Happiness is

Matching snowflake pajamas and spending Christmas with the family wearing them.

A little rehab background

"You really have to work to strengthen your leg muscles supporting the knee."  


"Yada Yada Yada", I said back.  


And then I paid the price.  Torn meniscus.... both lateral and medial. " Huh?"  I said?  That means inner knee and outer knee, and when it's bad enough, surgery.   I held off for a year or two until I couldn't take the pain and couldn't walk the dog, and then, I chose a surgeon. At the time of my choice, his Houston Oiler knee doctor credentials impressed me.


Thus began my journey of learning more about my body.   Having ignored the wisdom of those who knew better than me for so long, I was determined to do things right after surgery.  I started rehab immediately after my day surgery to trim away the torn meniscus and other degenerative issues in my knee.  Since my surgeon sent me home with a constant motion machine to use 4-6 hours daily, I went beyond the minimum and strapped my foot in at bedtime too,  adding 10 degrees range of motion every day until my knee bent all the way to my waist and awakened me at 2 am, about the time my narcotics wore off.  I awoke gasping at the sensation that my leg was caught in an animal trap.

In addition to the machine, I also brought home some crutches.  I was a 60 year old crutch virgin, wondering how such a hobbled experience as I was having with my new third and fourth leg could possibly lead to healing.  For three days, wearing the same pajamas, I rolled my coffee cup around on an office chair and tried to figure out the mechanics of walking.   Then I took a Saran wrapped shower and went to meet my PT guy, who taught me to walk on one crutch,  and I regained a hand with opposable thumb.  I was back in the business of carrying my own coffee.

Meeting my PT guy also meant I could dispense with the few terse instructions on rehab my surgeon sent.  I had read  them over and over, unable to make sense of

         Therabands (black silver gold) 20-30 reps no discomfort to anterior infrapatella area


These were the surgeon's instructions to an Oiler trainer, I realized, but I had absolutely no frame of reference for them. Any another time, not on pain pills, I would have searched the web for information that might have cleared things up.  But instead, I just started doing the routine the PT guy gave me, because his instructions came with pictures. By the end of my first week, I was feeling pretty proud of how much I could bend and straighten my knee and walk on that one crutch.  I was practically flying from chair to bathroom to the coffee pot.

Things were looking up until I cruised into my one week checkup on one crutch.  The surgeon was incensed that after all his valiant effort and painstakingly clear explanations that I would listen to a crazy PT man and walk on one crutch, much less stop taking pain pills because I was falling asleep.  “Why do I knock myself out with instructions?” he lamented.  "Take the pain pills, have some coffee," he said, "and do more squats."


Show me your squats," he ordered.  I squatted.  He corrected my technique.

I pulled out my list of questions, such as, what exactly did you find when you looked inside my knee, what did you do, what should I expect down the road?

“I fixed it,” was his answer, and that I should expect to get presents at Christmas.

“No, seriously, I want to know if I can hurt it.”  

“Well, you can get run over by a car.”

“Am I just closer to a knee replacement?”

“I thought I explained all this to you already.”

Surgeons, got to love them.

Gymnastics

Today Daisy and I walked thirty five minutes.  The entire walk I felt what I would describe as a tweaking feeling in my butt, but I know that won't be a good enough explanation on Saturday morning.  That's when I will return to the gym for my next rehab workout and Lisa will ask me to describe the sensation more specifically, maybe even use a scientific body part term like gluteus for butt.  Then she's likely to comment, "That's good, that means you worked your glutes on Wednesday."

Yes, readers, I have been absent three months because I have been in rehab.  Not the drug and alcohol kind, but the "I really want to walk normally again" kind.  And I have been studying anatomy with the renewed interest of somebody with a dog in the fight.

Did you know that the hamstrings are six muscles?  And that each one can individually be the problem of your complaint that your hamstrings are tight?  I think with me is it the semimembranosus, but who can be sure?  They all tie in together at the knee and the hip.  Lisa thinks my tightness starts with the knee.  There's a reason for that.....knee surgery three months ago.

So, if you check back, I'll share some moments of wisdom, pain and humility soon.....maybe even start at the beginning of this sixty year old's fight to walk the dog like a normal person.  Gotta go..... gotta stretch.

