I'm a real wild child, I tell ya.

Here's what my Friday has consisted of.

• woke up at 8 with a headache so bad I cried holding my eyes open
• emailed a girl in my Religion class to see if she'd give me notes
• went back to bed till 11
• got up, got ready, and ate lunch
• went to French to take my French test
• went to English
• came back to the room and took a nap
• ate dinner
• did homework
• watched TV
• did more homework

Thrilling stuff, isn't it?  I was supposed to meet with a guy in my French class, Matt, to do a dialogue, but he asked me to move it till tomorrow.  At least I'll have something that will force me to get a shower and get out of my pajamas tomorrow. I'm known to stay in my pajamas all day on Saturday. ;)

A girl in my English class, Becca, also wants me to hang out with her and her sister tomorrow, but we'll see if that happens.  I've got to do a ton of reading for Western Civ (we have quizzes every week, and this week's quiz is on two chapters, and we have a test on Thursday) and Science (that I've just been putting off, and now I have to read 5 chapters before our test on the 21st). 

I just can't do anymore homework tonight.  I've been nauseous so I'm about to crash from this Phenergan I took.  

Good news, though, is that I can actually walk all the way from my bed to the toilet in the bathroom.  I look forward to the day when I can walk to class. :)

Hope your Friday night has been more entertaining than mine! :)

Baby Steps

That's what my life is right now. Baby steps.

Itsy bitsy, teeny weeny (yellow polka dot bikini!...sorry) baby steps.

This part of the recovery process absolutely sucks because it's the most painful, but it's also the most crucial.

The good thing is that I don't have to push myself. I can't push myself. One, for the risk of tumbling and screwing my foot up again, and two, because of the pain in my left ankle. So things are going very, very slooooooooowly. However, I think I'm at about the same point I was 2 days after getting the cast off from the first surgery, so that's good.

Oh, and I forgot to show you guys the awesome before and after shot of my feet. It's so amazing. I still sometimes look at my feet and think they look like someone else's feet. :)

Isn't that cool?  And don't worry, the right bigt toe still looks crooked because of swelling.  I'm telling ya, it's a huge, huge improvement.  The best part of all is that aside from the tendon pain in my ankle, my left foot doesn't hurt at all.  I don't remember my feet ever not hurting, guys.  Can you tell I'm on Cloud Nine about this? :)

Speaking of tendons, though, I've flared up the tendonitis in my left arm from copying 7 pages of notes today, so I can't write anymore.  Besides, it's late.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

So I've already told you about how wonderful this past weekend was, and this afternoon, it went up another notch in the Mallory Book of Awesomeness.

I looked in my planner (don't judge) to get my reading assignment for Intro to Christianity, looked at tomorrow's block and saw "NO SCIENCE LAB." Suh-weeeeeeeeeeeet!

That means I get done at 1:50 instead of 4:50. And considering I'm like three times as doped up as I usually am thanks to starting over at the top of the pain scale with my foot, that three hours is huge.

I wish I could look forward to the day that I'm not so tired anymore, but that's just not going to happen. You'd think my exhaustion would be from the painkillers, but because of my lack of thyroid and seizure meds, my doctors have already warned me that I'm pretty much going to be this tired for the rest of my life. Sounds exciting, no? Oh well. Can't change it, so I just have to deal with it. That's what I have to remember.

Good and Bad

As in, it's good totally freakin' AWESOME that after three and a half months, I am cast free for good. No more scooter. No more taking twenty minutes to get in and out of the shower. No more cast cover. No more panicking about the rain.

However, the bad is that the pain was finally almost gone, and now it's back to extreme because guess what? When you don't walk on your foot for 6+ weeks, it doesn't really like doing it again. Thank heavens for pain killers and my power chair, that's all I can say. Oh, and did I mention how I scrubbed and picked the dead skin off my foot for over an hour tonight and it still looked covered in it. Hooray for lotion and baby oil.

But anyway, Dr. P said the x-rays looked fantastic, and that the issue with my left ankle is that I've overworked the tendon on the outside from only standing on and pushing on that ankle for so long. Kinda weird that it happened to my good ankle but not my bad one when I was only using it, but whatever.

I go back in a month. He wanted me back in two weeks but I begged him to let me wait till my fall break because I really can't afford to miss another day of class.

My visit was so frustrating today. Mommom and I showed up 50 minutes early, at 10:50 for my 11:40 appointment, and I still didn't get called back till 12:25. Yet about 8 people who got there way after me were called back and got through their appointment before I was even called back. You'd think they'd see people in the order they show up, but apparently not. What made it worse is that I had to listen to my grandmother sigh and whine and complain, which really got on my nerves.

