places, I can't put any weight whatsoever on my foot for five weeks.



Yay.



But I get me a cool wheelchair to roll around the house in, which the foot guy prescribed because he felt sorry for me when I mentioned Brother. And when I mentioned also that there was a Miss Boo in the picture, he felt really sorry for me. A very nice guy, for a Quebecois. (Actually I think he's from Tennessee, his last name just happens to scream QUEBEC.)



Also, I can't cook dinner for five weeks, so the Husband will have to do it (boo hoo). And I get to ride in one of them cool motorized carts, should the Husband decide that he needs my assistance grocery shopping. Since I will only have this privilege for five weeks, I intend to be the most annoying motorized cart driver there is and drive down the middle of the broad aisle at Walmart very slowly, and try to go down aisles that are too narrow and bump things onto the floor and then act like I don't notice them, and bother store personnel to reach the high items and then decide I don't want them, and so on and so forth. We have to take our kicks where we can get them these days.



The icky part is, it's baths and not showers for five weeks. I dislike baths on account of I don't like sitting in my own filth, but baths are better than no washing at all. And at least I've got my one good foot to get in and out of the tub with.

So my adventures of the next few weeks will be less...adventurous than I had planned. But the Lord must know this is a good idea. I wish He'd tell me just why, but He has His reasons I'm sure. At least that's what I keep repeating to myself. I'm not in much pain, so that's a blessing, and perhaps I'm meant to build patience. (And socks. I've been so bored I've been knitting like a madwoman.)

Cheers,

Breanna

Foot Update

Actually, it's not that painful. I don't know if I'm brave or numb or just real full of ibuprofen, but as long as I'm not trying to move around the foot is pretty ok. Feels about like a badly twisted ankle the day after, but without the loose gooshy feeling.

Here are the bones of the foot. :) You can see the metatarsals; the one I broke is the pinky toe one on the outside of the foot (not the phalanges, which are the actual toes, but the bones leading up to them). What a whiny little bone to break, eh? I broke it up there near the top where it hooks into the ankle.

I see the podatrist (who does surgery, who knew?) tomorrow at 3:15 and he will tell me whether or not I need pins. I'm sort of hoping that he'll say, "Heck, you're 25! You have great circulation in your foot! You don't need pins! Get outta here!" but I think he'll probably say "Standard of care is pins and we need to put them in." I'll keep ya'll posted.

In the meanwhile my mother-in-law is with us, taking care of the kiddos and my house and I am just sitting here with nothing to do but feed Brother and blog. Sorry for no pictures of my boot; I'll try to hobble to the camera later today and capture how everybody is dealing with the crisis.

Continue to pray for the Husband, if you would; he is desperately underslept and has to have the Corporate People here this week, spreading Company Morale and Looking Things Over. They generally love everything he does, but it's still stressful for him.

OK, with that I'd better close until I can get some pictures. Sadly (or actually fortunately) my foot doesn't look too impressive, just a wee bit swollen and bruised. I don't even have nasty pictures to show, go figure.

Cheers,

Breanna

So I was kickboxing an evil ninja and...

...I broke my foot.

Actually the kickboxing part is a lie. And the ninja. Actually I was just walking across the church parking lot and twisted my ankle, and broke my fifth metatarsal, but doesn't the ninja story sound more exciting?

I mean, who breaks their foot just walking? It wasn't fancy walking or snowy or muddy or anything. I was wearing heels, but they were low and mom-ish, not stillettos.

Thank the Lord my in-laws were coming up for lunch anyway, and could sit with the kiddos while the Husband whisked me off to urgent care. All the way there I kept denying the obvious:

"Maybe (ouch) it's just (ouch) a sprain?"

We got to urgent care and they took x-rays, and said "yep, it's broke" and also cautioned me against putting ANY weight on my foot. I would need to use crutches. Oh, and they didn't keep crutches there at urgent care. How I was supposed to get to my car was a mystery; perhaps most people have magic carpets when they break their feet.

Anyhoo, I am now established in the Big Chair with my foot in a boot brace, being waited on and having to hop back and forth to the bathroom on crutches that we rented from Shopko. (Yes, we have the money to buy crutches; but my dear sweet mother-in-law broke her ankle not long ago and has crutches that will fit me, and it was only an eighth the cost to rent crutches as buy them.)

On the upside, since I gave birth to Brother earlier (and since such a birth costs around five grand before insurance) I've hit my out-of-pocket max already on the insurance, and presumably everything is free. Which is good since the urgent care people tell me that I have to see an orthopedic guy who will probably want to put pins in my foot. I'll likely get one of them cool cards to take to airports, so they don't assume I'm a shoe bomber. Score!

