Ankle-Fusion...A different kind of adventure.

I am now six months post-op since my surgery in December and I wanted to write about my journey.

Last year, exactly a year after my initial accident (and still having no knowledge of what was truly wrong with my shit), I said I wasn't going to bitch about my ankle any longer...a year of bitching about it was enough and it was time to move on.  I really wish that were the case, but truth be told, my thoughts are completely obsessed with the healing and taking extra care, worrying about the pain, just everything that comes with having an ankle difference.  I try to stay as positive as I can, but it's difficult when I want to be so active and I really can't be right now.  I've found a few ankle fusion support groups that have helped me understand that I'm not alone in this.  It's reassuring to hear other people's stories, what they've gone through, where they are, where they're going and tips on feeling better.

So, here's my story.

When I moved to Chiang Mai in February 2012, the first time that I needed to cross the street, I knew at some point that I was going to get hit by a car.  Call it a premonition, call it coincidence, call it whatever, but I could feel it.  I never actively thought about it, but I knew it would happen.  When I moved into my first apartment, I lived a five minute walk to my school.  That's when I started having dreams or visions of my left leg in a cast and me hobbling to work on crutches.  I could literally envision myself walking down the street that led to my school on crutches.  Two months after I started teaching, that's when it happened.  BAM!  Three underage girls on a motorbike slammed right into me.  Frogger: Game Over.

When I got to the emergency room, I was taken to the X-ray room and only had one angle of an X-ray taken.  THE angle that didn't show the fracture in my ankle.  I was diagnosed with a torn ligament, sent home with a cast on my leg and crutches under my arms.  The premonition came true.

July 8, 2012.  Frogger D-Day (left)
Two weeks later (center, right)

Many of my friends told me then, that I would have been better off with a broken ankle.  "Broken ankles heal so much easier than torn ligaments."  "Torn ligaments are so painful and take forever to heal."  These where the things I heard from so many people, which I think ultimately made my problem worse.

By October 2012, I was exploring Angkor Wat on a
misdiagnosed broken ankle.

Take no prisoneeeeeers!  Lara Croft, eat your heart out.
Exploring the magnificent temple of Ta Phrom.

The pain I was feeling for so long, I thought was normal because of what everyone told me about torn ligaments.  Therefore, I put up with it, thinking it would get better in time and wear off.  Thaaaaaat never happened...

A month before I left Thailand, nine months after my accident, I decided to see an orthopedic surgeon because I started to think my ligaments didn't heal properly.  He sent me for another X-ray - of the same, wrong, angle they took in the ER.  Because it was the same angle, again he didn't see the fracture.  He suggested I get an MRI to check out the joints and cartilage.  I decided to wait until I moved to Korea.

By the time I came to Korea in May 2013, I was broke like a joke.  The pay in Thailand is shit if you're trying to save, so I thought I would try acupuncture to help with the pain until I could get in to an orthopedic doctor here.  I really believe the acupuncture made the pain worse.  They did this blood-letting thing that never really helped, and after a few weeks, that's when my pain worsened.  By September, I finally got in to see an orthopedic doctor who only works on ankles and feet and had an MRI.

Some crazy, medieval blood-letting acupuncture...

The news wasn't good.  They took X-rays of all the angles of my ankle, which finally showed the doctor that my ankle was fractured.  The MRI showed the extent of the damage to my joints - they were trashed.  The MRI also showed the necrosis of the bone.  Because I was misdiagnosed, I was walking on a broken ankle for over a year.  That led to my ankle bone collapsing, which cut off the blood supply to the bone, which meant my ankle bone was dead.  I saw two doctors who both told me the same thing: I had one option because the extent of the damage was so severe and chronic arthritis was settling in.  I had to remove my ankle bone and ankle joints, replace the bone with either my hip (hell no!) or cadaver bone, then screw it all together, let it marinate, or fuse - if you will, then I would be pain-free.

I decided to have surgery from the doctor who offered to replace my ankle bone with cadaver bone.  I've seen the extent of extra pain years down the road from using part of your hip to replace bones (my mom had this done for her knee), and I wasn't about to put myself through that.

