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Update: Right leg saga installment number 5001.

I finally got the hot pink cast off, but, honestly, I was a little sad to see it go. It was pretty cool to have a hot pink leg. I need to figure out how to replicate that. Leg warmers? Hmm. But, now I’m free to at last exfoliate the bound leg and remove the fungal-like dead skin covering my right leg. Ew. The goo that sloughed off from between my toes last night was epic.

When I got the cast off, the nurse gently removed my stitches. She put some sort of surgical tape over the stitch-hole. “If the tape falls off, here’s some extra.” OK. Cool. She bandaged it all up with an ace bandage type thing (but way cooler), and I was released into the wild.

The problem? I had assumed I’d get a walking cast, so I hadn’t brought a right shoe or sock. The nurse made me a sock out of tubical gauze used for building plaster casts, and I flapped on the little plastic shoe protector I had been wearing over the hot pink cast. The result was me walking with a floppy limp, begging Matthew to stop at the house and find me a shoe. I’d survive with the surgical tube sock, but I needed my shoe. Fortunately, he grudgingly indulged and found my shoe. I can only imagine what I would have been like to flop around in the plastic over-shoe ten sizes too big while at work. Scrape, flop, drag, limp. Scrape, flop, drag, limp. “Christine is coming.”

Last night was the main event, the first shower since getting the cast off. I removed the stretchy bandage, and looked at the surgical tape. “I guess it comes off for a shower.” I started to pull, but it had the tenacity of a pit bull clamped onto my leg. I had already started though, so it seemed too late to turn back. I got to the stitch holes. My god. Such pain as the super-magic-cling-ultra-serious tape began to peel off my stitch scabs. I wanted to cry. But, I had come so far, there was just no way to re-adhere it. I stopped half-way over the stitch scabs, knowing I had to go on. I screwed up the courage to pull. The sharp stinging pain was like thousands of tiny needle points grinding into my delicate ankle hole. But I did it.

I got the rest of the tape off, and looked at the tape. My skin and all the scabs clung to it in a perfect formation of where the stitches had been. Echoing through my mind: “If the tape falls off, here’s extra.” What she meant was, “Don’t remove the tape.”

I looked at my leg, and there the poor delicate skin was raw and exposed again. I felt set-back, and at my own doing. I finally told myself, “Oh well. Scabs will grow back.”

As soon as I finished the shower, I reapplied the surgical tape. This time, it’s not coming off until it falls off on its own. No more stitch scab shadows.