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.
Most excellent hammer. And to tell ya -- I had the same issues with my last post, as well. In fact the pix kept drifting further and further from the header the more I fussed with it. I solved the problem my deleting and re-posting. Not the most elegant solutions -- but effective enough.
ReplyDeleteYeh, the formatting and some of the functionality on Blogger can run contrary to your intentions .. . like what's with these static stand-alone pages -- you can add them, but then add nothing to them. Gotta work on it... but not this weekend.
I am most curious to know about your progress with NaNoWhamMo - NaNoWriMo... if I read between the lines of the last post, you're reading Roth and googling car bombs --- sounds like a Nemesis thriller in the making.
All good distraction from the knee thing. Sorry you're learning the true nature of surgeons (and docs in general). You must understand by now having thrived all these years that the best medicine has everything to do with self-healing.
So keep writing . . . and laughing your way through this. You'll be up and at'em in no time.
Hi Ann,
ReplyDeleteLots of luck on your surgery. Your humor will help speed your healing - all those good endorphins. As you know, laughter is good medicine. I'm loving your blog.
Love from the Weiss's