TMI

I have a bruise exactly this color.

I know. I know.  You could have lived happily for a long time without hearing about that.  But it IS colorful. And as it fades, it marks my return from uncertain footing to almost normal. I have a proud affection for this bruise, which extends from ankle to mid-thigh.  I can't see or even imagine my fabulous new knee, but that bruise is a badge of honor.  Proof that something happened here.

This is the Me. Me. Me. Report for Thursday.  It's been 10 full days since the surgery.  That time while not in any way dreadful and not nearly as painful or unpleasant as one would expect is kind of ... Weird.  It's passed very quickly in a telescope of days.

Here's what I can do now:  I can walk down the driveway all the way to the street.  I can go up and down stairs and it's no big deal.  I can flex my new knee to 92 degrees -- unless, it seems, I just did that and then I can only get about 85 out of it.  Because the new knee says yes, but the old leg says no.  (At least that's my interpretation.)  I can shower.  I can dress myself.  I can't dance.  Don't ask me.    

I suppose Doc Hammer is the only one who can pronounce my operation a success, but I gotta tell you, I'm super pleased.  I feel lucky.  I feel blessed.

I feel lazy.

This report has been brought to you by Ms. 3200 Words in the NaNoWriMo Challenge.  That's some words short.  A few.   Um.  Like. 46,800 short.  That would be 2300 a day?  And in the place where my ambition lies?  There's a big fat old percocet saying, "Hey. Dude. Let's take the day off and read some more of that cool Bill Bryson book."  I'm currently using all my bouncy can-do to bend my knee towards 93 degrees.  But I know that's about to change.  Know. It.

In the meantime, let me take a moment to express incredible gratitude to Bill -- first of all and forever -- for giving a first class demonstration of how to keep that "for worse" and "in sickness" oath he took back in our youth.  He's been "all about me" every bit as much as anyone could ever hope.  And nice about it, too.  John has been 100% solicitous and helpful and kind as well.  (Cujo hasn't been all that great.  He's a cat.  He's been hoping I'll die so he can eat me.  But I'm pretending not to notice that.)  And my friends!  I have such fabulous friends.  Food, flowers, cards, calls, visits, sympathy, empathy, kindness.  You people are the best people anywhere.  And that's a fact.

Thank you.  Everybody.  Thank you.  I feel very nurtured.  I feel very loved.

And bit by bit, as I kick my drug habit, I'm coming back.  First the blog.  Next the NaNo.  Soon the dancing.

But let's never forget that for one brief, shining moment, I had a sunset on my leg!

I Second That Emotion!

 Ow. 

But the good news is, I'm doing very well.  For example, my right knee feels marvelous.  My  head is fine (fuzzy but fine), my arms are quite good, and all my multiple choice of body parts are just peachy.

I'm repaired.  I'm home where the lake is wild and windy.  I'm ready for NaNoWriMo -- and only (yeek) five days behind.  I'll write more about what a uniformly excellent experience I had at The Cleveland Clinic and how Hammer, MD and I are both very satisfied with how things went.  But first a rerun post so I can slam down some words on my lagging novel.  Yay!

My Physical Therapist is coming to visit around noon. I think I shall call her Ms. OOF.

Here's an early post about living next to Lake E from the Like Water For Water blog.

On June 17, 2005 everything changed.

Before we moved to the lake, I dreamed of living near big water. An ocean, maybe. I'd savored a hefty handful of beach vacations, jealously guarding every moment of silent staring. Listening to the tattoo of waves breaking on sand. Tracking gulls and pelicans. Just soaking it up. Back then we lived in a nice old house. It had a nice old garden and small space for a new one which was so terrifically terrible for the planting of anything that I froze just considering what might be done with it. So, we engaged a garden designer and as part of the getting acquainted phase of the plan, she asked what I wanted in a garden. "Uh," I offered tentatively. "I always wanted to live near water." A professional, she didn't say, "Well, maybe you should move." She suggested that a fountain on the garage wall, which was, attractively enough, brick would allow the sound of water at least.

