arse poetica

Lounge Life

A fun day yesterday. I slept late, lounged in the room while the power was out, and read the paper. The power outage didn't last long, and in a grand stone inn, a power outage just adds to the whole Agatha Christie-ness of it all anyway. The power was out just long enough to persuade us to head to City Bakery for breakfast. Yummy cranberry muffin.

Then off to downtown for what turned into a gallery walk. I'd wanted to check out the shopping downtown, seeing as there are lots of interesting, one-off shops, but general shopping bores me to tears. No worries, there was art every 4 steps, and I spent most of 4 hours downtown browsing really interesting metal work (including yard art!), less pottery than I thought, lots of nature photography (duh), and some great  portraits. There is one portrait painted by a person aided by an organization that works w/ developmentally disabled people that I may go back and get today. I love it. I spent so much time in galleries that I barely had any time to spend in the bookstore that was my destination.

I did finally make it to Malaprop's and spent my little time left before db picked me up reading Alison Bechdel's awesome Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which, like an ass, I did not buy for some reason, but I'll go back and get it today. It's a worthwhile addition to the home library. Y'all check this book out if you haven't already. Smart, beautifully rendered, rueful, damn clever.

A late lunch of the absolute best quesadilla I've ever had -- curried potato and spinach w/ homemade mole sauce -- from the Laughing Seed Cafe, the area's premier veggie joint. Do not even get me started on the East/West Quesadilla! One of the best things I've ever eaten. If you're heading to Asheville, you'll be happy you stopped in to Laughing Seed. It's like the nicest hippie vibe ever in nicely lit, soothing but swank digs.

Then we were back to the best.hotel.room.ever. for a little rest before heading out to a yoga class. We are so 100% the stereotype for our demographic! It's almost embarrassing. Peace, man. Now I have to run out to peek at more art, so I'll have to write about the adorable yoga teacher latre. Right out of Central Casting, in the "hottt" mode, that is. I feel so unkinked today though. db and I are like rubber bands.

And glory be! No one's writing me emails! I'm free! Thanks for the vacation, work peeps!

There Were Four of Us in Bed Last Night

Me, db, the Dingo, and my arm. One of us has got to go. I'm voting for the arm.

Ow.

In Praise of Older Men

I've always liked older men, and I know readers and stumblers-across of arse poetica know better than to think I mean that in any kind of Lolita-esque way. I do not.

I had my first PT appt today and -- you guessed it -- my physical therapist is an older man. Maybe 60-yrs-old (? I'm terrible w/ ages), and the head of the PT dept., which made me happy. I was dreading having to work w/ a 25-yr-old guy. [Disclaimer: I'm sure there are amazing, brilliant, kewl 25-yr-old men out there (some of my best friends are ... !), but sometimes I just need someone more secure in what they know. Plus, I think I intimidate younger guys, if not become their counselor/big sister, and I just didn't want to go through that rigamarole.]

Allow me to generalize: Older men have good manners, a seriousness about them, a solicitousness, a world of experience/expertise, and they're safe because they have the smarts to know what's good for them. I'm not silly enough to think that there are not older men who defy all of these generalizations, but I've been lucky w/ older men in my life -- "older" being relative in age to me.

My father did the yelling dad thing for a little while, then got over it, and now considers himself a feminist. (Thank, Gloria!) Never any doubt that he loved us first and foremost.

All of my coaches with the exception of three (out of 4 sports, 18 years, and countless seasons) were men. God bless them for taking us grrls seriously as people and as athletes, working hard w/ us, pushing us w/in reason, and never once, not one time in so many impressionable years, crossing any boundary they shouldn't have. I consider myself lucky to have been able to learn in such a safe environment. [Might I note at this juncture that WE NEED TO SAVE TITLE IX!!]