I had my surgery here in Korea on December 20, 2013 (here's my account of what it's like to stay in a Korean hospital).  I can't say it hasn't been challenging.  Going through major surgery, alone, and in a foreign country is not the easiest thing I've ever done.  The doctors are great here, very thorough and attentive.  They speak English.  And medical care is insanely cheap.  I probably paid at least 10 times less the amount it would have cost me back home...and that's a low-ball guesstimate.  The only bad thing is that Koreans don't use very strong drugs to kill pain.  My first night after surgery was fucking awful.  I think if there would have been a sharp object within reach, I would have cut my leg off.  That might be an exaggeration...but it wasn't pleasant.

Night before surgery:
The one on the left is the right one.

The day after surgery.  Ouch. Ouch. Ouch!

Getting a look at my battle wounds for the first time
while getting the dressings changed in the hospital

Needing to get my dressings changed before getting a hard cast after I made it home from the hospital.
Close to infection :-/

Here I am now, six months post-op and it's slowly getting better.  I don't need crutches when I'm at home walking around, but still do to walk around my little city.  If I do too much, it gets pretty painful (and "too much" isn't very much at all).  This last month, I've been able to do a bit more, which is giving me hope.  Sometimes I get up and have no pain at all, so I'm waiting for that day to come when every day is pain-free.  Through the support groups, I'm finding that this sort of surgery takes a good 18 months to fully heal.  My doctor said about a year.  So I'm definitely on my way ("from misery to happiness again...uh huh uh huh uh huh")!

Ready to journey outside for a bit

For any of you out there that are going through this...I feel your pain - literally.  For any of you thinking about having this kind of surgery, it's a long ass recovery, I'm not gonna lie, but it's slowly becoming a good decision that I made.

My ma came to Korea to help out for a few weeks...
Giving me a Bronco pedicure :)

Bronco blue cast. Bronco orange toes. One Bronco sock.
Lucky 2013 playoff combo!

Sweaty feet?  Just use the "cool" setting aaaaand RESULT!

Just a side note: Obviously my Bronco Blue cast was lucky...it got us through the playoffs.  My doctor took my cast off after we won the Championship game against New England.  Then we lost the bloody Super Bowl.  I would like to formally apologize to my fellow Bronco Country fans.  I should have convinced the doc to keep my cast on until February 3rd.

Battle wounds a few weeks after my hard cast came off

My big sis had some Bronco Nike's made for me for Christmas.
It wasn't until May that I could finally wear
the "Bronco" side...and proudly show off the battle wound!

Five screws and the bone of a Korean dude...
I can now say that I'm part Korean.

Battle wounds as of June 2014.
Coconut oil does WONDERS for scars!
(I only really used it for the first two months after my cast came off)

UPDATE: July 13, 2014 (I meant to post the update a few weeks ago...better late than never!)
As of June 23, 2014 I am crutch freeeeee!  For the first few weeks, I had about the same amount of pain without crutches as I did with one crutch, but it's slowly easing...and also dependent on the weather.  I'm considering a new career as a weather-chick...my leg tells me when there's a storm a' brewin'!

On the left is my X-ray from a few weeks after my surgery when my leg was in a cast.
Inside the red box, you can see a defined white square, which is the Korean bone.
X-ray from June 23rd, the white square is less defined because my bones are fusing with it.
Amazing!

Happy Trails, fellow ankle-fusioners!

One day (hopefully) soon...I WILL walk 500 miles ;)

What did you say? Cross-cultural mix-ups!

Over the last eight years, I have lived in four different countries across three continents.  Each country having it's own unique culture and slang in speech.  I have a tendency to mimic habits and patterns very easily (but learning a new language is quite difficult for me).  I've recently realized how often I cross-reference slang and speech patterns.

