mind muscles matter

I have been consciously working my leg, back and arm muscles so I won't atrophy too much during this 8 week recovery period. But it's my mind muscles that are taking my attention now. A couple of people have told me that the anesthetic drugs can stay in my body for a month or so and that's the reason I have told myself for my occasional word or thought loss, my heavy-lidded eyes and mid-morning need to take a nap. But even beyond that, I seem to only want to watch movies and not even read (except for the review of the local and NY Times newspapers in the morning).

So yesterday, I made myself push through the nap-need to go online and respond to a Writer's Digest prompt, producing a short poem. Then last night, I showed up for my Grant Road Task Force meeting and took notes for 3 hours. I had a bit of a back and abdominal strain, sitting with an elevated leg for that long, but my ankle didn't seem to suffer from it. In exchange, I got my mind on something other than pain or discomfort in my ankle, and focused on relocation of utilities and what the TF members were expressing. It felt good to get the brain cells moving and reassured me that I can still do my work.

Today, one of my writing colleagues expressed the desire to see more details in my short poem from yesterday. I can do that and I can push myself to do another writing. It's important to have some others in my sidelines cheering me on. External motivation matters. I saw myself hobbling across the meeting room last night and managing pretty well. The same image can be a motivator for me in my writing. I don't know why I think writing should be as easy as gliding across the ice pond at Lord's Park in Elgin, Illinois. Writing sometimes is a glide, sometimes is a hike up a steep hill, sometimes is a tumble down a ravine and sometimes is a hobble across a room.

As I recall my mom's struggle with dementia, I am more empathy now for the challenge it was for her to connect her thoughts with reality. In the end, I think, she relied on my reading to her the familiar story of "Heidi" because she didn't have to try to compose the words herself anymore--the story showed her the way. I take comfort in believing that the sense of the story brought meaning to her last days.

All of this is to say, and I am stumbling and groping a bit here now--working my way through a forest of thoughts and words, that muscles of the mind matter, the words those muscles express also matter. And so, I write.

four more days

It's not certain, but I am hoping that on Monday my cast gets cut off and will be replaced by a moon boot that will weigh less and offer me more mobility. It will be another month on crutches or the walker but maybe I will get into a therapy pool and have other inticements for normalcy.

I am going to work tonight and hope I can keep my mind engaged (as well as my leg elevated.) I still can't seem to shift up to 2nd gear and prefer to keep my reading time short and my movie watching long. Saw both a great movie (Traffic) yesterday and a horrible one (Four Christmases). There's a wide range of stories out here.

Last night, Aron came over and made us delicious cheeseburgers. We had gone to AJ's for kobe meet and fixins' and I hate to admit it but the better quality beef ($14.00 for 4 patties) makes a quality burger. Of course, it also takes a skilled grillmeister and Aron is definitely that person. I occasionally have a flutter of mother worry-attachment but most of the time during my recovery, I just let those flutters go, concentrate on the goodness in life and push aside the worries like the dust bunnies that gather under our couches.

It is amazing how the weight of the cast counterbalances my tendency to worry. I can detach when the physical load I am carrying already is too much of a burden. Will I be able to transfer that learning to normal life in June? Since I know I can detach more than I have in the past, will grasping come back with mobility? Even now, as I right this, after having a good night's sleep, my eyelids beckon me to rest. But I have a conference call to attend to and, again, I hope my mind clicks in and I can begin to use some brain cells for more than dreaming.

signs of spring

Yesterday I had a late afternoon visit with a friend, Susan, and her 18 month old son. It was heart-lifting to watch him toddle around (he navigates space much better than I do at this stage), picking up tennis balls and throwing them to Lia, our 10 year-old nanny-dog, who was a gentle as cotten with him. When she was but a three year old, my then 3 and 4 year old nephew and niece, respectively, often stayed with us in the summer during the last full year of my mother-in-law's life and her battle with colon cancer. I guess the imprint of those early days with young children stayed with Lia during these more barren-of-child years and so it all came back to her yesterday.

It came back to me, too: the 26 years ago time of Aron toddling around our backyard on San Juan Terrace. A small pine cone was a mystery, a budding flower was a wonder. The soft skin of a very small child is like the finest silk and more valuable because it is a living touch. So that visit and those memories were the major highlight of my day.

