life narcotic

So I was supposed to fly to Seville immediately after that Wild Words panel. What should I do but forget my bag in the bathroom, and need to run out of the Mac Hall Ballroom just as the panel was starting? I ran to get it, tripped on the three stairs leading up to the door, fell on my face, and tore my Achilles tendon. I thought I’d just sprained it. It hurt, but not much. What was strange was that I’d lost control of my leg. It felt plastic. I dragged it down to the bathroom and back up to the Ballroom. I gave my talk about Grandma Naoe and Bakhtin’s carnivalesque. Afterwards, thinking some anti-inflamatories might not be a bad thing for my aching leg, I dropped into the student clinic on the other side of the building afterwards.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said the doctor. “You’re going straight to surgery.” 24 hours and a strong hit of anaesthetic later, I found myself in Ward 72 of the Foothills Hospital, stoned on morphine, with a plaster cast from toe to knee of my right leg.

It’s three days later. I’m supposed to be visiting the Alhambra. Instead, I’m hobbling around my apartment trying figure out how I can kick a nasty codeine dependency. I’ve had lots of kind and worried visitors. I’ve watched three movies, a lot of bad TV, and more episodes of Sex and the City than I’d really care to admit.

“Life,” says my friend Slavia, “is what happens when you think you have everything under control.”