For instance, in the United Kingdom, most people greet each other by asking "You alright?".  It's the equivalent of saying "How are you?" in the US.  The first time someone asked me if I was alright, I was going through the checkout at ASDA (that's the UK equivalent of Walmart).  When the checkout chick asked me if I was alright, I said "Yes", with a quizzical look on my face, "do I look sick?".  I started thinking maybe my face had gone pale or something.  It took me about a month or so to get used to being asked if I was alright, and quite a while longer before I started greeting the Britons the same way.  I really started to use it when I began working at Starbucks...then it became a full-blown habit.  In the beginning, I never really knew how to respond to that greeting because I always felt like everyone thought I was sick.  I remember one of my flatmates from university asked me how he should respond to being asked "What's up?" because they don't use that greeting in the UK, and that's how I had previously greeted people.

Although I haven't lived in the UK for about four years now, I still greet people that way because it became a habit and I haven't lived in the US long enough since then to adjust back, I suppose.  I never realized that I still use it until yesterday when I greeted one of my Korean friends that way.  My other Korean friend that I was with thought it was funny that I asked her that when I first saw her.  It got me thinking about other cultural references and habits that I've picked up along the way.

Living in Thailand, I picked up the "grunt".  I found that when Thai's are on the phone or having a conversation, if they agree with something, they make this deep-throated grunt noise.  I realized last weekend that I frequently make the grunt noise...I had to grab a taxi because of a mix-up, idiot mistake, on the subway.  The cabbie didn't speak a lick of English, and I'm one of those dickheads that's lived in Korea for a year and can only say "hi" and "Thank you" in Korean (just recently I've learned "sit down" and also figured out "yes" and "no"...getting there slowly!).  I was using Google Translate to explain where I needed to go, and when he was telling me things (in Korean) that I thought were equal to where I was needing to go, I was grunting at him.  I only realized that I did it when he mimicked my grunt and started laughing.  I realized that I grunt at people ALL the time.  I'm going to work on changing the "grunt" to saying "neh", which is "yes" in Korean.  So instead of sounding like a gorilla, I'll sound like a horse!

I always pick up other people's speech habits and tones and unconsciously mimic them.  So if you ever catch me doing it, I'm not being an asshole...it just happens.  If I grunt at you, I'm saying "yes".  If I ask you if you're alright, I'm greeting you.  It's when I don't say anything at all that you should turn and run the other way ;)

Maybe the next habit I'll pick up is the "khuu, khuu, khuu" of Orson smashing his beetles with a rock...

(^^ POINTS to you, if you get that reference! ^^)

Happy Trails!

P.S. Apologies for not having a song assigned to this blog.  I've got Patsy Cline running through my head (you can thank Kate Austin for that... < more points if you get THAT reference!)...and Patsy has nothing to do with this blog.

Reflections of...the way life used to be

I have officially been teaching in Korea for one full year.  I can't believe how fast this year completely FLOWN by.  We had our end of term party last night - our terms last three months at my academy - and it seems just like yesterday that I was at my first term party last year, meeting all of my new co-workers and staff.

Spring, my Korean co-teacher that started at the same time as me, and I were talking about our students that we've shared and how far they've come.

Spring and I shared the same classes for the first nine months of our contract...one of those classes was one of my favorites.  Unfortunately, this term, they had a different foreign teacher, so I lost that class.  When I had them last year, they were working on their phonics.  Now, they're speaking in complete sentences, working on using transitions and conjunctions!  It's so amazing to witness this and be a part of their learning.  It's not something that I realize everyday, but upon reflection over the last year, I can see how far some of my students have come.  (It's also heartwarming that Spring told me one of the students prefers me as their foreign teacher, not the one they had this term :)

My co-teacher, Spring, and I
November 2013

As frustrating and exhausting that teaching can be sometimes, it's seeing how your students progress and grow that make it all worth it in the end.  I've grown quite fond of some of my little monsters...even though my hair has turned considerably more silver in the process...

These two pics are of my lowest level class at the moment, the same age that the aforementioned class was last year...I hope to see these guys grow and learn as much as the other ones have :)

One of my favorite monsters right now...

The Wild Ones

Happy Trails!

And a song that really has nothing to do with teaching, but it's in my head because of "Reflections"...

Another adventure on the horizon?

I was reading through some old posts looking for something (which I can't remember now...I got distracted - chock that one up to age), but I found my old Wonderful World of Disney post.  Towards the end, I mentioned that perhaps one of my next adventures would be to the Middle East in search of Aladdin his magic lamp...

