How to Recover From an Injury with Elegance and Style

The other day I saw my doctor for a follow-up on my foot injury. He rushed in wearing scrubs and one of those cute little surgeon's caps, took one look at my foot and said, "This looks good. Let's get you a boot!"

Initially, I was thrilled. It's big and protective and comes with a pump to inflate it with air, so it's pretty comfortable to wear. However, it looks like this:

Aircast XP Walker

Sigh.

As if that's not bad enough, it's described as "extra pneumatic," whatever that means. Are there different degrees of pneumatic-ness? I always thought "pneumatic" was like "pregnant," as in, you either are or you're not. But I digress.

The next day, Derek e-mailed me a photo that pretty much sums up what I think I must look like:

Hey V! he writes. Please see the attached file - it is a recent picture of you, cleaning up the mean streets!

See! Even my husband thinks I look bionic. Or pneumatic. I spent the rest of the afternoon scouring the Internet for "How to wear an Aircast" and "How to stop looking like RoboCop" but finding only this:

Q: What should I wear to look better with this ugly boot on? For pants, because of the size of the boot, I have to wear the boot over the leg of pants, which makes it really stand out.

A: Confidence looks best. If you walk around embarrassed about your boot or sad then it shows. You have to be able to joke about it and be very confident.

Judging from this response, it looks like I have four more weeks of smiling and wearing stretchy pants. I guess I can live with that.