It did. She found us a lion-headed fountain which my neighbor named Bert after Bert Lahr in The Wizard of Oz. Bert got the job done. Provided the sound of water. Lulled me for years in that upland patch of pretty flowers. But I never stopped wanting big water. And it was so tantalizingly near, yet so far away behind the barrier of habit and convenience of living thirty years in the same lovely town. But we did it. On June 17, 2005 we moved to the shore of Lake Erie, ten yards from the water's edge, eight-point-eight miles and a hundred light years from our old familiar place. Bert came along, but when the pump died, we didn't replace it. Now we plant him full of flowers. A kind of reverse role from his old garden self. 

Of the sound of water, there is now a plentiful supply.

 

Gotta Love Those Knees.

I love this kid.  I don't actually recognize her as me, but if I really concentrate, I can take myself back and look at the world through her grubby little attitude.

She spent a lot of time on that step and, to the best of my recollection the world always looked and smelled pretty wonderful to her from there.

Just then, before the camera interrupted her, she was looking down the walk, across the street, towards an embankment that marked the edge of Eddie Grose's yard.

This embankment was covered in honeysuckle. When the honeysuckle bloomed, you could pinch the end of the blossom and very carefully draw out the little stem that ran through it.  Right there on that stem would be a single, pulsating, iridescent drop of nectar.  Like treasure.  Like gold. The world would give little Annie things like that, for free.

The street wasn't much.  A narrow lane of crumbling asphalt, trailing off to gravel along its sides. (A barefoot child memorizes the texture of every patch of ground she walks on. Barefoot Mindfulness, I'd call it. The gravel, especially when it got pitched up into the grass, was notable.) The sun would come up over Eddie Grose's house and everything would be shimmering gold and green.  Summer with no school.  And shoes only for church and going to the store.  Yay for that.

But I was writing about the knees.  Those perfectly functioning, under-appreciated, taken-utterly-for-granted knobby, dirty, skinned up, little knees.

Not that Annie wasn't reminded ad nauseum about how lucky she was to be young and agile.  There seemed to be no end of ancient people roaming about, hovering around, to tell a kid how lucky she was to be young and not old.  They should have saved their breath.  A kid, even one as essentially cooperative and anxious to please as this one, is not programmed to get that.  It doesn't compute.  Frankly, I don't think it should. 

I actually believe that the perfect time to understand all that, at last, happens to be right now.

I am struck by how gifted that child was.  How completely whole.  Her body ticked like clockwork, a billion tiny, unsupervised functions in their dance of health and vitality.  Nothing was broken. Nothing was tired.  Nothing hurt unless she skinned it or ran it through poison ivy.  She moved in a cloud of unconscious well being.  She was blessed and couldn't comprehend it.  But she knew a good blessing when she saw one.

I'm glad for that.  Glad for her.  Glad for me.  Glad for a moderately unblemished childhood. I had, in fact, a childhood happier than anyone deserves as long as any child, anywhere doesn't get one of those as its birthright.  It was pure luck.  Pure grace.

So, time passed.  I don't live in that house anymore, can't go back to that step again, and now I've wrecked those knees.  Or time, genetics, or something -- something I did or didn't do, or didn't even have a great deal of control over; one or all of the above -- wrecked them for me.  They're done. It hurts them simply to be.  And, just in time, science and medicine have an excellent plan to replace them for me.

I embrace that possibility.  I'm excited to consider it.  I'm optimistic.  I've done what I can to get ready.  I come to the first of the operations with confidence.  I'm ready.  I'm actually not very scared or sad.

But I don't expect my replaced knees to be good as new.

You see, I had new knees once and, disregarding the warnings of my elders, I enjoyed the heck out of them.  Or at least the kid in the photo did. 

For that, I feel very grateful.  And still quite lucky to be me.

If He Is A Carpenter, I'm Not His Lady

A quick, preliminary, aside:  I have gone to such PAINS to procure that photo of a hammer with my own technology and iPhone camera, and for some unknown reason, I can't keep the photo and the text side by side just now.  

The good people at Blogger have a message up that they are disabling image uploads for two hours at 5 p.m. for maintenance.  And what I'd like to say to the Blogger folks is: I certainly hope so. 

Enjoy that big gaping space right above here, people.  I can do nothing for it.  

Back to The Carpenter. 

I've been promising to write about the upcoming knee surgery, and up until now, there hasn't been much to tell except my breathless, blow-by-blow description of how faithfully I've been working out. 

