Yay! Today I finished my last day of inpatient therapy at Metro! I am so excited to get the hell out of this place and be home. I also got a wheelchair to take home today. It's just a temporary wheelchair until I get my own wheelchair for keeps. The lady asked me if I wanted a colored wheelchair. Duh, I want pink. I definitely won't miss being in this hospital with all 70 year olds, but I will miss my therapists. They helped me out so much. Now I'm getting around with no hassle. Making dad pay for his mistake of putting the idea in my head and then not going through with it tomorrow on the way home from the hospital. After I get out of Metro I have to go back to the Clinic for an appointment with my oncologist. Then I will get to go to my favorite place, the mall. It will feel so good to be home. Hopefully my friends don't think that I can't go places and do things because I just got my leg amputated. I'm still pretty mobile. And I think if I don't take any of my pain meds I can still drink a beer or two to celebrate America :)

Today I went to the Cleveland Clinic to see Dr. Joyce, my surgeon. He looked at my incision and that was it. He called another doctor and I finally got my shrinker! It's a sock-like thing that goes over my leg to decrease the swelling and help shape the residual limb for the prosthesis. My dad planted this idea in my head that after we meet with Dr. Joyce I could go to Tower City and get this pair of shoes I've been wanting since I have been wearing my mom's shoes for therapy. Well my mom and dad insisted that therapy would be more important than going to the mall, I thought the mall was more important, but I had them both bitching at me so I came back to Metro just in time for a therapy session. I came back with no shoes. What the fuck. And all I did in therapy was stand up for an hour and do puzzles while standing. Whoop de do. Having a new pair of Nike's on would have been way cooler. Not sure why, but that made me super upset. Obviously I am in need for some serious retail therapy!

My First Post

This all started Memorial Day weekend when I started feeling some pain in my knee. I thought it was my knee cap that had floated up, and called my family doctor to see if that could be a possibility since I had the titanium knee. I was fine, and not worried about it. I went out that night and when I woke up in the morning I was in some pretty excruciating pain. I elevated my leg, put some ice on it and called my mom to tell her about it. She then called my surgeon and he sent me to the hospital in Athens (which is the shittiest hospital on the face of the earth). They has no idea how to do anything so I just headed up to Cleveland to have my surgeon check things out. When I got there we discovered it wasn't my knee cap, but my surgeon thought it was scar tissue that had formed from having so much muscle removed in my initial surgery. He scheduled a biopsy, just to be safe, for June 15 and sent me back to school to finish classes and take finals. Right after the biopsy he explained that what he thought was scar tissue was in fact the tumor, yet again. He said there was no chance to save my leg, that the tumor was wrapped around the titanium knee. The only option was to amputate the leg to be sure that the tumor would be completely gone. So I went home and did some much needed retail therapy. Then I had some of the girls over to just keep my mind off the surgery I would soon be having. The next morning I had to wake up early and go back to the Cleveland Clinic for the surgeon to be sure that what he found was 100% for sure the tumor. It was. I went home and slept for 14 hours because I was so tired. I woke up in the morning and was set to go. I had no choice, so why not make the best of things? I went to the hospital and checked in. Kept my cool and was very calm. Then my surgeon came in. It all set in that I was about to lose my leg, and I got upset for the first time. The next thing I know I was being put to sleep and then I woke up, completely out of it. I was eventually taken to my room and slept all day from all of the medicine. Saturday I had many visitors and flowers. It was so nice to see all my friends come up to the hospital to see me. One of my parents stay with me at all times, so thankfully I am never lonely. I stayed in the Clinic until Wednesday and then came to Metro for inpatient physical therapy rehabilitation, where I am now. The therapy is going very well and I am working my ass off to get out of here and get home. They anticipated I would be here for 2-3 weeks, until they saw me in therapy and how hard I work. I now have an expected release date of Friday, which would make me here for therapy only a week and a day. Chaching! I didn't want to be in here very long.The comparison of the Cleveland Clinic to Metro could be like I went from the Taj Mahal to a nursing home. I have already come to terms with the fact that I have had my leg amputated and all I can do is keep a positive attitude. The only way to go up and get better is to have a positive attitude and not give up. I know I can do whatever I want if I put my mind to it. So once I get this prosthesis I'll be back to my normal self, and eventually I want to run a marathon. Today I watched a man next to me in therapy tell the therapists that he didn't want to do something and when she asked him to do a simple therapy task, that I know he was capable of doing, he simply said "no". I overheard him say that he had been here since the beginning of June. With and attitude like that, I think he might get out in September. I looked at him and looked at myself, and saw what a positive attitude can do for you. Just being around him almost made me discouraged about what I was doing. Then it made me work harder at not being a Debbie Downer. But I have to remember that not all people have the amazing support that I do <3