I love my kitty but...

...Seriously this morning I could have killed her.


She looks sweet and innocent but don't be fooled, she's plotting her nefarious deeds as we speak.

Picture this it's a little after 6am. I wake up for work after hitting the alarm clock a few times and drag myself into the laundry room to get my clothes out of the dryer. Before I ever begin I feed the cats. I know they're hungry. They flood in and get to eating. I start pulling clothes out the dryer. I get about halfway through when suddenly out of the blue Claire goes absolutely freaking spastic. You know how when cats get surprised on hardwood floors their little legs just go everywhere as they try to take off. You know that scrabbling sound as the claws dig into the floor. Okay imagine that on my bad f-ing foot. The pain was pretty intense, more so than it probably should have been. And that early in the morning as soon as I looked down and saw all the blood I started bawling. Just out right huge crocodile tears as I pitifully and somewhat stupidly ask her why why would she hurt me like that. As if she's going to open that fuzzy little mouth and go, 'Well Cindal it's like this..." After I calmed down enough to stop sobbing I got angry. She knew it. She went into the bedroom and hopped up next to DH and started purring, "Look at me I'm cute, I'm innocent, see?" Uh-uh wasn't buying it. So Dh got awakened by Claire getting a rump swat by a crazy crying lady in the wee hours of the morn. After that Claire gave up on the innocent act and did what she should have done in the first place, hide. I cleaned the gouges, put ointment on them, but couldn't get them to stop bleeding before I had to put on my shoe and go to work. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
She would of course pick three days before I'm supposed to go to the foot doctor to do this. It's like she freaking knows. It's my wedding day all over again in that aspect. To make sense of that here's a short flashback.
 2 Days before my wedding. Playing video games trying not to stress, Claire's asleep on my chest. She wakes up and decides to move to the bed, but instead of hopping down and hopping back up she takes the short cut. Up my chest and over my shoulder. Her foot slips and cuts a 7 inch long slice from my collarbone into my cleavage. My wedding dress had a corset top. I managed to mostly cover it up with makeup but it stung like a mother since it hadn't completely scabbed over by the day. I wasn't that mad then. I knew it was an accident. This morning...there was no rhyme or reason for behavior, no excuse.
So now I'm sure the foot doctor is going to be concentrating on my 'mauling' instead of what actually needs attention and I'll have to explain what happened and get lectured on the proper way to take care of a wound blah blah blah. As if this situation wasn't difficult enough. As if I didn't have enough foot pain. Stupid Cat.

Check it, the damage as of this evening. Small cut on my big toe. Puncture in the middle upper area. Three very long cat gouges from the center to the edge, the middle one is pretty darn deep. On the up side just a little bit of bruising left on the outside of the big toe, and on the knot(which rebruised on friday thanks to a 14 hr shift)

What Fresh Hell

I don't know what to do with myself.
My bad foot is acting up something horrible. To say that it scares me would be an understatement. I panicked on Monday. Full fledged, took my sock off and started to cry, panic.
My foot has never been something pretty to look at. I remember very specifically this one time my mom and I went shoe shopping. I was a teenager, probably looking for dress shoes. I was sitting down with the socks off while she went to go get me a different size and I happened to look down at the mirrors. I stared almost stunned at how ugly it looked, I'd never really thought about it, never really looked, never been subconscious until that moment. By the time she came back my eyes were filled with unshed tears and I was shaking. 'It looks so different," I mumbled, "So bad. It'll never be normal. Why can't it be normal?"  My mother, usually so composed, broke into full blown sobs right there in the shoe store. I was so shocked by her reaction and my very basic need to have her be happy that I stomped on the feelings I had at the moment and tried to console her. "It's okay, don't cry. I can walk, at least I can walk. It doesn't have to be pretty, just as long as it works. And it does okay, so don't cry."
Remembering that day and the fear I feel now brings those tears back. When I took my sock off Monday night after a day of hobbling on it, it looked worse than it has ever been with one exception. A huge blue black bruise circled my 'knot' spreading down towards my big toe out as far as my third toe and halfway down the foot. Darker purple ribbons of color snaked throughout and it was swollen everywhere. The pictures do not show the full extent of how badly it looked and they certainly do not capture my panic. For you see I didn't do anything to it, but walk. I didn't bump it, stub it, or drop anything on top of it. It appeared with no seeming cause or correlation. And the pain that comes with it is nothing to scoff about it. A heavy blanket on top hurts. The new orthopedic shoes I bought last weekend. Yeah you can forget about it, I can't wear them. I'm so lucky I bought three pairs of shoes on that last trip, because only the very last pair I picked up the ones I almost didn't buy are the ones I can wear.

I have been icing it every day twice a day, once after work and once before bed. As you can tell it has improved significantly, but its still swollen and there are still those odd dark ribbons of color on my toe. And it's still very tender. And that knot isn't the only place it's hurting, it isn't even the worse place it hurts. My ankle is so stiff and painful. The tendon that goes down the outside of my ankle is where I feel the most pain and its so swollen there I can't even see that tendon anymore. I limp constantly, wincing from the pain. But most of all worse than the pain is that I'm still scared. The thought of going to the doctor for it scares me. The thought of surgery scares me. The thought of amputation being suggested scares me. The thought of a wheel chair scares me. The thought of never being able to walk scares me. I am so scared right now, I don't know what to do.
This development is making me question so many things. I wonder if I can keep working. I wonder if its even right of me at all to want children, what if this is genetic and not positional as my mother's doctor suggested and I pass on this terrible burden to a child. What if pregnancy is the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back and I can no longer walk? What if there's a reason we're infertile? What if by the time I'm 30 I'm stuck in a wheelchair?
Ontop of all this, Dh's doctor bills came in. He owes a little over a 1,000 dollars. It's going to have to come out of the Fund. In a few days it will drop from almost 5k to 4k. If I do have to go to the doctor that will also have to come out of the fund. I'm never going to reach my goal. The more that has to come out, the more I have to work, the more damage I do, the more scared I get that something is going to have to give and I don't know what it'll be. My body or my heart.