My favorite uncle is, very obviously, an older man. I think he is the man on whom I modeled the men to whom I am drawn. Smart, quiet, funny, kind, gentle, competent. Oh dear Lord, I just cannot stomach a loudmouth, posturing guy. From the first boy I liked in 3rd grade to db, you can draw a straight and obvious line of influence. I find what I like, and I stick to it, apparently. Again, no harsh lesson there. My uncle Peter is a lovely man.

So back to Dr. H, my PT: He just quietly and ably, w/ seriousness and eventual good humor (okay, I may have flirted just slightly), set to the task of measuring, advising, correcting, and then poking, pulling, pushing, grinding, stretching, and massaging my shoulder. OWWWW.

I'm always struck that the rules about touching can so immediately be understood just because we're in a therapeutic environment. I wonder, too, if it's because Dr. H is 60. My surgeon was a man, too, about my age. He touched me less in the 5 or 6 appointments I had with him before and after my surgery than Dr. H did in an hour.

I do not mean anything even remotely unprofessional or, hell, pleasurable. I just mean I think it is interesting that a man who could not touch a woman outside of that office, can, inside that office, move his hands along her body -- again, as a matter of therapy -- without hesitation and with the tacit agreement from both that that is what he will do. It would be mindblowing to live in a world in which this sense of safety and care could be the norm.

And this is where I really want to give a shout out to older men. When I'm (potentially) worried about the shoulder of my dominant arm, I just want someone to exude confidence and competence and then, of course, execute confidently and competently. And if that someone has to touch me, I want them to touch me w/ skill such that I feel better and ministered to and only that.

A Note on Patience

db thinks I should teach a mindfulness class. If only. I don't know Thing One about mindfulness as it is formally practiced. I do know, however, the half-assed way I approach the world and, in particular, its annoying circumstances. db is trying to apply the principles of mindfulness to his life. Admirable, I say. Not sure it's taking, I say. He was the definition of ants-in-pants at the doctor's office this morning where I'd come for my post-op rundown, stitches removal, and PT Rx.

The good news is I apparently heal pretty quickly. Light bruising, pretty fair amount of inflammation, but pretty good range of movement at this point. I've got 6-8 wks of rehab (not bad!), which will hopefully start next week at Sports Med. Yaay, I'll get to hang out w/ the real athletes! The bad news is that db cannot sit still if he thinks people are not doing their jobs. Me, I don't have any expectation that a visit to the doctor's office will transpire in a reasonable time frame. I've let it go.

As my coach used to say in response to any question hiding within it even the most tangential temporal note, "Five more hours." If we were pulling into the driveway of the gym where we would park the van, and if as the van was rolling to a stop we would ask Coach how much longer til we get to the gym, he'd say, "Five more hours." These are, I think, words to live by. The inertia at the doctor's office seems built-in, so I'm not going to get my panties in a twist over it. Why aggravate myself? It'll obviously be five more hours.

I don't think it's a big, damn secret. I just do not have energy left to be annoyed by small things I cannot control. In service-related encounters, I expect that people are overworked, underappreciated, tired, distracted, and doing the best they can. I operate on this assumption until an egregious counterexample proves otherwise. Then I either sit in resigned lament and wonder at the world we've constructed for ourselves or I register a polite complaint. Generally, I am happy to have time to sit quiety, read, think, people watch, talk to my sweetie. This seems like a bonus to me. No phones! Oh, thank heavens. For one hour, no phones! Truly, everything is a bonus at that point.

And as easy-going and forgiving as I may be/think I am, I am hardly the picture of Zen equanimity. I'm sure my blood pressure would tell a different story. I am not patient enough, for example, to last until the end of one.single.equivocating.prevaricating.uhh-uhhh-uhhing.sentence of Dim Son's. Canna do it. I physically cannot sit there and listen to him fumble and bumble and dumble his way through what is meant, ostensibly, to be the English language. His.Native.Tongue. God. Hell, I almost didn't make it through my own sentence about that.

