Day Thirty-Three, Or So.

Pineapple Express was better than Superbad. 

Argue if you wish, but James Franco turns Pineapple Express from a bro-tastic flick into something palatable to the ladies. 

Yes, all kinds of high culture crowds my free time. 

Speaking of culture, Tom is still trying to figure out how to make bread. Remember in Stengren's class when we were studying anaerobic respiration and everyone made bread starters out of warm water, sugar, and those little packets of yeast? 

Well Tom made a sourdough starter from wild yeast, which apparently is everywhere, floating through the air. Sit a tub of flour and water on the windowsill, wait a while, and voila, wild yeast shall alight. You can tell the yeast has moved in by the little bubbles. 

You can make any number of batches of bread from the same sourdough starter, as long as you keep feeding it. It's like a silent, gooey pet, the starter is. Smells a little funny, too. 

Anyway, he's made several batches of bread so far, and each one has been kind of disastrous, sometimes because he screws up the starter, sometimes because he doesn't let it rise long enough, sometimes because he uses the wrong flour...I try to keep encouraging him because he's really into it (he loves to cook) and because making mistakes is a really good way to learn something, as long as you don't give up. 

Today he drove me into Manhattan to get a haircut which I needed desperately and on our way home we stopped at Roberta's in Williamsburg. We got calzones, which were incredibly yummy...Roberta's is Zagat rated, and barely a year old...it's a good place. The dough is especially tasty; fluffy and chewy and soft, with the charred brick-oven flavor that makes it special. He was in a bad mood, so rather than listen to him dwell on negative shit like how bad the traffic on Wilson is, I asked him what was something he liked. He said, There is only one thing I like, which is that pizza dough we just ate. There is nothing else on my gratitude list. Just the dough. 

And my Alex, he added. 

So besides having the best husband in the world, eating a delicious calzone, having a good new haircut, and enjoying Pineapple Express, here are some other good things:

-Hung out with Monica yesterday and she fed us the most delicious brunch I have ever eaten. 

-We brought the cats back home after being away for 9 days and they're still cute. 

-My leg doesn't hurt. 

-I'm down to 4 Vicodin a day. 

-There is a 2-hour class on yoga for injuries at Greenhouse on Sunday, which we are both going to. And we're even taking the subway. 

-Helen is taking us out for dinner on Sunday night. 

-I am going back to work on the 15th of March. 

I went to Downstate on Thursday morning. Goldman's wife was in labor, so he wasn't there. I saw an intern, who took off the little adhesive strips on my wound to check it out. It's still not dry, so he wouldn't let me start physical therapy yet. Booo! Hiss! The wound is gross. I got a little dizzy looking at it, at first. Jaggedier than one would expect from a scalpel. It's not infected, just raw. But, they put me on antibiotics anyway. 4 times a day for a week. If that doesn't kill all the flora in my system, I'm not sure what will.  All I'm saying is that wound better dry up. Or else....I'll whine. So watch out. 

By the by, I keep hearing about people being hospitalized with MRSA. Take your full round of antibiotics, people. Superbugs are bad. 

I did not plan this entry to be a discussion of microorganisms, but as we've learned, sometimes things just happen. 

One-monthiversary-- Martha's Vineyard, Still.

Originally, we were supposed to leave this island yesterday. 

But why would we ever want to leave? This house is all porches and windows and heated hardwood floors, perched on the top of a windswept hill, with whitecaps on the blue sound below and a large pond above. This land is a terminal moraine, dotted with boulders and rocky outcroppings. An ancient glacier pushed its way across the continent, and ended its journey here. The house somehow captures all of this loveliness like a huge terrarium.  

Anyway, we can't leave yet, for complicated reasons involving auto insurance and passing inspection and Massachusetts and old car headlights. The new headlight is supposed to arrive at the auto shop Tuesday or Wednesday, so we have to wait till then, but we MUST leave by Wednesday night, because I have another appointment with the doc on Thursday morning. 

My leg is less ugly, perhaps because I've been paying more positive attention to it. You know, bathing it, shaving it, moisturizing it. Letting it out into the air and the sunshine. It's still nasty and weird-looking, but at least it's mine again. Today it isn't hurting much. It's easier to love when it doesn't hurt.

 I am hoping that my leg will be ready to go back to school on March 2nd, but I'm not sure. I don't think I'll be able to walk on it yet, which means crutches, which means no subway, which means husband drives me to work, which is far away, which he can't do if he's working. But, so far, he doesn't have work lined up. So maybe I will make it to school a few days a week. On Feb. 17th, the doc said I could walk on it in 3 to 4 weeks. So that's like more the second week in March instead of the first week. 

