Well today is a 4-5. A bit of discomfort, but mostly low energy… and I only can blame myself for that.

Upon arriving at the hotel directly from the hospital 6 days ago, the bellman met us at the cab with the hotel wheel chair. Nice! Thinking that perhaps we’d be able to use it, since I’m a resident here, for a trip to a neighboring restaurant, we were disappointed to find that it must stay on the premises.

Plan B – rent one! We spent a good portion of the afternoon searching google and the local yellow pages for medical rental companies. We found a couple of decent options and were ready to go get one, when I got the bright idea that maybe I ought to get an ok from Dr Jaime!

We communicate through What’s App. I can send photos and notes to him. He said if I felt like going long distances, that was ok and they had wheel chairs at the office. So about 5 pm we Uber’d over to his office, filled out the paper work and paid a small rental fee and I have wheels!


The first part of our morning was taking showers, and me doing a few exercises. The side leg lift is the most painful thing of all of this ‘adventure’. My lateral muscles are not strong enough, or perhaps healed enough for any lifting. I’m resorting to just static contractions.
Laying flat leg lifts are hard but doable. I can sit on the side of the bed, or now the wheel chair and I think I’m pretty close to 90’…. Gaby says’ 80 this morning. However, I think the gravity helps while sitting because I’m only about 45-50 if I do this laying on the bed. The most discomfort I have is from the osteotomy area, and it’s a feeling of tightness/ like a band around that area, sometimes a pinching – which I think is the skin healing, and rarely a deep hurt – it’s letting me know that BIG stuff was done in that area.

You may have noticed that I don’t use the word ‘pain’ much. This has to do with my massage career. I preferred to ask a client if they were in any discomfort versus pain. Mostly semantics, but when your ears hear you say I’m in a lot of ‘Pain’ your body reacts differently than hearing the word ‘discomfort’. So to clarify my situation, I truly have not been in much pain – only a time or two. I have had several days of discomfort or short periods of discomfort during the day or night. This can usually be remedied by a change of position, application of ice, or as a last resort, a prescribed medication.

Daily I’m amazed at how little discomfort I am in now. I knew I was in a lot of discomfort and pain before the surgery, yet I had work to do so I just soldiered on.

I’ve also noticed mostly in the morning as I’m just about to wake an area of my leg spasming or more of a large twitch, encompassing the entire upper thigh. The left quadriceps tightens then lets go. It wakes me or startles me thinking that I’m getting a major leg cramp and THEN what am I supposed to do? I can’t put any weight on it – the best thing to help it relax. I just have to hope that it won’t happen and it’s all part of the healing process…. Yea, yea… that’s it!

Back to the wheels.
We didn’t get to see DR Jaime while at his office as he was busy with patients. I was secretly hoping he’d want me to have the full leg x-ray that he wanted right after surgery. It would show that I’m healing far quicker than anything he’s seen before and that I could go back to La Paz today!!!! Well, a girl can dream and hope right?


So, the wheel chair, and crutches and the rest of us piled back into a taxi and headed to the Mall. Those of you that know me are going “WHAT? YOU JEANNE WENT TO A MALL? “ Yep.

A little side note here….. a week or so before heading over here there was a short story on MSN about a woman from Texas with a strong Texan accent that underwent surgery. When she came out of the procedure she now spoke with a strong British accent! I had told Tom that I was going to come out of the surgery with fluent Spanish! Well, not so much on the fluent Spanish, but I never expected to have a desire to go to a mall!

That word desire, is a bit of a stretch. We had some specific things we were looking for:
Socks, for my foot – other than white, a replacement wallet for my 4 year old one that was falling apart and maybe a small back pack type bag/purse for while I’m on crutches. We got the bag and the wallet at 70% off of almost nothing, but no socks - so white it is! Anyway the mall is level, and easy to roll around on. But it didn’t take long for us to each reach our ‘mall limit’!

We had grand plans for an excursion with the wheel chair this morning.. ahem, now afternoon.
We were going to check out the Mercado. After breakfast and a shower I felt my energy waning. I’m currently sitting in the wheel chair, in the lobby area with a cup of tea writing this at a table. Gaby has headed off to scout out the market and make sure it’s either crutch or wheel chair doable. If so, we are going to try to get an early start on the day tomorrow.