I almost never watch Chris Matthews (at al.) without yelling back at the TV and correcting every false assumption, hothead posturing, and GOP-ready framing inherent in his "analysis," and lordy knows I treat NPR as if it is interactive and a remote argument I am having with many someones. I am damned impatient w/ feigned credulity, sloppy research, lazy analysis (if effin any), and the putrid pretense of "balance" that permeates the whole enterprise like the stink from a rotting whale carcass. God.

Neither am I patient about social justice, world hunger, environmental degradation, personal and physical sovereignty, betrayals, animal cruelty, or about all those molasses-ass mofos parked in the left lane while I'm trying to do 75 mph getting from A to B. And, good lord, have people forgotten how to make a left turn?? Damn.

[Photo credit: JM, Prague, October 2005]

It's Fron-ken-steeen

The pain pump has been removed, and the bandages have come off! Why the docs felt compelled to draw football plays on my shoulder, I'm not so sure. Hoohaw! Surgery humor! I got a million of 'em.

Feeling better every day even as I feel slower and more lethargic. Is this normal? I wonder if part of the body's natural healing process is to slow everything down, down, down? Makes intuitive sense. Or, I could just be tired because my sleep schedule is disrupted by the meds. For the last few days, I napped everytime I took a pill, so I was 1) sleeping a lot, and 2) sleeping randomly. Last night, I tried to return to a "normal" sleep schedule, and I woke up veeeeeeeeeeeeery tired this morning. I blame the sitting-up-in-bed thing. I was missing sleeping in bed, and my arm felt better (it's all relative, duckies), so I thought I'd just prop up some pillows, nod off, and that would be that. Yeah, not so much.

One, it's hard to sleep in one position all night, especially if that position is: The 45-degree Angle of Death! Okay, not of death, per se, but of discomfort, okay? Woke up a lot during the night, that sort of fitful sleep when your brain needs to remain half awake to be alert to something out of the ordinary. Like, for instance, if you find yourself in a hotel room in the middle of the night in a godforsaken one horse town in East Bumf*ck, Texas, in which the only other occupants seem like a cross between carnies and cannibals, and they giggle at you nervously and watch you walk all the way to your room. Oh, that never happened to you? Did me. I "slept" in my clothes, shoes on, on top of the covers, the bureau pushed against the door. Clearly, something was making me nervous. I discovered our key in the lock the following morning as we were leaving. Dur!

Today was a good day. No pain meds, the arm creakily and protestingly doing its baby steps-level exercises. Feels less heavy, less stinging pain, less cramping. My pop visited and told me that he thought he may have been wiretapped himself. Eeeeeek! This is probably true. All of you reading this may want to get new identities after dialing in. We bemoaned the state of the world and ate homemade soup. Good times.

and she emerges from the fog

hi, friends. anything going on while i was gone?

guess what, i'm fine! i'm typing one-handed, so this'll be a short note, but thanks to everyone for your good wishes and good advice. they held me in good stead. much to say but not a lot of manual dexterity to say it. suffice to say that i am really lucky to be a middle class person with access to superior health care in a research setting. damn.

went as well as it possibly could, i think. i feel extremely grateful for the good care i received, and as soon as i am out of this sling, i'll be penning some thank you notes. my nurses were, quite simply, fantastic -- kind, efficient, funny, protective. my doctors, responsive and careful. who could ask for more. i'm happy to be out of there feeling so relatively unscathed.

db's been his usual wonderful self in keeping me fed and on the correct pill schedule, making me tea, bringing me juice, tucking in my blanket, the whole routine. i have spent the better half of the last 24 hrs in the world's most comfortable recliner. thanks, parents-in-law! my work peeps sent a plant basket so large it takes up half my table. (will post pic tomorrow) i'm hoarse from being on the phone all day. everyone is wonderful. 

my arm hurts. owww. i have a pain pump attached to me that is delivering 0.07 ml of a morphine-derivative (?) every hour. i could stand a little more. it comes out tomorrow, as db gets to show off his bandage-ripping-off skills. tonight, i'm still be-slinged and recently be-percoceted so i've be-come be-sleepy. must be off. thanks again for the well-wishes! very kind of you to write. a demain...

