I love shoes but I can't put them on.

Thanks to a wonderful doctor I can now walk and can move around without excruciating pain. Gone are the days when I'd try to walk down the halls at work and end up falling into someone's office and crying for a while. Gone are the days of walking around in a Vicodin induced haze. Gone, I tell you - gone! That's great and I'm really lucky but there have been a few challenges as a result of having spinal fusions. 

Putting on socks is a real challenge. I never knew how hard it was until I couldn't bend any more. I can do one foot better than the other but they're both hard. I've tried leaning forward, sideways, bending my foot backwards...it's not a pretty picture folks. I also have trouble with shoes that aren't slip on. I've got a cool, long handled shoe horn to help me but if the tongue of the shoe slips forward any at all, I'm toast. For a while there, kidlet had to tie my shoes for me. I can finally do it but the bow is all lopsided and off to one side. Who cares as long as my shoe stays on!

Another challenge that you wouldn't normally think about having is grabbing toilet paper when you're conversing with the porcelain gods. My dispenser is on the wall right next to the back of my throne so in order to get paper, I have to sit sideways. It's actually sort of comfortable because the seat is wider that way but still...
I won't go into detail about how - ahem, how do I put it...cleaning up afterwards is a challenge since my arm won't bend in the direction it needs to bend since I can't lean to the side like I used to. Nah, that would just gross you out. But it's hard. That's all I'll say about that.

I like to pull weeds and sit on the ground but doing that is out of the question now. It just won't work. My spine won't fold/bend anymore. I can try to sit sideways but I end up falling over. Sort of like a Weeble. Remember those? Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. I do.

All in all most of the challenges I now face make me crack up. I think it's sort of funny that after tying my shoes for 40 years, I have to have a 12 year old do it for me. I think it's funny when I tip over when trying to sit on the flat ground. I'll live with these challenges because I'm not in so much horrible pain any more.

I went to the shoe store the other day and was attempting to try on various shoes. The area I was in didn't have any stools to sit on so I had to try and do it standing up. I tried on a pair of boots and managed to get them on after a lot of stumbling and hopping around. I'm sure the other patrons thought I was drunk the way I was staggering about. When it came time to remove the boots all hell broke loose. I was attempting to stand on one leg while bending over. Not a good scenario on any day but to try and tug a boot off of my foot made it even harder because the boot was snug. Since I could only get my foot about a foot & 1/2 off the ground I really had to do some strange gyrations to get a good tug on the boot. Then with one foot up and bent sideways, I started leaning to one side. As I started going down I tried to grasp the shoe rack which resulted in an avalanche of ugly shoes. The rack wasn't very sturdy so it started wobbling, too. My boot was 1/2 way off so I couldn't put my foot down to steady myself because it was all crooked. I knew I was headed for the ground (along with a bunch of shoes) and I didn't want that to happen because getting up off of the floor is challenging. So there I was, hopping on one leg, tugging on the foot of another, leaning heavily to one side, grasping anything that could stop my fall in an attempt not to destroy the store. After a couple of dozen pairs of shoes fell and I almost ended up on the ground I managed to get that dang boot off. I got some strange looks and I laughed at myself for a little while but that's OK. Oh, and by the way...I didn't buy those boots. Too frickin' hard to get on and off.