I’m at that age now where you’ll have to forgive me if I’m repeating stories… Anyway, I was 19 and Mark, my piano accompanist, called me from Boston and urged me to come up. He said there were plenty of places to perform and I could crash with him. But when I told my boyfriend I was planning to go, he asked me to marry him. (I wasn’t expecting that!) So even though getting married was the farthest thing from my mind, I got married because I was afraid of hurting my boyfriend’s feelings. How’s that for codependent?
Category: My So-Called Life
Focus, people!
So my friend Wendy calls me from the road in Palm Beach, which means I get to listen to her yell at her fellow drivers as “you goddamn motherfuckers” before she settles in.
“Susie, I just read this great book called ‘Stolen Focus.’ You really need to read it. It’s about how our brains are completely overwhelmed by all the online stuff and data and that’s why we can’t focus,” she enthused. “It’s why we’re always so stressed. And it’s really well written, it’s not hard to read.”
Well, if there’s one thing I know, Wendy is unerringly right about books.
So after we get done chatting, I pick up my Kindle and try to put the book on hold via my library app, but I’m distracted by the fact that another book I was waiting for is in. I try to download it, but now it’s demanding my Amazon password, which I can’t remember.
Then a message pops up telling me to change my password because of a breach (you know, the same password I can’t remember? I think you all know where this goes.) After waiting several times for the one-time code that’s supposed to allow me to change my password and other variations on the circles of Hell, I finally give up and call Amazon. Those people must be saints, because even when you’re a double Libra, it is extremely hard to suppress hysteria. She keeps sending me codes that will allow me to change my password, but because the email address is from another account, it is not arriving by the five minute deadline that will allow me to enter it.
I am just a teensy bit tense by this point.
After 20 minutes, we finally get the password sitch straightened out, and I decide to just buy the friggin’ focus book, because I’m too strung out at this point to navigate the library app. And guess what?
I bought the book two years ago. I’ve just been too distracted to read it. Ha, ha!
More progress
Yesterday was my first attempt to ride the bicycle, and while it was hard (the first time my arthritic bad leg went around, I screamed. No, really!), I feel like I’m making some inroads.
I didn’t ride it normally, like I would with a real bike (as if!); but just getting it around very slowly seemed to help. And once we figured out how I should position my foot on the pedal, it got easier. It seems to lessen the pain.
Now the REAL work begins
Yesterday I had my first “land therapy” session. Holy moley. You don’t know what pain is until you’ve had a man sit on your foot while he’s forcing your knee down on a table.
I can see that the PTs who were coming to my house weren’t really pushing me the way I really needed. My surgeon said I’m losing the straight line in my surgical knee, and when I told them, they just sort of shrugged: “You’re going back to therapy, right?”
The therapist was apologetic. “Most people go home and curse me in their sleep, so I’m used to it.” I told him no, I wanted things to get better and I appreciated his effort. But man, it hurt.
Progress report
I went back to aqua therapy this week, and it’s already making a huge difference in my ability to move. Everyone keeps telling me how well I’m doing, and all I can think about is how much farther I need to go. Oh well. (I live in fear of the dreaded MUA — manipulation under anesthesia, where the doctor goes in and tears your scar tissue open because you don’t have the expected range of motion.)
The PTs in the rehab center told me they don’t usually get patients who are this engaged in their recovery. It’s more common that patients get the surgery and believe their job is done — when it’s only just beginning. I know what the PTs mean; I met some of those people in aqua therapy. They constantly complained about how the surgery didn’t work and how long they’ve been in pain — while they walked around the pool talking on their cell phones. I mean, there were some people who I never once saw do actual exercises. (That said, the doctor did not give me enough pain pills, and that was rough.)
I, on the other hand, overprepared. Read lots of books, watched lots of rehab videos, asked lots of questions. When I started aqua therapy again, my therapist told me she couldn’t believe how well I was doing. (Which was what I told her all along. I think she just assumed I would follow the same timeline as her patients who didn’t take an active role in their recovery.)
So far, it’s paying off.
Sigh
Philips, maker of millions of recalled sleep apnea machines, agrees to halt U.S. sales https://t.co/V16Uj6JOjm
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) January 30, 2024
So I have one of these same cursed machines, as I mentioned, and mine does seem to be spewing formaldehyde now. I wake up with an awful taste in my mouth and I feel dizzy. Plus, there’s the feeling of impending doom. I have an appointment with a telehealth sleep doctor to get a new, non-formaldehyde spewing machine. Hope to God Medicare will cover it under the circumstances.
Life from the back seat
Last week I had to take an Uber to the doctor’s, and I got into a conversation with the driver. He told me about when he was a FedEx driver, and got shot in the stomach. He has a license to carry and shot back, killing his assailant.
He wasn’t happy about it, said it still bothered him. He said he’d like to talk to some youth groups about gun violance.
We started talking about all the young kids who get shot down almost every day. “I know,” I said. “It’s why I want to move out of here. It’s just so sad, that every single day, another little kid gets killed.”
“I grew up in Brooklyn, and I never saw all the guns I do here,” he said, shaking his head.
l
Back to something like normal
I drove my car yesterday for the first time since the surgery. (It wasn’t an option, because the battery went stone dead while I was gone and I had to drive it after I got a hot shot.) I kept it short; I just went to the Popeye’s for some mac and cheese, maybe a mile from my place.
It felt… weird. I’m still a little woozy from being sick, and being out in the real world with all that traffic felt unreal. Isn’t my real life online, or on cable TV? (I know it isn’t, but it does feel that way sometimes.)
Just scheduled the second surgery for June. The surgeon warned that the “new” knee was starting to bend back, because of the other leg being shorter now. But the more I stretch it, the more it hurts. We’re trying to keep the discrepancy under control with a shoe lift for the non-surgical leg — you know, like Trump and Ron DeSantis use.
I still have a lot of nerve pain when I stretch the muscles. I’m going to try a TENS unit to see if it will help me relax enough to stay asleep. If that doesn’t work, guess it’s time for some medical marijuana.
Against all odds
I’d broken up with someone, and every time I heard this song on the radio, I’d start to cry. And now I look back and think, “Really? All that drama over HIM?” I still like the song, though.
River
I used to love to ice skate. Somehow, somewhere, my mom got hold of a used pair of figure skates in my size, and when it had been cold enough, long enough, I would trek down to Cobbs Creek, lace them up, and skate on that frozen stream as far as I could, blowing plumes of breath into the wintry air. The park was especially beautiful in the desolate light of winter; you could hardly hear the traffic on the parkway.
I was not an especially good skater; let’s say I was adequate, and never got any better. But it felt like flying, and that was more than enough. Later, when I was a grown-up, I’d go skating late at night at the Class of ’23 rink with my brothers (who were much better skaters than I could ever hope to be), and in keeping with the family tradition of parallel play, which is to say, close but actually never involved, didn’t try to help me improve.
I longed to skate backward like they did, but alas, it was not to be. But sometimes I still dream about skating.