YES...AE doing fine after surgery

Hi Everyone. DB here guest posting.  ae is at home and doing fine after her surgery.  The doctor said that it was best case scenario once he got inside to look around.  The surgery lasted about 3 hours.  The doc said that the first scope broke about half-way through and they needed to change it.  I just told ae that and she said "I hope it didn't break off inside of me!"  Well, I guess we will know the next time we head through a metal detector.  Other than that, I had 5 good hours of reading old Time magazines.  That is all for now.  I need to have ae sign some papers while she is still groggy...............KIDDING!  One thing to note, it is just as hard to wake ae up in the morning to go to work as it is to wake her up for shoulder surgery.  I will post more pictures tomorrow.

Note to Self

In anticipation of ouchies tomorrow, I note this poem as a not-so-subtle exhortation to buck up. I'm sure it's saying that suffering is all around us while we go about our mundane tasks, but I think that's what makes suffering so mundane. It's all around us while we go about our mundane tasks! Recognizing suffering is one step; acknowledging it publicly is another; addressing it, however simply, is yet another altogether. Let's do our part to really address suffering. And I don't mean the garden variety outpatient kind, though it's nice to be nice to the nice then, too. See you all soon!

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W.H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"

General Anesthesia

Had my pre-op appointment this afternoon. Three boring hours in the hospital, if you please, a good 2 hrs and 25 minutes of which were spent just.sitting.there. Grumble, grumble.  The longest prolonged amount of attention came after the half-hour mark when my X-ray tech spent 20 minutes w/ me arranging my shoulder in various poses. Judging from his exclamations, he's either a top-notch arranger and highly pleased w/ himself, or I've got an especially photogenic shoulder joint.

Not much news today. I know what it boils down to: arthroscopic surgery, part of which is fix-it-if-we-find-it. Grrreeaaaat. My rotator cuff is still torn. I still have a bone spur and some sort of cartilage impingement and a possible biceps wadjklfafhkmff and a labral mfioffjflsss. Oh, who the hell can ever understand what they're saying? Plus, I didn't hear anything after the resident said "general anesthesia." Cut to: db and me w/ saucer-sized eyes. General anesthesia?!

Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis? I thought I was going to have a spinal block (sounds fun, no?) and, like, be given some happy juice or something.

I've never been under general anesthesia. I've never been in the hospital. I've never had surgery. The surgery, which I'd before regarded as an in-out-Bob's-your-uncle kind of outpatient thing, suddenly took on a whole new tenor. They're going to tube me and knock me out?? Doesn't that sound like a much bigger deal?

Apparently, it's not. My orthopaedist doesn't find this little boring, workaday, mundane fact about my pending surgery as daunting as I do. He does a million of 'em, and in his experience, a slight knocking out is highly uncomfortable for the patient. Why is that, doc? Well, because the patient is in a neck brace, head strapped to the table, their face draped completely, not to mention their arm pulled down a good 5-inches for 3 hrs so as to open the shoulder socket as much as possible. Altogether now, kids: claustrophobia! Oh, hell no. Knock me out, friends. I'm not sitting there immobile and suffocating and conscious. Heyull naw.

So, there it is. Surgery under general anesthesia. Sounds crappy to me. Let's see, a slew of Class A narcotics, 6 weeks in a sling, 2 months recuperation, 3 months rehabilitation (at least). Should be a breeze!

That's a be-slinged 6 weeks w/ my dominant hand generally out of the picture. I'm fairly ambidextrous, but it's going to be a little awkward, I can tell. db's going to have to cut my food for me! And, more importantly, guest post.

And in cheery news, the nurse suggested we fill out our living wills. Alrighty then.