For the last, probably 6 months or so, I've been in complete limbo.  Not sure of what to do or where to go next.  I feel like I'm constantly fighting the urge to move back to the States and settle down with that comfort and familiarity I sometimes crave.  But I'm confident that if I do go back, within the year I'll have itchy feet again.  I'm also fearful of going back to the States and not being able to find suitable employment and getting stuck temping again.  Fuuuuuuuuck that, son!

So recently, I've been thinking about Dubai...maybe I really will get to meet Aladdin and Abu.

Regardless, I told my manager yesterday that I'm extending my contract through November, so I'll be in Korea until then.  Hopefully fully healed (my ankle is sloooowly on the mend) and can take on a new adventure, head on.

Happy Trails!

Teaching Imagination: 101

The thing I find about teaching is that if you ever get bored, you can start making shit up for pure entertainment value.  And I don't mean make things up about English or whatever subject you're teaching, I try not to (*coughcough*) condone that sort of corruption (unless it's something funny), I mean I make things up about myself to tell the kids because I get tired of them asking me the same questions over and over again.

I have one student in my lowest level class, so he's probably kindy or 1st grade aged, he has pretty good English skills for his level and very good pronunciation skills for a Korean kid.  He's also extremely curious. He's always asking me questions...but he asks me the same questions over and over again.  He's asked me how old I am about four times now.  So, our last conversation went like this:

Kid: "Teacher, how old are you?" (which he blurts out in the middle of the lesson)

Me: "How old do you think I am?"

Kid: "32." (Which is not far off!)

Me: "Nope, you're wrong...I'm 100."

Kid: "100?!"

Me: "Yep, 100 years old."

Kid: "Whoa!"

Me: "I look pretty good for my age, right?"

Kid: "Yes, teacher!"

Keep in mind, I have told him my real age four times already.  You think he'd move on to a different subject...which, he did...

A little while later, the kid asked me if I am a mother.  I replied, "Yes, I am the Mother of Dragons."  (Shout out to Daenerys...the real Mother of Dragons).  That one is going to take a little more convincing though, he just turned around and walked away.

In three of my other classes, older students - maybe 4th or 5th grade - we were learning about mysteries. One of their stories was about hunting for the Loch Ness Monster.  Having been to Loch Ness in Scotland before, I told my classes, with the most serious face I could muster (usually I crack a smile, but this time I kept my cool), that I had seen the Loch Ness Monster and took a picture of her.  Of course they demanded I show them the picture at once.  So for the next class, I went onto to Google, found myself a not-so-obvious fake photo of Nessie, saved it to my phone to show my classes.  I think for the most part they were convinced...at least they didn't respond like they normally do when I make shit up for them...

My "pet" alien...From Flight of the Navigator

We were also talking about aliens in those classes - there was a story about aliens possibly being responsible for building the Great Pyramids of Egypt.  So...in typical Kaycee Teacher fashion, I told them I have a pet alien.  I now need to hunt down a Google image (I keep forgetting and my classes keep reminding me...) of the wee alien from Flight of the Navigator - you know the one who dances to the Beach Boys - to show them a picture of my pet alien.  I've already told them I can't bring him into class, he was homesick and had to go back to his home planet.




My newest tale of late is that I'm trying to convince all of my classes that Captain America is my boyfriend.  I'm pretty sure my older students know I'm full of shit, but as for my lower level classes, that remains to be seen.  This was my conversation the other day:

Kid (not the same kid from above): "Teacher? Captain America is your boyfriend?"

Me: "Yes.  Isn't he handsome?"

Kid: "Captain America really your boyfriend?"

Me: "Yes."

Kid: "Do you kiss?"

Me: "Of course...he's my boyfriend.  Duh."

Kid: (turns around to the rest of the class) "Teacher KISS Captain America!!!"

Class erupts in giggles (from girls) and eeew's (from boys)...

Me: "Dudes, of course I kiss Captain America...he is my boyfriend.  Now get back to work!"  (I was about to lose my straight face...)