I'll be back soon, at any rate. I can't wait. 

Despite intermittent pain and an annoyingly heavy leg thingamajiggy, it has been pleasant being here for the past week. We have completed one puzzle (The Rug Merchants) and are at work on a second (The Oyster Gatherers), a painting by Singer Sargent that is mostly composed of blobs of various shades of gray. It's tough. So far we've been at it 4 days. The Rug Merchants only took two. 

I have read a torridly enjoyable romance novel called The Prince of Midnight (mysterious and sexy highway man encounters damsel in distress; romance ensues; there is a lot of horseback riding and swordplay, soft-porn love scenes, witty repartee, and cross-dressing). RL 7th. 

I also read Home, by Marilynn Robinson. Writerly, moving, a little boring. Good enough to make me want to write. Unfortunately, I started writing a new story on the same day I started reading The Prince of Midnight, so I fear for the quality of my prose. Home is about a middle-aged spinster who returns to her family home to care for her dying father. Her wayward brother comes home at the same time, and they have to reconcile their relationships before old dad kicks the bucket. Robinson is one of the only writers I read who writes about Christianity. Her views are inoffensive and humane, and she treats her characters tenderly but unsentimentally. RL PHS.

My latest book is called Wild Swans, Three Daughters of China, by Jung Chang. It's nonfiction and so far it's pretty good. I will let you know how that goes.  

Back to The Oyster Gatherers. 

Day Sixty-Eleven: Screwed

I went to the hospital yesterday to get my stitches taken out. It wasn't during Goldman's regular office hours, so I had to wait 3 hours for him to get out of surgery. I asked him what he had been working on; he told me a guy got shot up about a week ago and one of the bullets entered his femoral artery, which then got infected. Goldman had to take off the leg at the hip joint. 

So a little ankle fracture in comparison seems like a walk in the park. Or, not a walk, exactly. 

My fortune cookie from chinese food last night said, You are a practical person with both feet on the ground. Katie said, Well, one foot.

Goldman took off my cast. It turns out I have two incisions, one on either side of the ankle. One is about two inches long and one is about seven inches long. He took the stitches out-- not painful, but the incisions are ugly. The whole leg from the knee down is ugly, in fact. Yellow and disfigured. The ankle is fat, the calf is thin, the toes orange. Scaly, hairy skin, no muscle left, bruised. And the scars, maroon and bunched. I didn't look at those too closely. 

Goldman cleaned the dried blood and the iodine stains off, and rewrapped my leg in cotton gauze. Then a nurse put me into a long white sock and this black walking cast that looks like RoboLeg. I can't walk on it yet, though. I am supposed to go back in a week for more x-rays and a prescription for physical therapy. On Friday, I'm allowed to start taking showers! But I can't start trying to walk for 3 or 4 more weeks, so that sucks. I'm supposed to go back to work in 2 weeks. I may have to actually not go back, or at least certainly not full-time. Crutches in the subway...ugh. 

Goldman also showed me post-surgery x-rays of my ankle. I have sixteen screws in there, and 4 plates. My ankle seems to be mostly hardware at this point. It was a bit shocking to see how long some of the screws are, and how they are literally holding my bones together. To think that I will have a full recovery from this is something of a leap of faith.

I know I'm making progress on healing this thing, but it feels like it's going nowhere. I am still lying around all day. I am still on painkillers, because my leg still hurts. I still can't walk. My ankle still looks monstrous, like it doesn't even belong to me. I still can't carry anything from room to room.  I'm still on crutches. I'm still wearing this gigantic cast on my leg (although now it's black and strappy--- that makes it sound sexy, but it's incredibly not. Like I said, RoboLeg). 

The frustration of being crippled is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that I am on Martha's Vineyard right now. It is an immense relief to be out of the apartment. It is cold and raw here, but beautiful. And this house with its high ceilings and huge windows and views of the ocean is an easier place to while away hours reading or sleeping. Also, Anne is here, and Katie with Michael, so I have company. Everyone went out on a walk this afternoon, except for me. I took a two-hour nap on the couch. 

Invalid can be pronounced two ways: invalid, and in-valid. 

Three Weeks In

I talked to my surgeon yesterday. We made an appointment for the 17th (4 days from now) to remove the stitches. I hope my wound is healing nicely. Any other possibility does not bear pondering. 

I have been feeling a bit down lately. I think it's The Couch, sucking out all of my positive energy. I am SO TIRED of these 4 walls, of this cast, of being alone and cooped up and somewhat helpless. I am missing so much of the world. It's all going by, outside my window, the weather is changing, people are working, eating meals, meeting friends, walking in parks. Children are learning, or not learning, slinging their arms around each other's necks, laughing, struggling and striving, eating chips in class. I am lonely for the rest of the world. 

