So I went to my first physical therapy appointment this morning, which went less than well. Ironically, it was the part that I had anticipated being the most enjoyable (the whirlpool) that was the worst. The therapist put my leg in the whirlpool as one of the first things. It was already hurting on the one side (he had been moving and pressing it before), and two minutes after I started whirlpooling, I also started getting very, very nauseous. I think the way the water was hitting my ankle just intensified the pain. I pulled my ankle out of the water, and the therapist got me a cup of water to drink. After I felt better, we did the rest of the exercises and I got ones to take home. Not an auspicious beginning. The best part about the physical therapy is that now I actually have an idea what my injury is. My primary care physician sent me right to the orthopedist (he thought I had fractured something), and the orthopedist, while being a very nice person, doesn't really tell me anything. He spends most of our (very brief) appointments talking into a little dictation recorder in untranslatable medicalese. I think after he determined that there no actual bones injured in my injury, he didn't want much more to do with me.

So according to the physical therapist, I have torn both of the ligaments on the outside of my ankle - the huge bruise that appeared on the side of my foot, and the bruises under my toes are from the blood from the ligaments flowing down into my foot. (I think I'm starting to feel nauseous again just from typing this. My apologies to anyone with a weak stomach.) I also injured the ligament on the inside of my ankle (hence the bruising on my foot above the arch), but he doesn't know if I did that at the same time as the injury, or if it got injured by overusing to compensate for the injury. In any case, he very nicely told me not to expect to be healed any time soon.

Three good things that happened recently to make up for it: I surprisingly don't have a copay for the physical therapy sessions! I was expecting $20 an appointment, 2 to 3 appointments a week, 3 or 4 months...you can see how this might add up.

Also, my iPod broke before the Thanksgiving vacation, and I tried everything I could to fix it, to no avail. My iMac wouldn't even recognize it to restore it. I took it to the Genius Bar at the Mac store last night, and a very nice young man took it in the back, resoldered a cable, and poof! It was fixed!! I was almost resigning myself to having to buy a new one, sometime far off in the future when I might have money for it. So I have music again.

And finally, Netflix! People, I am addicted to Netflix. My queue is 260 movies long. I wanted to get Netflix because there are tons of older movies that I want to see that they never have at the local rental stores. Recently I got "Run Lola Run" and "La Belle et la Bete," both of which got 4 stars from me. I wanted Belle because I love the Phillip Glass opera version - this DVD had the option to play the movie with the opera as the soundtrack. I am also busily working out which post office boxes get the movies returned the quickest, so more can take their place.