One of my 4th grade student's writing homework...She's convinced that Captain America is my dude.
This is what I call "Winning at teaching".

For the last 11 months (wow, I can't believe I've been at my school for 11 months already), I've played up the "April Ghost" scenario (our academy is called April).  Anytime something odd happens in my room, I blame it on the April Ghost.  The door rattling (because kids in the next room are bumping the wall), it's just April Ghost knocking on the door to say "hi".  (I tell the students to open the door to answer it, but there is no one there...they completely freak out).  My mouse cursor moving on the smart TV (because I don't have a mouse pad under it), it's just April Ghost saying "hi".  The white noise the speakers in my room randomly make, it's just April Ghost saying "hi".  One clever kid said the mouse thing was a computer error (he's too clever for his own good). The majority of the others, though, they're always talking about April Ghost.

Korean kids, for the most part, are pretty clever.  And when I tell them these things, they're quick to know I'm making shit up, so I stay with the stories and play them out as much as possible.  If anything, I'm trying to develop their imaginations...at least, that's what I like to tell myself ;)

Happy Trails!

South Korea Fun Facts #'s 3-9

I haven't done any South Korea Fun Facts in a while, so I'm going to go crazy and dedicate a blog purely for SKFF's. 

South Korea Fun Fact #3: Spit

Korean guys LOVE to spit.  It's fucking disgusting.  When I'm walking to and from work, I have to dodge spit pile after spit pile...not only stepping in it, but avoiding my crutches in the spit piles as well - spit is slippery!  Seriously, it's nasty.  Just this morning, I was waiting for the elevator in my apartment building when I heard a guy coming down the corridor, he hacked and spit a loogie...IN THE APARTMENT CORRIDOR!!  Then he joined me on the elevator.  Ugh!!

South Korea Fun Fact #4: Hair perms

It's almost like South Korea never advanced from the 80's with regards to hair perms.  They're so popular here...and not really in a good way.  They're so popular that when I go from having a straight-hair week to letting my hair go naturally curly, staff and students at my school always ask me if I've had a perm. 

South Korea Fun Fact #5: Car Lemmings

South Koreans are notorious for not embracing individuality.  They generally try to look the same (Korea is the country to come to if you're looking for plastic surgery); they rarely try to stand out in a crowd.  This even includes the color of their cars.  I would say about 85-90% of Korean's cars are either white, black, or silver.  If they're not white, black, or silver, they don't stray too far from those colors...maybe cream or gold.  Rarely do you see red cars, blue cars, green cars.  I knew my Korean co-teacher was a badass the moment I saw her car: sparkly orange.  Hers is the only car of that color that I've seen in Korea.

South Korea Fun Fact #6: Hello? Is It Me You're Looking For?

Because South Korea is a relatively small country with a relatively high population, it's built towards the sky.  The cities and suburbs are full of high rises which are full of intercoms.  This includes apartments.  Every apartment comes with it's own intercom speaker that, every now and then, likes to wake you up at 7am on a Saturday or Sunday morning with an important Korean announcement.  I just hope they're not announcing the apocalypse...I wouldn't understand a word of what was being said, therefore having no time to get my zombie apocalypse plan set in motion.  I'd be fucked.

The high rises of Hwajeong

South Korea Fun Fact #7: Smelly Kimchi

I'm not the biggest fan of Korean food.  It's either too spicy, too pickled, too bland, or too sweet for my taste.  But Koreans loooooooove their kimchi.  Spicy, garlicky, fermented cabbage.  They even have special refrigerators for it.  And it stinks.  When Koreans eat a lot of kimchi, which is pretty much all the time, the smell just flows from their pores and is gag-worthy.  Especially the older generation, I'm sorry to say they reek of smelly kimchi.  There's nothing worse than stepping onto a stuffy subway car crammed with older folks who smell like kimchi.  I need to invent something to insert up my nose to block out the smell of kimchi.