People say they will come by, and then they don't. 

The worst part is that I have many more weeks of this ahead of me. At least 3 more weeks of this non-participation.  Then I can move up to semi-participation. And then NINE MONTHS of physical therapy. This injury will have demanded a year of my life, by the time it's healed. 

What I've Learned So Far:

-Life without pooping is not worth living

-The body is an ingenious and miraculous machine

-Cows are supposed to eat grass

-Baths are good

-My husband really loves me

-I take my body for granted 

-True friends show up for you

Some of those things I already knew, but I guess it's good to have reminders. Maybe next time I won't have to break my leg to be reminded. 

I know it's unattractive and unproductive to complain. It doesn't make anything better. How about a little gratitude to even things out? The "Grateful" list is good to make at any time but seems especially helpful in tough situations.

Things I'm Grateful for:

-My other leg

-My hands and arms and neck and back and butt and knees and fingers and ears and eyes and nose and brain and head and hair and lips and collar bones. My ________.

-Kimonos

-Flowers and plants

-Netflix

-My man

-My true friends

-Modern medicine

-Painkillers

-Orange kitties and gray kitties

-Deep sleep

-Dreams.

The HMV contraption

Day 18-- Gold Stars for Husband

My husband should receive a hundred gold stars. Firstly because he still apparently finds me attractive, even in a cast. Secondly, because he's been cooking every single meal and doing all the dishes for three weeks straight. Thirdly, because he watches Big Love with me even though he's not a huge fan. Fourthly, because yesterday, he constructed for me a home-mobility vehicle that allows me to CARRY THINGS AROUND THE HOUSE. 

This is a big deal, because when you're using crutches, you don't have any free hands. Robert's cupholder innovation is helpful, but too small to do any significant work. This home-mobility vehicle (HMV) allows me to carry several books, a cup of coffee, the Brita, and a bowl of cereal and yogurt from the kitchen to the pink room, or to wherever I want, really. The HMV is really a rolling office chair that Tom tricked out with a speed-rail attachment that supports my left leg, whilst still leaving my right leg free to push myself around. We have rolled up all the rugs so I am free to roll unimpeded from room to room on our hardwood floors. 

I believe he got the idea for this contraption from a sports doctor he's seeing for back pain. The sports doc's wife also just broke her ankle, and he came up with the HMV to help her get around while she was recovering. The sports doc also said, Orthopedists don't understand pain management, and he gave Tom a prescription for a hundred Vicodin, with two refills. !!! For Tom and me to share, he said. How nice.

I'm off Dilaudid (however romantically-linked it may be to Laudanum, Opium, Victorians, corsets, swooning, lace, hysteria, Xanadu, Lewis Carroll, or poetry, I must get off the stuff), and now just popping Percocet every 5 hours. It's fine, so far, although I spent some time yesterday feeling nauseous and weak. At least my appetite has somewhat recovered. I now eat 3 times a day! What excellent progress. 

Erika is coming over to do an Ab-blaster workout with me. I can't wait. 

Day Something. I can haz bucket?

At the beginning of this experience, I lay on the couch in my new cast with piles of stuff around me. I was constantly asking Tom to carry something for me into another room. Then we hit on the idea of The Bucket. 

The Bucket is a plastic bin that I have filled with all the items I need on a daily, hourly, minutely basis. It moves into the bedroom at night and sits next to me on the bedside table. It moves back into the pink room in the morning and sits next to me on the couch. I love my bucket. 

Bucket Contents:

The New Yorker, Feb 9 and 16

Moleskine planner

Half-empty jar of Omega-3 "700" EPA & DHA from cold water fish

Half-empty mason jar of homemade herbal salve

Vitamin organizer (Sa-Su)

Checkbook

Red wallet with owl decal

USB cable

Body lotion with royal jelly and natural mica to enhance skin tone (99.02% natural)

Green zipper pouch full of pens

2 straps for holding cold packs onto cast

Rubber MacBook keyboard cover, unused because annoying when typing

Hand salve- a farmer's friend

2 boxes of chocolate truffles, from Heather

Shea butter hand repair cream

Half-empty jar of vitamin D 3, 1000 IU

1 bottle Oxycodone with Acetominophan 5mg/325mg

1 bottle Hydromorphone, 2mg (only 3 left)

2 pencils, one sharpened, one unsharpened

iPhone earbuds

Emppty glasses case

Smaller jar of homemade salve

Memo book

Rewetting drops

Feline claw clippers

Tweezers

1 bottle aspirin

Half-empty water bottle

Downstate discharge paperwork

Pharmacy receipts

3 vials Arnica Montana pellets

Lip balm

Dental floss

1 bottle Cascara Sagrada pills (look it up!)

