The Bored Flamingo

“Flamingos often stand on one leg, the other leg tucked beneath the body. The reason for this behaviour is not fully understood.”

Let me tell you, I’ve wondered over the last week what on earth would make a flamingo want to stand on one leg. It’s a mystery. It is NOT comfortable.

Life was pretty crazy in a normal kind of way before this happened (see pic). Sure, there was the odd speeding ticket, a fair amount of illegal parking, and a few drive-through moments to help us through; but generally my 3 kids, my husband and I got everything done.

It would be fair to say I didn’t have the luxury of being able to stay put in one place for very long. My schedule was a carefully planned operation requiring military precision, including sometimes simultaneous drop offs, pick-ups, dog walks, grocery shops, speech appointments, volunteer meetings for the school/rugby/charity boards, and somewhere in there; the 50 hours of work a week required to run my business.

My right foot was a pretty important part of the military operation; but not for a minute did I ever appreciate it. I hadn’t valued it as my driving foot, or ever considered walking to be a privilege…. well,that is until now. So when I badly rolled my ankle at netball one night, I under-estimated the resulting fall-out. Within half an hour I was deposited on the couch holding a half-eaten bag of frozen peas on my ankle simply wondering if I was going to be able to drive the kids to school the next day. As it turned out, that was just the start of it….

To cut a long story short, a few physio appointments, an x-ray, and an MRI later, I found myself trying without success to get an orthopaedic surgeon to support me in my decision not to have it operated on. After some uncomfortable talk about taking ham string fibres out of my leg to fix it if I left it any longer, I conceded defeat and went in for surgery. The outcome was this: 6-8 weeks in a cast, and no weight bearing or driving for at least that long! No exceptions.

My military schedule has now been transposed onto a 6-page excel spreadsheet involving the help of pretty much everyone I know. Now, to fill in some time, I’ve decided to share my experience as it happens – in the hopes that anyone who may find themselves in this unfortunate situation might be able to read this blog, and learn from my successes and failures as I navigate through it!

In short this blog is about surviving From Crazy to Lazy when you unexpectedly find yourself temporarily house-bound for longer than you thought humanly possible.

I’ll share my tips and tricks for managing a few months out of action, without going insane (fingers crossed)!

So – here goes – this is just my journey, we’re all different. And by all means, please feel free to challenge, add, share and improve wherever you can! Collaboration is the goal!

Enjoy!!