Today is August 13, and I'm back home after a morning excursion downtown for my cast removal. It went smoothly, and we quickly cracked open the cast like a lobster, but I wanted to share how I've been since then. Unfortunately, I have taken many steps backward in my recovery. I can no longer walk and suffer greatly with standing. I am once again almost entirely reliant on my walker to get around by hopping, something I was previously starting to move on from in my cast, and my adventures have once again not gone farther than the living room. It is awfully disappointing. I hoped I would be better by now, but perhaps as always with what I like to call the Brewer luck, I will be stuck in an inferior state for a while longer. To make matters worse, in a disgraceful combination of my sensitive skin and my desperate attempt for itch relief in the final weeks and days of the cast, my leg and foot have become quite the eyesores. Redness and irritation, swelling, sores, bumps, and serum oozing, it's not been much of a joy to have my leg back. We expect that it may take weeks for it all to heal back to health in an excruciating process.
Regardless, after my cast was sawed off and I was properly cleaned up, I was presented with my shiny new, finished and fitted orthopedic brace picked out inexplicably by my parents while I was undergoing the surgery. Why it was done that way I have no idea, especially at my age, but I am quite pleased with their selection based on the options they described to me. Since the last brace I had years ago as a child, I've also received an excellent upgrade to higher-quality, more visually appealing, reinforced straps that are delightful. Right now, I've been instructed by my orthopedic specialist to wear my new brace night and day to maintain the stretch of my Achilles tendon. After this first month or so, he believes it will be fine to skip it at night if I wish to, something I cannot express how much I am looking forward to after great restlessness and discomfort from an extra thing on my leg all this time.