hi everybody!
i have missed you guys.
i've been busy, but not as planned.
we set off on our lovingly-planned, long-awaited european holiday on april 2nd and got to paris on april 4th as planned.
everything was going absolutely perfectly, we were having a fabulous time in the lovely spring weather....and on the morning of april 13th, i slipped on a wet bathroom floor and broke my leg quite comprehensively in a split second.
i had a dislocated ankle, broken tibia and fibula, fractured malleolar, o and tendons and cartilage are kaput in that foot too.
by evening i was in a parisian hospital, recovering from emergency orthopedic surgery and the trauma of being carried down three steep flights of tightly-wound parisian staircase by a bevy of cute and buff ambulance guys and firemen.
i had to immediately cancel the remaining 27 days of our holiday *sobbing*.
first i started hemorrhaging, and for three days they threatened a second surgery to seal up the leak.
there was some adjustment of anticoagulant medication and i stopped bleeding to death.
then there was trouble with one of my new huge scars ( my ankle looks like a shark got me).
then we had to wait for flight schedules to mesh.
finally, i was up out of my hospital bed on 23rd aprl and off to the airport in a wheelchair.
we flew home via hong kong and brisbane, cathay pacific business class because it was mandatory that my leg be kept elevated the entire trip.
getting around in a wheelchair for the first time in my life, weak as a cat after ten days of blood loss and lying in bed, and spending 48 hours in transit.....it was a living nightmare.
throw in a bad nausea reaction to the painkillers and mid-flight a
medication injections in the thigh, administered by my husband, who is not a medical person, and you've got yourself a 'verging on hysterical' mess.
that was moi.
from paris i organised some mobility gear to be at home when we arrived.
i have decluttered an entire vacation and i am now lying in bed looking at a wheelchair, a walking frame, a shower chair, all cluttering up the room!
i am entirely grateful that i have the luxury of space for all of this.
my husband has moved to a daybed, because i am surrounded by three large sleeping cats and i need room to throw my plaster cast about.
i have 3 months ahead where my foot may not touch the ground even once or i have been threatened with permanent cripplehood.
then we are looking at a lengthy rehab.
i am just grateful that it wasn't my neck....or both legs.
i was supposed to meet up with netleigh and ninakk and have an international unclutterer time, and i am so disappointed to have missed that.
next year, ladies!
at least we kept our shopping very modest in paris...a mere handful of small kitchen items: a nutmeg grater, some copper cleaning paste, some cool stretchy silicon lids (i won't use plastic wrap to cover food and these are even better than brown paper and rubber bands) and we were given some mariage freres tea.
i think in a month's time we will be cluttering the workshop with gear to modify our production there.
i am already racking my brains for ways to repurpose and modify existing stuff.
it really never ends!
