6. New depths of humiliation!

Last night my life reached a new low - I tried to take a shower for the first time since donning THE CAST.  It was an epic fail! 

You know, I clean up pretty good, but even in the best of circumstances, not many 48 year olds look all that great nekkid.  Add a cast covered in a trash bag, a pink shower cap, crutches, and loss of muscle tone due to a year of inhibited activity, and...well, do you have a mental image yet?  NOT PRETTY.  And everything jiggles when you're jumping around on one foot.

Here's what I looked like:




http://goodbyecrutches.com/

  Oh, wait, wrong picture.  HERE'S what I looked like:


http://skeptisys.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/yo-mama-is-so-fat-she-didnt-get-the-job-for-which-she-was-over-qualified/



Why are there so many mirrors in bathrooms?

To add insult to injury, I felt so wobbly from the Vicodin, that I was scared to try this alone.  I figured that Vicodin, water, tile, and crutches wasn't too great a combination of elements, so I had to call for reinforcements, in the form of my longsuffering husband.

Let me tell you something - I didn't too much care for the odd mixture of expressions on his face.  Pity, anxiety, impatience and mirth morphed his normally attractive features into something strange and unfamiliar!

 Somehow, I think our entire relationship shifted and will never be quite the same...

Anyway, I stood there at the shower door, and realized that I had a dilemma.  Our shower has a little ledge you have to step over to get inside - most showers do, unless you're lucky and have one of the newer types, or one that is handicap-accessible.  Now...how do I hop over that step - on one foot?  I mean...I was already humiliated to be standing there looking so, well, ridiculous, and then...I couldn't even get in there!  Michael and I just stood there looking down at that step, and thinking, while the water ran.  Finally I said, "Well, we can move the shower stool over and I can back into it and sit down, and hang my monkey leg outside the door." 

This SORT OF worked - but take note - be SURE that the non skid rug you have by the shower door is pushed all the way to the door.  Otherwise it will be very easy to slip on the tile. 

As soon as I got my hiney onto the stool, I looked up at my husband and said, "Thank you and will you please get out of here?"  With a very relieved expression, he darted from the room.

As I sat on that stool with the water pounding down on me and my bum leg sticking out the open shower door, trying to figure out how to clean my under yonder (thanks, Grandmother, for that terminology!) while sitting down, I realized - I haven't felt this dejected since I knocked my front teeth out in a dunebuggy wreck 30 years ago!

I also came to the conclusion that I refuse to try this shower thing again!  I think I can rig something up with that stool in the bathtub.  Any suggestions, anyone?

I managed to shave my one leg and pretty much clean myself up in about five minutes, and then I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.  I hollered for my husband again, and he came back in and handed me a towel, with that same odd, pained expression somewhere between pity and hilarity.  "Wow, that was fast," he said.  "Are you sure you want to get out so soon?"

I looked up at him from my hunched position on that wet stool, with that stupid pink plastic cap on my head and my leg stuck out in front of me, and growled, "Do I look like a person who is having one bit of fun?  Help me get the hell out of here - and don't look at me."

He couldn't get out of there fast enough! 

On a better note - the neat little stool I bought to sit on at the bathroom counter was a good investment.  And actually, I did feel better after cleaning up, brushing my teeth, and putting on my new uniform - yoga pants and a T-shirt. 

So...next time, I'll try the bathtub.  What an ordeal!