Go Cyborg!

Greetings, gentle readers.
Having just emerged from surgery with a hefty whack of titanium surgical steel apparently now permanently nestled in my bones, I thought I would do my bit for Sartre-esque nausea and show people what my ankle looked like just a few hours ago. Brace yerselves...
This is what the leg looked like while still in the sock and semi-fibreglass cast, rather inextricably fused by cascades of seeping blood. Note how clean the back the ankle, near the Achilles tendon, seems in comparison to the remainder. More on that later.
Now that the cast has been removed, we can see the staples extending down the interior of the leg. This side now has two screws and a plate holding the bones together, and the x-ray shows that things are mending apace.
This is the exterior of the leg, which is now home to three screws. Note the back of the ankle, where the fibreglass cast pinched the flesh against the plastic and foam of the airboot and slowly snipped off small tracks of flesh, the blood of which soaked into the fibreglass but did not leak into the sock area. The swelling still looks a bit nasty, n'est-ce pas? The bruising higher up on the calf was caused by prolonged elevation and insufficient blood drainage out of the foot and ankle area. Of course, I didn't realise the length of this incision, which caused me no end of bewilderment why the muscle on that side of the leg was so pained and clenched. Heh. Silly me.
So in any event, the staples are now gone, the robo-piranhas have been banished, and although I still feel very funky, the piercing sharp lances of agony have abated. All that remains is vague bone-nausea and the throbbing and swelling.

"It's dark in this wood, soft mocker.
For whom have I swelled like a seed?
What a bone-ache I have.
Father of tensions, I'm down to my skin at last."

Ah, Theodore Roethke had it right all along.
But I shall return soon, and hopefully, shall do so with more inspiring and happy thoughts and images. Cheerio.

-mARKUS
^+Justice for the 96+^