We didn't get back to Campbell till 5, and since I had my 5:00 class, thankfully, Mommom and my RD Laura unloaded my stuff so I could just grab my notebook and rush to class. I was only a few minutes late, and I had called my professor earlier this afternoon about being late, so all was fine.

All right, now I must get to bed. I do have to get up at 7:30.

Never Have I Ever

been so darn excited for a doctor's appointment as I am for my appointment tomorrow.

After 3 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days (yes, I counted), I will finally be cast free and STAYING that way!

This casting time has felt so much longer than the first one. Probably because I've had more stuff to do, so it's more obvious that it's getting in my way.

Plus, I can get my doc to look at my left ankle, because I've definitely done something to it. Of course. But hopefully a good brace will just be the solution.

Tomorrow evening, I'm going to post a before and after of my feet, so you can get an idea of why these surgeries were so important and so exciting for me. :)

Happy Labor Day!

Lovely

This weekend has overall just been lovely.
Chelsea's not picking fights.
Mom is chill because Chelsea's not picking fights.
I can sleep in.
I'm not stressing about anything.
Mom went out and bought grouper tonight just because I said I was craving it. (And we're going to Olive Garden tomorrow! We didn't make it to Jacksonville today.)

And, of course, best of all is that I've gotten in some quality snuggle time with my Blake man. I can't help but think about how strong my love for this little baby is when he's not even mine, and how much stronger it's going to be when I'm holding my own baby. (Which makes me pray about the "ovarian disorder" my doc has warned me I might have - being a mom is the thing I want absolutely most out of life.) It's also helped me to really understand how fast time goes by. It literally feels like it was yesterday that I was sitting in English class when I got the text that Chelsea's water broke, and now he's six months old!

Okay, cut the sappyness, Mal.

Really, though, this weekend has been exactly what I needed. :) I hope yours has been just as blessed.

It's Been A Long Time

Last night, right here in my warm and cozy bed, I got the best sleep I've gotten in weeks.

That in itself should be proof that I desperately needed this weekend at home. A weekend where I could relax. A weekend where I didn't have to think.

Today, we were lazy. Mom and I watched Date Night (one of my new favorite movies, I must say) and then went to Las Fincas for dinner with Blake while Chelsea slept. I even ran into Mr. Laughinghouse, my high school French teacher. So that was fun. When you're stuck on a college campus 24/7, you can kind of forget what real restaurant food tastes like. ;)

Tomorrow, we're going shopping in Jacksonville and to Walmart to get Blake some 6 month pics made. These will be the first professionally done pictures we've had taken of him, so it's a little exciting. Speaking of Blake, he seems so much bigger now, even though I just saw him a little over two weeks ago! Plus, there's the fact that I can't believe tomorrow it will actually be 6 months since he was born! It's like...what did we do before he was here? God, I love that kid.

Okay, I think I'm gonna read my new People magazine and go to bed. I love my bed. :)

Home. Finally.

My friend Rebekah lives in New Bern, and since she was coming home for the weekend, as well, she agreed to give me a ride to save my mom or grandma five hours of driving. Well, even though I was expecting to leave between 3:30 and 4, we didn't pull out of the parking lot at Campbell till 5:40, which meant that we didn't get to New Bern till 7:40. She drove me to Mom's friend Rachel's house, because Mom was hanging out there killing time to avid going home between work and me getting there. We left Rachel's around 8:10, and after a couple stops, arrived home at 9:15.

I. am. exhausted.

So glad to be home for the weekend.

Now, I'm going to bed. 7:30 am was a loooooooong time ago.

4 days till I get my cast off! :D

Another dull day.

I think it's because my body is trying to get used to this new medicine the doc put me on,
and the fact that it's a muscle relaxer that makes me drowsy,
and that they're weaning me off my Lyrica,
but I seriously feel like every ounce of energy has been drained out of my body.
I so need this weekend to relax and rest.
Thank heavens I don't have any homework to take with me.
I can just hang out with my family.
And I can't wait to see Blake! And hug him and squeeze him and kiss him to death.
And to give him the onesie I bought him. :)
Five days till I get my cast off! :D

Happy September!

Two things I really like about it being September 1st:

1) I get to go home in two days.
2) I get my cast off in six days!!!

I really don't have anything to say tonight, so I'll leave you with that. :)