So next time you see a ninja, punch him real good for me. It must have been invisible ninjas. I can't figure out any other reason for a perfectly healthy person to randomly break their foot in a flat parking lot.

Bleah!

(You'll forgive me if I can't sign off "cheers" as usual.)

Breanna

How I Stay Sane

Sometimes...

...they all sleep at once.

Ahhhhhhh. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

Muppet Theology

Is it weird to see theological points in movies? What about if it's a movie with muppets? OK, I know it's weird. But in the movie Labrynth, Jarred the Goblin King (who is, appropriately enough, David Bowie), does a very good Lucifer impression.



Sarah, the main character, has battled her way through a big maze trying to save her baby brother from being turned into a goblin by Jarred. Jarred, who has been trying to make Sarah fail the entire time ("It's not fair!" says Sarah. "You say that so often," replies Jarred. "I wonder what your basis of comparison is?"), now gets on his dignity. He asks how Sarah can be so ungrateful, when he's been doing all of this for her. He's only been what she wanted; he wants to give her everything she wants. "If only you'd just bow to me," he says sadly. "If only you'd let me rule you, you could have anything."



Which makes you shiver when you think about what it almost quotes-- "Bow down to me and I'll give you all these kingdoms."



To which the appropriate answer is not Sarah's in the film ("You have no power over me"-- he clearly does, he's bigger than she is, for one thing, and has a goblin army; she has a dwarf, a muppet, and a fox who rides a dog) but "The Lord rebuke you!"



The thing about Jarred in the film is that, at least at first, he seems charming, witty, even stylish (for the 80s). He's obviously a good con man and has obviously done this before. Our adversary has perfected his con down through the centuries, but he's not terribly creative. It's pretty much the same con he ran on Adam and Eve: it's reasonable to disobey, because look at what I'll give you.



Lewis has pointed out that in the story of Faust, which is a bit more highbrow than Labrynth, Mephistopheles is supposed to represent Satan. However, it's not Mephistopheles, who is witty, charming, and humorous, who really represents Satan--it's Faust, who is singleminded, desperate, uncreative, and humorless, as well as willing to do anything to realize his ambition.



So what's the point of all this? I was just thinking about obedience today, and how disobedience can seem reasonable. (I've been reading about Baalam.) I wondered why Baalam, who actually had the Lord speaking to him audibly, would think it was a good idea to take off riding where the Lord didn't want him to go. David Bowie was what I came up with. Every sin seems reasonable and okay at the time, otherwise we wouldn't do it.



Then, of course, you have to praise the Lord, because He generally sends us donkeys. :) (By the way, did you ever wonder why, when the donkey talks to him, Baalam isn't amazed? The donkey asks why Baalam hit her, and Baalam doesn't say "You can talk? Why did you never talk before?"; he says, "Because you were being snotty!" He doesn't actually get amazed until he can see the Angel of the Lord. Bizzare.)



(Oh, and if you don't get the donkey reference, go read up the Baalam story. The donkey keeps Baalam from getting killed, like he deserved, and he repents.)



So my meditation today was, "Watch out for Goblin Kings--and pay attention to donkeys."



Cheers,



Breanna

Fingers in the Dirt

So on Saturday we got real ambitious and decided to upgrade the front yard. I've been wanting a herb garden, and the flower bed could use some snazzing up. Also, the rose bushes that were there were dead as doornails, and the sight of their twiggy corpses was depressing.

Miss Boo decided to help out.
Luckily when she digs, she only moves a teaspoon of dirt at a time, or the hollyhock would have been in trouble.

Here is where Brother spent the gardening time-- he rode sleeping in the sling the whole time. He was less smushed than he looks in this picture, though.

Miss Boo helping plant one of the 3 new rosebushes I got for my birthday. (Austrian Copper, a cool rose "cultivated since the 1500s" according to its tag.)

The finished project-- there was nothing but lawn here before.

A blurry shot of my cool birthday pansies from my mother-in-law. Sorry I didn't get a better pic. :)

Now I must read "The Selfish Giant" to Miss Boo or I will have the equivalent of a Zulu uprising on my hands.

Cheers,

Breanna

A Simple Inquiry

They are constantly forgetting that their bodies can effect their spirits....The patient is left wondering what sin has caused his faith to ebb, when a simple inquiry into what he's been eating and drinking for the last 24 hours would reveal the source of the problem.

--The Screwtape Letters

Disclaimer: As far as I know, all the people who will read this are not taking any of the medications I might mention below. But if you are, 1) it's none of my business and 2) I assume you have gotten the prescription legally, and so you and your doctor have determined you really need the medication--so don't take this blog as a recommendation you stop your meds or as a slam. My thoughts below are simply my thoughts on what I find an interesting topic.

Ok, on to the blog.

