Strange Things Afoot: Freiberg's Infraction

I'm having foot surgery on Wednesday, which has been the cause of a great deal of recent angst.  And pain.  And such.

A lot of people have asked, "What's wrong? What kind of foot surgery? Did you injure it?" and so on, so I figured I'd write an explanation.

My right foot has bothered me off and on since I was in high school.  It had just been a minor annoyance with an occasional flare-up of short-lived agony until fairly recently, so it was just easier to ignore it.  It's gotten progressively worse, though, to the point where I finally went to a podiatrist.

It should be noted at this time that I hate feet.  I. HATE. FEET.

So the first time I went to the podiatrist, I received a phone call from Belle's school saying that the kids were being dismissed immediately because of a sewage issue.  When the doctor walked in for the first time, I said, "I have to go ... sewage emergency."  (I have a bad habit of saying stupid things before thinking of how they'll sound).  The doctor was very nice about it (I did elaborate, by the way, on what I meant), and I got the appointment rescheduled.

Anyway, they did x-rays and stuff at the rescheduled appointment, and I have something called Freiberg's Infraction.

Which, by the way, doesn't show up anywhere--not WebMd, not anywhere!  I didn't pay attention when the doctor was explaining the condition because I figured I'd just Google it, but it was crazy.  The only stuff I could find was written by doctors, and I don't speak science.  My mother, who usually translates medical jargon for me, was in Ireland when I received this news, so I rather hysterically started stalking my sister (she's a microbiologist, which is obviously different from a medical doctor, but she does speak "doctor").  Mary, as always, came through for me, learning more about Freiberg's Infraction than most doctors, I think, and even making a model of where my surgery scar will be and such.

So, basically, I injured my foot when I was a teenager (before the growth plate closed).  The second metatarsal, to be exact.  Over time, the cartilage between my second toe and the metatarsal bone disappeared, then the bone itself started breaking down (the official word is "necrosed", which of course means "dead" ... have I mentioned that I hate feet?).

It's gotten to the point where it is very painful, and the toe will "pop out" (I don't know how to put it better than that) once in awhile, which freaking kills.

So, yeah, surgery on Wednesday to reshape the bone and such.  Gross.  I hate feet ;-p

The pain is such, however, that I can't decide if I'm dreading this surgery or looking forward to it (because I want it to stop hurting).

Yeah, the recovery doesn't sound like much fun either.

For three days, I have to sit on my ass with my foot elevated above my heart.  Ice on for an hour, off for an hour.  Painkillers.  Not able to do anything.

The sitting on my ass/elevating foot is a constant for two weeks.  I can't drive.  I have to wear a sexy surgical shoe.

I don't do well with sitting on my ass.  I am feeling claustrophobic at the very thought of not being able to drive.  I'm glad that I got a few gift certificates to Barnes and Noble for my birthday last month as I'm going to to be racking up the Nook purchases.  There's always TV, I suppose.  A lot of family coming for Thanksgiving.  Missing work (ugh!) and not being able to do jack for a couple of weeks.

I'm just trying to focus on how nice it will be when this is over and my foot doesn't hurt on a regular basis.  It's just going to be a pain--both literal and figurative--getting there.

Youth is Flummoxed by ... What Used to Pass for Technology

There is a rotary telephone at my family's beach house.  It is avocado green and completely epic.  I should also mention that, while we've gone through three or four cordless phones on a separate jack, that rotary phone still works just fine (well, unless you get to an automated system because clearly you can't press one or whatever).

But anyway ...

Belle is a pretty technologically savvy kid.  She knows how to operate an iPod, a television, a DVD player, a VCR (which Henry informed me that some of his high school students can't accomplish), a computer (in fact, she's pretty well-versed with PCs, which we have at home, and the Macs she uses at school), and a sno-cone machine.  

She also passed "The Moron Test" on my iPhone, which had me stymied (I was a little embarrassed ;-)).

But today, when my mother asked her to call a family friend to see if she wanted to join us for dinner, it was Belle's turn to be stymied.

She figured it out eventually, of course, but it struck me pretty deeply how this kid who can navigate touchscreens couldn't figure out how to use a telephone circa ... well, I was born in 1976, and there are pictures of me as a baby with that phone in the background.

We talk about the technological advances of this day and age, but it's unfortunate in some ways that we've sort of lost the technological wonders of the past.  I don't know if I'm just nostalgic here, or if it's worthy of concern that kids today can program computers but aren't able to gather reliable information from a book (I'm talking about when it's not all done for them, a la Wikipedia).

We had a little dinner party for Addie's graduation tonight, and her friend asked me a question (a really good question) about Harry Potter (since, according to Addie, I know everything there is to know about Harry Potter ;-)).  

I did not know the answer to this particular question (basically, "What the hell happened to Harry's paternal grandparents, who couldn't have been all that old since he was in his twenties when he was killed?"), so I did what I always do in those situations ... I took out my iPhone and Googled it.  I got the answer (which I'd tell you, except it's easy enough to Google ;-)), but I also wondered what would have happened if I hadn't found it right away.

Yeah, being me, I probably would have reread the books.

But I had to think about that for a second.  What WOULD I have done?  I can remember the days before the interwebs sliced its virtual highways around the earth, and I can remember being a pretty resourceful kid, but ... I cannot remember what, in that situation, I would have had for options.  

Scary stuff, if you think about it.

If you hand a kid a cassette tape, an Atari joystick, heck, even an EZ-Bake Oven, they'd look at you like you were crazy.  Actually, they'd look at you like Belle looked at us as she tried to figure out how to operate a rotary telephone.

Do you have any great stories about the technologically advanced youth of today being flummoxed by things that were simple to us at one point in time?  

Oh, and do you think that letting the technology that came before, that paved the way, should be forgotten?  (I mention this because I never heard of an eight-track until I was in college and was dating a guy with an eight-track player ... I thought it was the coolest thing ever and wondered why my musical scope was limited to LPs, cassettes, and CDs)