1 packet Desogen pills (pause to take today's dose)

1 ball point pen stolen from nurse at hospital

1 red diary

Man, I'm gonna have to downsize. I've asked Tom to do the cleanup game. He said, "Not right now." Dammit. This room is a mess. 

My ankle is bugging me a bit today. 

Day 3 Again-- notes

Life without growth is not living, and the act of growth can be pleasurable, and sometimes painful. Growing pains, they call it. The sweet ache of life. 

This limb aches with life. 

When this cast comes off, I will get pedicures. Many, many pedicures. Salons shall know my name. I will honor these toes and foot and ankle. Perhaps I may wear toe rings. No, toe rings bug me. Well, lots of great foot massage then. 

My body is jellifying. Diminished and pale and jellied. 

Spring is bound to come, though. 

Let me just say, when you haven't pooped in 4 days, finally pooping is deeply joyful. It restores your hope in the world. 

Also, situps continue to be available and I shall partake daily. Still waiting on the set of small weights. 

There was a chunk of plaster on my cast that stuck into the back of my knee and kept me from bending my leg much. Tom cut it off tonight with some perfect tool that he has made just for cutting plaster. My cast is more comfortable now. Still tight, but getting looser. 

2 Dilaudid, 2 Percocet. 

I finished the Ommivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. Do you know that we are all eating corn, in the form of meat? The meat in our supermarket comes from cows that are eating corn (plus lots of antibiotics, so they don't die from it), but cows are supposed to eat grass. Grass, people. Cows eat grass. Not corn. They have 4 stomachs just for the purpose of digesting grass! But cow factories feed corn, because it fattens up the meat quicker. And because our government makes corn very, extremely cheap for industry. 

So, we eat those cows. We are at the top of that food chain. 

Just sayin. Read the book, it's good.  8th grade RL. 

I also finished Away, by Amy Bloom. It's about a Russian Jewish woman who emigrates to America in the 20's, after living through the massacre of her family in her home town. It's a great story, full of characters and lascivious yet elegant details. The librarian at Heritage, Caitlin, recommended this book to me and today I recommend this book to you. It would be good if you were on at least a 10th grade reading level for this book. 

Now working on Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Locavore food movement. It's okay...I'm a little bored but so far inclined to withhold judgment as to how good a book it is. 

In the queue is Home, by Marilynne Robinson. 

I watched Entourage today. a whole disk. What an utter work of shit. I can't believe it's had more than one season. 

I had a couple of nice visitors today. Tom was working, so we set up some babysitting shifts. Robert Feldman brought me a bunch of DVD's, thai food, and cardboard and duct tape. He fashioned me a cupholder on my crutch, and gave me a travel coffee mug. Now I can make myself tea and carry it to the couch. Also can carry: small ice packs, moisturizer, water bottle. Robert is a very clever man. And interesting. He even did the dishes and took out the garbage!

Meredith came by and brought flowers and chatted. 

Hector came by to bring me the schedules of all the 10th graders-- sweet! He hung out for a while and we speculated on the relative probabilities of keeping our jobs in these tough economic times. 

Chin up. 

 

Day Eleven Hundred- Post Surgery

Don't break your bones, kids. It's really painful, inconvenient, and depressing. 

Thursday was, by far, the worst day of my life. I'm not joking. 

I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything, even water, all day, because they don't want you puking it up and choking when you're under general anesthesia. 

Also, hospitals aren't the most user-friendly institutions out there. We spent so much time waiting to be called, in various waiting rooms around the hospital, and they don't care if your broken ankle is throbbing because it's not elevated because you're sitting on one of their waiting room chairs, nor do they care to give you a wheelchair rather than make you crutch your way through the halls and elevators, with your heavy cast dangling and your dehydration headache making you all confused. 

Tom had to leave at 11 am to go to work, which in some ways was the worst part of the whole day, besides right after surgery, which was scheduled for 3. I was so thirsty and sweaty and sore and scared and frustrated that I cried a little after he left, feeling pretty sorry for myself, but then stopped when I realized I was losing precious fluids in the form of tears. 

I will skip the part where I waited for what seemed like fifty-eleven more hours, skip the anxiety, skip the part where the anesthesiologist put the IV in the wrong spot on my wrist and I almost passed out, skip the freezing OR, and just mention two things: one, that a very dear friend showed up later that morning after Tom left and helped me get through the afternoon, and two, that waking up after surgery was the worst thing I've ever gone through. 

