With one faulty step
An ankle can be shattered
And a wandering girl
Becomes a wandering cripple
- Zach (my poet of a brother)
The meditation retreat ended on March 4th and much has happened since I last wrote. On the eighth day of the retreat I broke my ankle. Surgery was needed and I now have a metal pin in my ankle with five screws drilled into my bone to hold it in place. I stayed in the hospital for 9 days from December 18th through the 26th. I'm actually lucky I didn't break it during the three months prior: climbing Mt. Kinabalu, trekking in the jungle with no access to a phone or medical facilities or while learning to ride a motorbike in Thailand. It was a fairly good situation to break an ankle in. The temple and the doctor took good care of me and after 4 weeks in a cast and some limping I'm walking almost normal and the pain is almost entirely gone. In one year the pins need removed and I'm tentatively planning on Thailand for the surgery considering the staggering price of health care in America.
