cruisinelves

I've recently discovered how difficult it can be to get around without the use of all four limbs. Simple decisions such as, "Should I go to the bathroom now, or can I wait a while?" become complex. On the plus side, I've become very adept at hopping around on one leg. On the minus side, that one leg (my left) hurts like hell as a result of all the hopping (and the fact that it also got bruised up in the accident).

So I spent most of Saturday lying in bed with both legs propped up on a precarious stack of pillows, trying not to feel sorry for myself. The fact that I had presciently downloaded "Pirates of the Caribbean" and the complete "Invader Zim" to my Powerbook helped. Even better, the ship offers free room service! If you have to have a broken leg, there are many worse places to have one.

Greta decided to be adventurous and head off on her own while we were anchored off of Belize City. She caught a water taxi to Caye Caulker, a cute little island (Belize is well-supplied with cute little islands). However, she decided that it was "kind of boring without me" (which, when she told me, made me a bit weepy) and returned before too long, but not before capturing the cool photos that you see interspersed throughout this post.

In the evening, the nice South African doctor fit me with a real cast (I had been wearing a temporary cast while the swelling subsided), which is a very stylish royal blue. While applying it, he told me that he had had a serious motorcycle accident in South Africa a number of years back, breaking his leg in two places. "The bone was sticking out!" he said cheerfully. While he bonded the cast, we bonded over the proposition that the thrill of riding powered two-wheeled vehicles is not worth the risk involved.

I now have a greater appreciation for the difficulties that Mimi faces, since she needs a walker to get most places. For example, I am now intimately familiar with the sinking feeling that the semi-mobile get when encountering a staircase.

I'm looking forward to the continued healing of my "hopping leg" ... no doubt I will soon be crutching around Manhattan with something approaching aplomb. (I think one really needs to be wearing an ascot in order to really pull off "aplomb", but I think I'll give that a pass.)