The quote above is from a passage where Screwtape, the Undersecretary of Hell, is describing in a letter to Wormwood, Junior Tempter, the dual nature of humans. We are, he says, weird amphibians, half spirit and half animal, and our animal nature can impact our spiritual nature and vice versa. Screwtape then goes on to turn the discussion toward sexual purity (or rather, since it's Screwtape, impurity), but the quote got me thinking the other day about depression.

There's something of a controversy in Christian circles over whether Christians can even get depressed. My take is, clearly, they can, unless Elijah, David, Paul, and numerous other people weren't really saved. There is also controversy over whether Christians should take antidepressant or mood-stabilizing medication. A few thoughts on that, though I believe they apply to non-Christians, too:

1. Studies have shown that a half hour of brisk walking in the sunshine every day for a month raises seretonin levels in the brain as much as Zoloft.

2. Studies have also shown that post-partum women suffering from "baby blues" or mild depression have improved their mood to normal by taking a fish oil supplement. There have been similar results with vitamin B-6.

3. Americans get less sleep and poorer-quality sleep now than most people in the developed world.

4. Some of the side effects of chronic dehydration are nagging headaches, difficulty thinking clearly, and depression.

So to me the question is not so much whether depression is necessarily a lack of faith, as it is whether depression is a symptom of physical neglect.

Now, can depression be a spiritual issue? Absolutely; it clearly was for Paul and Elijah; but David experienced highs and lows and impulsive behaviors that probably would have gotten him a diagnosis of being bipolar in this century and was never rebuked for the moods (though obviously the impulsiveness led to sin on some *ahem* occasions). So it seems to me that when facing a down mood, the first thing to do is "inquire into what you've been eating and drinking the last 24 hours".

I don't mean that if you eat nothing but twigs and leaves you'll have a perfect, elevated mood, but if you're subsisting on beer, chicken nuggets and Hohos, you're not giving your body anything to work with--except, ironically, the antioxidants in the beer. We tend to eat less vegetables than we need, less (also ironically) of good fat than we need, we don't like B-6-rich whole grains, and we don't drink enough water.

So my approach to depression would be this: fix the easy things first. Exercise. Get more sleep. Eat and drink better, take a fish oil supplement. If you still feel depressed, do the spiritual work (or do this at the same time and anyway, because you ought to be maintaining your walk with the Lord all the time)--examine your heart and repent of what needs repenting of, surrender where you need to surrender, forgive where you need to forgive--you know the work the Lord has for you. Immerse yourself in Scripture and get in the habit of praying every time your mind isn't occupied with something else. Especially pray if your mind gets occupied with depressing thoughts.

Then, if after doing both those things you still don't feel any better, maybe you need the antidepressant medication. This needn't be a long process; give each intervention a week to work. The antidepressant won't kick in for a month anyway, as it has to reach a certain concentration in your bloodstream. You will at least have a solid record of trying to present to your doctor, who will unfortunately likely be very ready to write you a prescription anyway (not being counselors or pastors, they like to write prescriptions because it's what they know how to do). But it's better to have tried and know that you're really taking necessary medication.

I'm not willing to say that nobody has the kinds of imbalances in their brains requiring meds, but on the other hand, if you CAN fix it without expensive medication that has side effects many people find troubling, why not?

And now to the idea that a Christian's joy is in the Lord and they shouldn't have to work on their mood at all, they should just be happy all the time: bull puckey, not to put it too finely. As I've mentioned, there are numerous examples in Scripture of godly people who got depressed, discouraged, and even despairing. For that matter, the Lord Himself got discouraged in Gethsemene. The point is, when you get depressed, to strengthen yourself in the Lord. As Tozer said, just be honest in prayer. You know you should tell the Lord, "You know my name, it's written on Your hands", but honestly you have to say, "Lord, I feel like You've forgotten me. I know You haven't, but that's how I feel. You'll have to adjust my emotions because I surely can't." I find honest prayer, while attempting to obey regardless of how I feel, is much more effective than a grin-and-pretend-to-have-the-joy-joy-joy-down-in-my-heart attitude.

Then there is also meditating on the warlike psalms, but that might only work for weirdos like me. :) ("Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who prepareth my hands for war" for some reason works wonders for me when facing the twenty-seventh dirty diaper of the day.)

There you have my thoughts on depression. Hope I haven't offended anyone--like I said in the disclaimer, if you're taking medication I assume you really need it. But maybe you'll appreciate some of the other coping strategies I've outlined. I've never met anyone on Zoloft who would turn down an extra bump for their mood.

May the joy of the Lord really shine on you today,

Breanna

P.S.
I'm 25 today--a quarter century and automatically a better driver, according to my insurance company. Or as I told Miss Boo this morning, Mama is an old, old lady. When you're 18 months old, 25 is very old indeed. :D