I know I’m supposed to be patient.

I know healing takes time. I know the skin graft was only a week ago. I know
that my appointment later this week will tell me whether it took, and until
then, worrying about it changes nothing. I know all of this. I have been told all of this. I have told myself all of this.

And yet.

I woke up today with a bad attitude. Not a “something specific happened” bad
attitude—just the bone-deep exhaustion of still doing this. Still non-weight
bearing. Still waiting. Still wondering if this time my body will cooperate or if we’re heading into another complication, another setback, another round of medical whack-a-mole.

There’s a gap between knowing something and feeling it. I know I should be
grateful for how far the wound has come. I know Integra and skin grafts exist and that’s kind of miraculous. I know I have good doctors and Sarah holding
everything together and a couch to be stuck on that’s reasonably comfortable.

I know all that. And also: I’m tired. I’m so tired of my ankle being the main character of my life. I didn’t audition for this. I don’t want this role.

The frustrating part is that the bad attitude doesn’t help. It doesn’t make
the healing go faster. It doesn’t change the outcome of Thursday’s
appointment. It just makes the waiting harder, and makes me less pleasant to
be around, and makes Sarah have to manage both my ankle and my mood, which
isn’t fair to her.

She’s been so patient with me through all of this. Through the fear and the
frustration and the days when I can’t find anything positive to say about any of it. She doesn’t deserve grumpy couch Dylan. She gets him anyway, because
that’s who showed up today.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion here. I’m not going to pivot to gratitude or
find the silver lining. Some days you just wake up tired of being the person
with the thing, and that’s the whole post.

I’ll let you know how Thursday goes.