Faithfully.  Let me just say:  Faith-fu-lee.  

And also I've shared my observation that the happy folk at the Cleveland Clinic seem to take pleasure in referring to my procedure as "carpentry."  Which is so clever and reassuring.  (I wonder what is the emoticon for sour, sardonic sarcasm.  A wink and a frown, maybe.  '-{   I do not know.  Please pretend I typed in something that conveys that.) 

This morning, though, there's some news.  I can now report on my pre-surgery meeting with The Guy.  

M.D. Hammer, MD, we like to call him.     

Here goes:  To this man -- this very skilled and competent man -- I am a knee.  Our relationship, going forward, is that for him, for us, it's entirely Guy + Knee.  Hopefully during the actual operation it will be Guy + Knee + an avid interest in the vital signs of the Knee Owner.  But for Doctor Hammer & Me, the electricity will never be there.

To be frank, I didn't actually expect him to sweep me off to Bermuda for lunch or anything, but I was secretly hoping for a "Wow.  You've been working out five days a week?  You rock!"  But no. 

I showed up with my carefully composed list of questions.  And he answered each one with a range that went, pretty much like this.

Me:  "When will I be able to climb stairs?"

Dr. H:   "It depends.  Some people leave the hospital walking.  Some people leave the hospital dead."  

Okay.  I'm exaggerating about the dead thing.  But it went on, kind of like that. Me, being worriedly specific.  Dr. H., being diplomatically vague.  It reminded me of the days when I would take the car in for servicing.  I would pour out my woeful tale of gauges, rattles, odd ticks, and screeches and the mechanic would let me ramble on for awhile and then respond to my woeful enumerations with a glassy stare and then ask, sympathetically '-{ , "Your name?"  

And also, to be fair, this is just about how I'd like our surgeon/patient relationship to be.  For example, if the doc cared about me as much as I care about me, he'd probably break down and cry in the operating room and not be able to wield his saw or anything.  

He kept saying, "It's your knee" with the implication being that my instincts would be in its best interests.  Yeah.  Right.  If he knew how many times I skinned this knee in third grade, he would probably take it away from me and not give it back.  

Oh.  Wait.

Right.

Anyway, the rest of my pre-surgery appointments are day after tomorrow.  I'll keep you informed.  If I can get informed.  I hear you're not allowed to have your toenails polished for the surgery.  This is BAD NEWS.   But I was afraid to ask Dr. Hammer about that.  I thought he might take my knee away from me.

Oh. Wait.

Right.

On My Knees

NOT a post about prayer.

My mother always warned me I'd be sorry for:

Running.
Going barefoot all the time.
Getting chilled.
Getting wet.  And then chilled.
Not wearing a hat.  Ever.  And getting my head chilled.
Eating nuts ... which, of course, leads to weight gain.  And endless, endless regret.

All of these things (in my mother's worldview) cause arthritis.  Betcha didn't know that.

Well, now you do.

She didn't, however, warn me about the bad genes she married.  My father died before I was two and therefore didn't live long enough to enjoy The Family Knees, and my mother was not close with My Father's People. But my childhood was haunted (well, a little bit, especially looking back) by the specter of little old ladies in wheelchairs. Wheeling by in my memory, in black & white, like a scene from a Fellini film.  My Aunt Miriam with whom we were close had a hip replacement (back when they were beta-testing replacements as a category) that gave her feet wheels, not wings.  Thus, more specters. 

So, imagine my surprise and vague, uneasy sense of déjà vu when, at a very young age (my opinion) I started having knee pain.  (Oh, look.  Here's another one of these.  I can't resist.   
( listen) DAY-zhah VOO)

First it was nagging.  Then it was disconcerting.  After that, it got limiting. Now it's just ... kind of bad.  So on Monday, I called "My Orthopedic Surgeon" who's been shooting my knees up with cortisone (and, I presume, making me ineligible for participation in The Olympic Games or the Tour de France) and, as they say, "turned myself in."

I'm scheduled for replacement of my left knee at the estimable Cleveland Clinic on Monday, November 1.    


One of the things I'm planning to write about on this blog is that.  So far all I have to report is a calendar entry.  Not a news flash but one must start somewhere. 


Stay tuned.