Our 3rd child Camilla Josephine Walker was born on Thursday. She’s awesome, super cute, strong :) It was a little stressful for me to be full-time dad to Emerson and Isabella from Wednesday to Sunday, but we made it through it. I did my first driving since my Achilles rupture!

And on that note, I get my cast off on Thursday – I’m still pretty much pain free, crutches suck, I’m getting a little nervous about physical therapy. Right now my foot is wrapped in it’s protective cocoon. I’m going to feel like a snail out of it’s shell at first :)

Why is it that the Firefox 3 mac UI looks so much better than PC UI?

click to zoom in

Obviously the mac UI looks much closer to OSX Safari – and I guess they couldn’t also take the PC UI closer to OSX Safari without a lot of griping. But show 100 “non-religious” people the two UI options, I’d say the Mac version would be chosen 2 to 1 or more…

Quick update: I’m feeling pretty good. Went out to work @ client location past two days, good to get back out and get off the couch :) Good thing is that if I’m lying or sitting, my foot doesn’t hurt… Crutching around is killing my armpits, and my foot throbs a little when moving around, but at least I can move around. I’m off pain medication for the first time in a few months.

Now my focus turns to taking care of my clients and hope they forgive me for being less than 100% past few months. Oh and of course we have child #3 due to arrive in a week or two! One thing I can say with certainty is that I’m not suffering from boredom :)

Thank you to everyone who has offered help and support. People are great, my spirits are up. Randy Pausch has been an inspiration for how to handle the curveball’s that life throws at you; I really can’t complain that I have it so bad.

My surgery yesterday involved:

• First they gave me a nerve block behind the knee that blocked pain for 24-48 hrs after surgery. A lot of needles while I was semi-conscious—I don’t remember anything about that, but they said I was basically responding to all their questions with sarcastic jokes… I guess the “true me” was coming through :) Then I was given general anesthesia and was out.
• Removal of haglan’s deformity—irregular bone growth on my heel that is the result of my years of achilles tendonitis.
• Flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon transfer—they harvested a tendon behind my big toe to lace into the achilles tendon. Basically they drill a hole in my heel and pull that tendon through, which serves as the new anchor. The bone will grow around it to secure the connection.
• Achilles debridement—small cuts are made to the tendon, which stimulates an in-growth of blood vessels and results in a healing response.

I vomited about 6 times after waking up, went home about an hour later. Went right to sleep for about 5 hrs. Watched the Celtics-Lakers game, then the trouble began.

I tried to fall asleep at midnight, but could only sleep for about 30-45 minutes before the pain woke me back up. I took some of the percoset they prescribed @ 5am, but it didn’t help too much. I struggled through it until 6am when I had Shannon go get valium prescription filled, I was writhing in pain waiting for her to get back. Once I got that stuff in my system, I fell asleep until 9am, and my pain level was lowered.

I called the doc, he called me back around noon and he told me a lot of the post-op pain I’m feeling is attributed to the bone work he did. He said today + tomorrow are going to be rough from a pain standpoint, but from there it should slowly subside.

I go in to see him in 2 weeks to get staples out, and then he’ll recast me for another 2 weeks or so. Then I’ll be in a boot for a few weeks before starting physical therapy, around week 6. He thinks there’s a good chance I’ll get back to 100% percent strength, but that’ll be about a year(!) out…