We did go out for a short drive and saw the two young foals (about a month-6weeks old) and the newest (about a week old) at the UA farms close to our house. The young one's legs were twice as long as her body and it was amusing to watch the difference between the three of them: the distance they made between themselves and their respective mothers modelled the difference in their ages. The youngest kept her nose nuzzled in her mother's flanks as they walked, the middle one, brushed his nose against his mother's tail and the oldest, almost already an impudent adolescent, lagged behind a couple of lengths, tossing his head and prancing.

Other than these moments, I struggled, a bit, with depression and a sense of loss. My sleep last night was disturbed by the feeling of tiny pins pricking the outside of my leg, on the bone where the plate was placed. I did dream, though, and morning sounds are settling in as I finish my blog for the day. Another cool front comes tomorrow but today should be warm and windy. So, I will act "as if" I am contented, even though my spirit is restless and my mind wants to wander.

a wonderful life

I read to the 3rd/4th graders at Pueblo Gardens El. School yesterday and received a folder full of "get well" cards that I later read to myself at home. All of them were straight from their hearts--all I give to them is some time, occasional treats and support for their future lives as productive person and they give me their smiles, hugs, honesty and affection. One of them had this line: "I hope you have a wonderful life with your leg."

It cracked me up--sort of like the "hopefully sad" comment made by the Starbucks barista on my first outing after the ladder accident. Language mash-ups (a term I learned from watching the t.v. show "Glee": a mash up is putting together two or more songs that don't seemingly work together) seem to be resonating with me during this recovery. I suppose that they are also called oxymorons, but I like the concept of "mash-up"--somehow that term is more active and both phrases I have heard elicited laughter from me.

Well, I am definitely having a different kind of life with my leg/ankle. The luxury of a massage has become a necessity; going to a local park and sitting on the hard concrete bench with my leg up brought some sense of normalcy as I watched dog walkers, grandmas with toddlers, seniors reading books under newly unleafed trees and freshly mowed grass.

I was watching the vintage movie, "Tender Mercies", yesterday and observed that as the script's long pauses between sparse dialogue and movie's cinematography scanned the Texas landscape, my life, like the movie, has become filled with large spaces of time, action, even thought. Within those spaces comes some quiet peace, maybe even a sense of grace, of something being given, offered, if I am attuned to reception.

It's like when I get a massage and a pressure point is touched--there is this release of the muscle and, with it, energy, that comes from within the body. A strange sensation.

So, living a wonderful life with my leg, is a mash-up, but it's one worth doing.

getting dressed by myself

I think about my mother in the last days of her life. About a year ago, her decline increased and in a month we would move her from Cascades apts. which she shared with dad, to the Golden Days home. In the end, she couldn't dress herself, barely wanted to eat. About two weeks before she died, I had made her famous spaghetti for Aron's birthday and he, like her, wanted white cake with caramel frosting for his birthday, soI brought both for her to eat. I had to feed her like the baby she was becoming: preparing for a second birth. She opened her mouth for the red sauce, juices forming around her lip and she licked them with a smile. When it came to the sweet cake, her mouth opened wider, greedily, taking in the last real meal she would have. Only now, do I begin to understand how she felt giving up the daily rituals she clung to in her final years in Green Valley and then, here, in Tucson.

I think about the early years of dressing my baby boy. I would pick out his clothes, his booties, later socks and shoes. Oshkosh was my favorite brand and he had no choice. Later, he would dress himself and make his own clothes purchases. Like my mother, he enjoys shopping for clothes and he is almost as "persnickety" as she is about what he wants.

I have a limited selection these days: the pants have to fit over a cast and be easy to slip on and off. With spring warming, I can skip a camisole (bras are buried in my drawers for work meetings only) and slip on a tshirt and, of course, only one shoe. But for the past two weeks, Mark had to help me get my clothes on and sometimes I just opted to sleep in day clothes--too much bother to go through the movements twice each day.

Last night, after my shower/bath, I wore pj's to bed and dressed myself this morning. I wonder if, like my mother, I will recover to a place slightly below where I was or if I will return renewed and stronger. It was hard to watch her age and diminish and I hope, while no longer in my prime, my diminishing abilities won't be noticeable yet. But, like much of what I am learning in this recovery process, I can only do the "footwork." Dressing myself is a step forward and I will appreciate the small victories as they come.

