A Lot Has Happened

Well Howdy, it's been a while since I wrote last...sorry about that but it's been a bit of a gong show here this spring...with this crappy weather, the worst spring we have ever seen in Alberta, it feels, even today, like we will never see green grass and leaves again...It's snowing here for the past couple of days...and while last week we had a few nice days where there were a few bare spots of brown earth showing through the foot of snow still on the ground, it has all been buried underneath another foot of heavy wet snow in the past two days...while it is mild...sitting just below freezing...it is very depressing.and the mud is something else....

So I think the last time I wrote we had been putting the cows through the system for vaccinations and just a couple of days ago we ran them through again to sort them into different groups to put with the bulls. It is a lengthy process...the way we do it...we spend a few days reviewing each cows history, how good her calves were with different bulls and determine the best bull to mate her too this year....we make a list which also shows the number of her calf this year..because when we sort we have to make sure the cow and her calf end up in the same pen together...so we take all the babies and put them in the barn...for safe keeping...and then the rodeo starts, sorting the cows...in the mud, where your boots get stuck in the clay and you can't move...as the cows whiz past you, covering you in muck and shit in a parting shot....they act like you are going to slit their throats...and they are all bellowing so we can't hear one another and have to shout...we started at 10 am...and were finished by 7:30 pm, only stopping for 30 minutes to have a quick lunch. but it got done and we didn't have any screw ups this year...

So we did all that on Wednesday and then Thursday morning it started snowing...and Robert had to deal with the multiple groups of cattle to feed and bed now...  Of course the whole job is made worse by the fact that all our corrals are over 16 yrs old and are starting to rot...broken boards and rotten posts, most of the gates don't swing anymore because the post they are mounted to is rotten or tilted..and the gate has to be drug along the ground...not so easy  when there is two feet of ice built up and frozen shit, or like this past week.... inches and inches of mud with frozen earth below.

We walked to the house at the end of the day like our feet were in cased in cement shoes.

I had a doctors appointment on Tuesday...and it was enlightening.  to say the least...you know how I have been complaining but my ankle since last summer, well I went to the doc to find out the result of the MRI I had gone for..and while the outcome wasn't what  I had hoped for...it has given me  a bit of focus, if nothing else...

I fractured my ankle last summer....the break and subsequent rough abnormal patching at that point, along with indications of a severe sprain...in the ligament and tendons...and am even now suffering from tendinitis in two of the major tendons of  the foot...

My doctor, seemed surprised although it was he who had first had it exrayed when it first happened...he told me I had probably pulled a muscle...take some tylenol and rest it...and I have complained about it to him on three other visits...in which he didn't even remove my sock to look at it...neither did the other two doctors I complained to .....

so on Tuesday he asks me...which orthopedic doctor did I send you to?
I said...none...
he said, I sent you for physio therapy though didn't I?
and I said. No....I have complained about it to you and others and you have just blown me off, like I was just a whiner...

to which he says, well its tendinitis, and there is not much we can do for that....but if there is arthritis there as well, which the MRI seems to indicate...they will probably fuse your ankle bones together...to stabilize it and get rid of the pain....

and he said that, like it was a threat or he was trying to scare me into not complaining about the pain anymore... I am afraid I was a bit emotional by this point.   Because I had pinned so much hope on the MRI pointing to something definitive...and it would just be a matter of fixing it and I would be better... and when he saw that I was crying he said " C-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e, what is the matter?  and Robert spoke up and asked a question...the doc answered but that made me cry more...and he said "Now why are you crying" and I finally got Pissed Off enough to say....because I can take the diabetes shit, the blood pressure shit and the LUPUS/Not LUPUS crap....but this not being able to walk and the constant pain in my ankle is the last straw...and the thought of having this problem the rest of my life is unbearable... I have wild crazy thoughts of taking a sledge hammer and breaking it clean in half so that you will have to fix it..that is how desperate I have become and you just blow it off...I have never had trouble with my feet ever...and you all just think this problem I have had for over eight months now i because I am fat...but I knew it wasn't...

Robert asked for a copy of the MRI report...and it says a lot more on it than what he even disclosed to us... Robert has asked me to find another doctor... ours is only in the clinic one day per month now, since he wants to retire..
and it shows.

so now we just wait for the clinic to contact an orthopedic guy and make an appointment.  But I do not hold out much hope of finding a solution since my weight seems to be a stumbling block for most of these doctors.

I just want to point out that, as livestock owners, if we had a cow that we allowed to walk around for eight months on a broken foot, we would have been reported to SPCA....but we would never allow that anyway...either a vet would have been called to cast the leg or she would have been shot and put out of her misery....but it's apparently okay for the fat lady to walk around on a fractured ankle and perform all her farm duties...and I'm not suppose to complain...to say that I am a little disgust would be an understatement.

to be continued.....