I've never been in that kind of pain. My whole body was writhing, my jaw chattering, I could barely breathe. Some smart nurse wrapped a warm blanket around my head which cut down on the sudden sensory input of the recovery room, but with the oxygen mask roaring in my ears, unable to get a full breath, and the unbelievable pain in my left leg, I felt unhuman. 

My sister-in-law Anne was there immediately, like an angel, patting me and saying soothing things to me that I couldn't hear past the oxygen mask and my chattering teeth. It was she who got the nurses, who were utterly unconcerned with my fate, to start the morphine drip. Anne felt like my only link to the world. She stayed with me, even after Tom got there when he was done with work. I am incredibly grateful to her. 

A nurse later told me that when she broke her humerus, the pain of the surgery was worse than all three times she gave birth. 

The surgery was supposed to take three hours at the most, but it took five. Nobody, including my surgeon, would tell me why, he just said they wanted to do a really perfect job. 

You can't sleep in a hospital, even when you're all drugged up on morphine, because the nurses are always in and out, the hallway is noisy, and they won't close your door. Plus there was construction going on outside my window all night. I couldn't wait to get home the next day, even though my pain was still high, just to get some peace. I got in bed at 6:30 last night and didn't get out till 9 this morning. 

The only cool thing about the hospital was my Foley catheter, which they stick in your urethra, which means you don't have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to pee. Getting up to pee at night is one of my pet peeves. Although, when I think about being passed out under anesthetic, in a room full of male surgeons and residents and nurses, and having someone stick that tube into my urethra in front of everyone, I feel pretty embarrassed. Ashamed. Silly of me, but still. 

This was a truly traumatic experience for me and two days later I am still feeling pretty horrid. The healing I had over the last two weeks has been obliterated. I am back to the beginning, and this time it hurts even worse. 

Day Skeighty-Eight

Dear Universe, 

Surgery tomorrow-- what fun! Thanks for hooking me up with a good doctor.  I really hope everything goes smoothly. Can you please make that happen?

Because, Dear Universe, I am tired of all this. I am ready to go outside. I want to do yoga. I want to run. I want to stretch. I hate the couch. I hate the cast. I hate being unable to take care of myself.  

I'm done, okay? Can everything please go back to normal now?

Regards, 

Alex

Day Ten FItter, Happier

Feeling pretty good, all things considered.  The sky outside is brighter than usual. It's groundhog day, and 49 degrees outside. 

Not that I've actually been outside. I haven't been outside for going on a week now. This indoor landscape is the only real place on earth, as far as I know. This couch, these walls. These pillows. 

Doesn't it sound a little cozy? Letting the world pass you by, gazing through your window at the clouds moving across the blue sky? 

It's not bad, I have to say, except for one significantly bad part. 

The bad part is getting better. Lesser pain and swelling. Surgery this week...then I'll have to go through the pain and swelling all over again. But by that time, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Diogenes, a student in my studio, sent me a text message today. Tomorrow my students will all be back at school, after the Regent's. I won't be back for a month. I am worried about how they will manage without me, and how to make myself available and helpful to them. 

Tom found me a set of light weights, so I can keep my arms in shape while lying here. I have nothing better to do. Also sit-ups. I can do sit-ups. One must retain some semblance of one's former glory, after all. Even if but a shadow. 

My sister left this morning at 5 am. She was so great to have here, so incredibly helpful and kind. She gave Tom a break from everything. So now he's much nicer, too. I must do something nice for her. Perhaps something in the mail. I will mail her my cat, maybe. She does like him. No, actually....not my cat. Maybe a tiny replica of Larry Fitzgerald, with a red and white suit and a tiny number 11, and a miniature curvaceous bum. Hmmm...

I told my friend Mark about the "Blackness Scale" created by Terrence and Ajay, and he was intrigued, wanted to know how black he was. Obviously, this guy is white. Here are his self-made lists of scores for and against him.

Pros:

Know lots of African-American music-- jazz to hip hop

Strong slang vocabulary

Basketball skillz (see? vocabulary)

Wear lots of track suits

40's 

Have talked to Warren G on telephone

Have dated white girls with huge asses (bonus ++)

Cons:

Pretty nerdy

Own a Belle and Sebastian album

Hang around a lot of frosties, aka white devils

Don't like okra, gravy

Can't dance (excepting robot)

Mark thinks he should get a 7/10 (whereas Terrence placed me at at 6/10), but I can't be the judge.