My 91 year old dad is looking forward to swimming again at the Cascades and I will be checking out the City's theraputic pool tomorrow to see if it can be a good transition between homebound and getting to the Y. There's some merit in being raised in a midwestern home where my mom was a farmer's daughter and my dad was a 1st generation Italian, honed from peasant stop near D'Aquila, Italy. We don't break easily and we are persistent in our living.

mental recovery

I think I was having a mild reaction to the withdrawal of narcotic meds from my system: not only did I have a bit of light headedness and mild vertigo, there were several times when my mouth didn't come up with the exact right word I wanted to say--a close word, but not the right word. Yikes, that was an eerie feeling. So far so good this morning, although I notice my brain can't follow as many indepth articles from the NY Times that I am used to doing (course two weeks ago, I read nothing and last week only some, so I am moving in the mental recovery direction, I think).

I just resist any sensation that takes me back to the experience of the 3 hour post-recovery: the sound without sight feeling (like death is, sound being the last sense to go), the heavy-lidded attempts to see, the over-wrapped sense of being in a cocoon and trying to squirm my way out (mostly unsuccessfully--how does a butterfly continue with that arduous effort?), the relief of a cold wash cloth bringing moisture to the my skin.

I tried to watch "Avatar" last night (the non3D version) and it literally made me ill. The avatars looked like blue fish or fetuses and their liquid-like movements and the multi-colored visual stimuli that surrounded them was like a psychedelic video. When the humans go into those chamber-pods, I felt claustrophobic and I just had to leave Mark to watch it alone. (He admitted it was "freaky and disjointed and had everything in it but the kitchen sink" but he was also very adrenalized at 11:30 p.m. when he is usually sound asleep).

I retired to bed and a rerun of Nationa Treasure/Secrets which was more my speed (slow, semi-literate) of a story.

I am beginning to move things around at home such as newspapers or magazines (my level of "straigtening things up" is low) and pulling stems from my gift flowers out of the arrangement as blue and purple petals fall to the floor.

We have overripe bananas that Mark wants to make into banana bread and I hope to guide him to that task and I look forward to the smell of break baking, even if I am not the one to pour the batter into the pans.

Moving ego aside every day, making room for humility and gratitude, accepting this nuanced shift from post surgery to recovery isn't an easy task for me. But unlike the dead left in Mississippi after yesterday's tornado, I woke up today, and the sun was shining.

easy does it

I think I have successfully weaned myself off of the narcotic med and onto tylenol which is a step toward more natural recovery. I did get a massage yesterday and the masseuse gave me a couple of tips about sleeping position which I used last night and did get a better night's sleep. I noticed, upon awakening and doing my in-bed stretches and mini-yoga, that the swelling around the upper edge of the cast has gone down and I can bend my leg more easily and without pressure.

I started to walk around the inside of our small (1450 sq. ft) house yesterday and after two rounds on just the concrete floor sections, I was pooped. I need to do that more today and maybe extend a tiny bit out onto the sidewalk when we go for a drive in the afternoon. I need to practice "easy does it" both physically and mentally because my ego-driven tendency is to try to go full throttle on both. Since I am both wanting to and am forced to live my life more slowly for the next 7 1/2 weeks, the slogan Easy Does It has to become more than a principle, but also a practice.

I see all the yellow winter eucalyptus leaves scattered around the patio outside and I want to pick up a broom and rake and pile them up, bag 'em, and take them to the recycle can. But I can't, and expecting Mark to do that NOW while he has to balance everything else is unrealistic so...easy does it.

I see my cluttered home office with too much furniture and the mental image of my UA office which I need to clean out and move home and I want to move the futon out, move a work table in, rearrange files and books but...easy does it, "forget about it" until a month from now.

Dust bunnies grow around the edges of the couches as Lia sheds her winter coat and I want to pick them up, but...easy does (not dust) it and I just blow them across the floor.

I have learned how to use my walker, pick up newspapers that litter the kitchen counter and table and drop the papers into the wicker basket for recycle pick up on Monday. But that's my biggest home chore I have learned to do to date. Most of everything else is "easy does it", so that's the best I can do for today.