Ave Meniscus

I could have been faithful

to you, my sacred knee

listened to the sages

who said strong muscles
would save me from hell

But I took their counsel

and put it away, along with

“buy low, sell high”

and other worldly axioms

all good in theory

Instead I betrayed you

leaving no choice

but the surgeon with the big ego

crutches

and saran wrapped showers

Now  I worship daily

in the temple of the Y

leg presses, adductors

supine, prone, squatting

genuflecting to my knee

Soon I will have quads of steel
hams of spandex
chiseled calves
taut abductors
supple gluts

All this and more
I will offer

on the altar to my knee
never again
a disbeliever.

Would I fly?

Standing at the top of the Mount Cannon near Franconia Notch  on a warm July day in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I experienced a disconcerting urge to leap into space and fly. What would it be like, to be swept by an updraft, to circle with the eagles? To gently spiral, looking for lift, meandering over valley and peak? My tummy turned. I backed away from the edge.

Moments later, two gliders rushed silently over my head. My mind climbed into the cockpit, living my fantasy. 

We chased each other, criss-crossing, two birds playing.

The thermals were favorable, and we climbed higher.

Ever aware of our mortal limitations, we kept one eye on the airport to the north in Franconia.
Do you ever wonder, if you stepped out, would you fly?

A little mountain music

On the Blue Ridge Parkway, a stop for a little bluegrass at the Blue Ridge Music Center..........Daisy had no opinion about the selections.

There's no drive more like a massage than the crest of the Appalachians.  From Front Royal, VA, not more than 60 miles from crazy busy bee DC, all the way to Great Smokies National Park, we are wending our way. In the distance the hazy blue ridges seem to say slow down, be calm, we've been here for billions of years, and there's no need to hurry.  So we don't.

The speed limit in the first section, Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park, is 35 mph.  The park is less than two miles wide but over 100 miles long.  On either side, the valley is green, the river winds, and I can hear the song with the same name in my head.  "Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you.....and hear your rolling river...."

Little towns dot the landscape, but it is still largely agricultural.  It was food that made the valley so coveted a prize in the civil war.  In the town of Front Royal, markers describe the only urban battle in the civil war and  the cunning moves of Stonewall Jackson, outnumbered by the Union forces but not outfoxed.

In Shenandoah, I walked one mile on the Appalachian Trail, an uphill rocky switchback that taxed me to the max and rewarded me with a million dollar finish.  Imagine, 2,175 miles of rocky mountaintop hiking.  I am not sure the AT will stay on my lifelist, but just to re-inspire those thoughts, I am listening to Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" during the drive.  I'd read it years ago, but it is a perfect redo for this trip. In addition to a humorous account of his treks on the trail with his hapless college buddy Katz, Bryson treats me to a geological history of these mountains, the world's oldest, a third of their original size.  They took billions of years to get this soft and pillowy.  The haze that makes them blue is, unfortunately, pollution.

The Blue Ridge section of the Parkway has more elevation, including some 6,000 foot peaks,  and is over 400 miles long.  Sometimes there's even cool relief from the heat wave.  The speed limit increases to 45,  still a casual stroll along the ridge of the Appalachians.

Along the Blue Ridge, rhododendrons grow wild.  In the spring, the parkway is a pink cloud.  I think there are no bad seasons here on the parkway.  Summer is green with wildflowers.  Butterflies are abundant on the pink phlox, queen ann's lace and rudbeckia.  Here the native flora that botanists from England harvested when the land was still wild grows in abundance.  There's also wildlife, although it is harder to photograph.  I saw two black bears as they scuttled across the road and into the bushes, several wild turkies, and deer.  All of them were quite shy.

The park service has preserved split rail fences along the parkway....a delightful way to separate the picturesque farms from the highway.  At one waypoint, five styles of spit rail fence are on display.

The artisty and the beauty of the stonework, the winding, undulating highway, the waypoints, the overlooks,  all built during the Great Depression, convince me that the our current recession would be worth suffering through if one more Parkway were built with our tax dollars.  I find it sad that nothing permanent like this drive in the clouds will be left to show for our investment in bailouts and rescues. I'd rather have a scenic highway than AIG.

Happy Birthday Christine!

For your birthday, Daisy has finally posted a blog.  Have a happy one!
http://chewingmypages.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-road-2010.html
And today's photo:  The James River on the Blue Ridge, sky and water.