South Korea Fun Fact #8: You Can't Sit Here (said in the voices of the kids on the school bus in Forrest Gump)

Koreans generally don't like sitting next to me on the subway (I don't really like to sit next to them because of SKFF #7...).  If the subway car seats are full when I am sitting and a spot opens up at the next stop, nine times out of ten, Koreans who sit next to me will get up and move to the other open seat.  At first, I was slightly offended, and wondered if I have a weird American smell that they don't like.  But after a while (and when I realized they do this to my foreign friends as well), I didn't mind...actually, I was kind of grateful that I could stretch out a bit.  When I was coming back from the doctor last week, there was an open seat next to me.  Two ladies, not together, one by one stepped onto the subway, looked at me, looked at the seat, then walked to the next subway car were there were more open seats without any foreigners.  Whatever...more room for my ass!

And finally...
South Korea Fun Fact #9: An Endangered Species: The Book Reader

Koreans love technology.  It's the most connected nation in the world.  I read a percentage, which actually seemed quite low - and I can't remember the percentage, maybe 60%, of the amount of Koreans that have smart phones.  Even some of my students, who are like, 8 years old, have iPhone's or Samsung Galaxy's.  Sure, they're probably recycled from the parent's, but still!  When you step on the subway or bus, 95% of the people on it have their heads down in their smart phones playing games.  They even carry around extra batteries for their phones.  A rare occasion indeed is seeing someone with an actual, real, page-turning book on the subway.  When you see it, you have to document it.  It's like seeing an endangered animal in the wild.  Does it really exist?  Absolutely...and I only believe it because I photographed it.

An endangered species: The Subway Book-Reader

For South Korea Fun Fact #1, check out Doctor, my eyes... and you can learn about Fan Death.

For South Korea Fun Fact #2, check out It's a nice day, for a...white wedding and you can learn about smoking.

Happy Trails!

Wasting Time...in the Andaman Sea - A Photo Blog

Dreaming of sandy beaches and clear, turquoise waters, I bring you my newest photo blog of the few weeks I spent lounging on Koh Ngai in the Andaman Sea.

After I completed my TEFL certificate in February 2012, it was time to find a job.  Having imagined myself teaching wee Thai monsters in the mornings and spending lazy afternoons on a palm tree studded beach with a Mai Thai in my hand, I left Chiang Mai and headed south to Krabi to look for work.  I spent a few days in Krabi learning how to ride a motorbike and dropping off my CV at the schools in the area.  Meanwhile, my friend Laudi, who was a fellow student on my TEFL course, was living on Koh Ngai - a small island off the coast of Trang - with her diver-instructor boyfriend.  She invited me to come stay with them while I waited to hear about any job offers.  Her friend Laura was coming to visit from the Netherlands.  We spent the next few weeks lounging on hammocks and snorkeling in the beautiful Andaman Sea.

Catching the longtail boat from Trang to Koh Ngai

Sailors: Laudi, me, and Laura
(No, I wasn't intentionally flipping everyone off, I'm just no good at throwing "peace" signs)

Tu, preparing the fishing gear...I think.

First glimpse of Koh Ngai

Hanging out with the divers of Ronan Dive

Our first night, we headed to Koh Ra to snorkel while divers of Ronan Dive headed out for a night dive...
Overnight camping on a boat!

Beautiful Koh Ra

Storm brewing over Koh Ra...it was a doozy!

Waking up on a boat to this
Sunrise on the Andaman

From Koh Ra, we headed to Koh Rok, a national park

Beautiful beach of Koh Rok

Koh Rok

Looking out from Koh Ngai

Koh Ngai sunset

Sometimes, I sing on beaches

Enjoying a nice evening on the beach of Koh Ngai

Unfortunately, while I was in the south, I never received a call regarding a job in Krabi.  So, running out of money (because the south of Thailand is a bit more expensive than the north), I headed back to Chiang Mai...and 24 hours later was offered a job.  About three weeks after that, I received a call from a school in Krabi.  I'm still cursing myself that I didn't back out of my contract and head back to the beach.  Hindsight is always a bitch.

If you dig solitude and quiet beach life, check out Koh Ngai.  Additionally, if you want to learn how to dive, here is a link for my friend's dive shop, Ronan Dive.

Happy Trails!

And what's a beach blog without a little Jack?