One small step for Arley. One giant step for Arley's dignity.

For the past six weeks, I have been going down the stairs backwards. After the surgery, I lost use of my hip flexors, so I couldn't stick my foot out far enough to clear the stair and spent many a frustrating hour standing in front of a staircase wiggling my toes to try to get them off the edge. No dice. So, since being sent home from the hospital, I have been rappelling my ass down the stairs like I'm some kind of ridiculous mountain climber, except instead of a mountain, it's the 30 stairs in our heritage house and instead of a rope, I'm clinging to my crutches and a railing that my mom and dad had installed in the back staircase. There's a reason "Danger" is my middle name; (because Lord knows the first thing I need is another middle name. There are some members of Spanish royalty with fewer middle names than I have).

But today, success! My physiotherapist took me to a staircase near the physio ward and held tight on to my shorts so I couldn't fall, (though given that I'm over six feet tall --why do I keep mentioning that?-- and 165 pounds and she's probably 5 foot 4 and 100 pounds, I'm not sure exactly what she would have done if I had fallen), and worked with me until I was able to fling my foot off the edge and plant it on the next stair. I cheered and my physio cheered and the nurse heading up the stairs with a tray of Timmy Ho's gave me side-eye, since the noise echoed in the concrete stairwell.

This is a big step for two reasons:
1) My mom had a dream awhile back that I was getting married and had to descend the stairs in my wedding dress backwards. I, too, was worried that I was going to spend the rest of my life trying not to break my neck on all the staircases of the world.

2) For the past six weeks, my poor mom has had to wait on me hand and foot; (thanks mom! Love you!) Get me a drink! Get me some frozen grapes! Make me some toast with just a little peanut butter and no margarine under the peanut butter and a little bit of Nutella but not too much because I feel like a fat-ass sitting in bed so long even though my physio says I need to eat more so I don't suffer bone-density loss! So, even though I suspect that my jeans still fit by sheer virtue of the fact that there was 30 trecherous stairs separating me and the ice cream, it is a good thing that I can now venture downstairs, prepare myself something to eat, and bring a plate upstairs to my lair. Now my mom won't feel like she's trapped in that scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Sally spends three minutes ordering her meal. Maybe I will even be able to "cook a meal" (read: heat up a Lean Cuisine and turn on the Food Network so I can pretend I'm eating something not made of pressed chicken and sulphides) someday soon. Hah.