A Quarter Inch of Happiness

My friend, the gal I previously mentioned that could write a cat blog, keeps me on my toes. She sends me emails with blog REQUESTS. I don't know if that is legal in bloggy world, but I allow her to do it. More often than not, I pacify her (lest she stop reading my blog) and do whatever she tells me. So she asked for an update on Ella, our goddess of drama and gorging herself on food. She's taking Depakote for her epilepsy. And that is that.

She's having seizures, but they are...less noticeable. She doesn't have grand Mal seizures, her's are a flutter of her eyes and losing a few seconds. Before the meds they happened a dozen times a day. Maybe more. Always more if she didn't get enough sleep or was doing math with mom stressed. So I guess she's better off. I think. It's only a few times a day. Ugh. But that is NOT what this post is about...

Before we went to Ethiopia, Ella was getting her shoes on and came running into the kitchen. She stood in front of me, quite determined, and said, "I want another leg. I want two feet. Like Eli and Everett has. I want a foot like this 'real' foot I have."

Oh dear me. What to do, what to say. I've been dreading this day. So, I start with, "Well, why do you want another foot like that?"

"Because I want wear flip flops."

Relief. This isn't so serious after all.

"Wha...Hmmm. You've got flip flops," Me, leading her to the Birkenstock sandals that are strappy.

"No, I want it go in my toes. Like Everett and Eli have. I show you." She runs off to show me a 'true' flip flop. I obviously already know what a flip flop looks like and that indeed it does go between your toes. Unfortunately, her prosthetic foot is a mold of toes, all one piece, and honestly in pretty bad shape. At that point, the toes were just barely hanging on.

She runs, breathless, into her bedroom with a flip flop on her right foot. A camo flip flop. "See?" she says, "Between my toes. I want this."

It goes on and I promise that we can look for some shoes with a thingy between the toes. I'm planning to just cut the 'thingy' and have straps holding the shoes on around the ankle or something. I'm pretty crafty, you see. Or ghetto, depends on who you talk to.

Months pass, we go to Ethiopia and come home. We are busy now. Real busy. And Ella's toes are held on with a variety of colored duct tape. The replacement foot we ordered before I left for Africa never arrived. An insurance glitch that would get fixed in August. This was June. So we left that leg man and found another.

This guy is the man of Ella's dreams. He took one look at her sad leg and said she needed a replacement leg, not just a foot. And he ordered her a foot with toes that are separated for flip flop wearing gals like her. She loves him, I think. She drew him a picture with cats on it. She adores him. And we went shopping for flip flops that day. Even though it took about a month for the leg to get done. She can't keep the stinkin' shoes on, but she wears them when I let her.