Sylvia's Journal

Some days everything is just a bit too much. I went to work and struggled on the proverbial treadmill. I lost my battle to keep my emails down and the box is filled up again. My to-do list is getting longer by the minute and I began to feel the beginnings of panic about getting everything done in time before things come to a screeching halt for the holidays. I am preparing for a trip to New York City next week and then Ghana right after the New Year; these deadlines are quite hard.

Before the accident I was able to hold many balls up in the air at the same time; now I am less agile and I am afraid to drop some. I feel a bit like that famous tightrope walker who did fine until he looked down and then he fell. I am looking down a bit too much. Not surprisingly, the biomechanics of tightrope walking revolve around the ankle as the pivot point. No wonder I am having a hard time! Luckily I am surrounded by people who are willing to relieve the pressure. I just need to figure out when to ask and what to let go. I am having a hard time saying no because the things I am asked to do, small or big, are all exactly the kinds of things I like to do.

Morsi told me in the morning that Joan’s double vision had not diminished at all. A consultation with a neuro-ophtalmologist at MGH confirmed that this was not good. She was told that her eyesight is unikely to improve without an operation. The alternative is prism glasses that will realign what she sees into one image. The news cast a dark gloom over the rest of the day.

A stop and go commute added further to the distress. My body does not do well sitting in a car for over an hour. The tingling in my toes is exacerbated by the repetitive motion of breaking and accelerating, and my shoulders, well, it really is a pain in the neck. Julia, my physical therapist, relieved some of the pains with ultrasound and hot packs. The pain in my hip may be a developing bursitis. I hope not, but it would explain the funny stuff that is going on in my upper legs and hips that makes puttiing socks on or taking them off a painful activity. I have heard such complaints from old (really old) people, and now I understand and am so sympathetic to their plight. It is a tremendous motivator to do those exercises faithfully, at least once a day, probably for life. I now go to sleep with an icepack on my hip for 10 minutes and then my shoulder to get the inflammation down. Julia had to remind me again that is was only 5 months. Still…

Axel went to his OT/PT session and was ordered to walk more. And so he walked into town to buy dinner. On his way back he stopped by the PT office to drop of his groceries (a big cabbage) so that he could walk back home unencumbered. He had never met Julia who knows a lot about him. Of course Axel also knew about Julia and it was nice they finally met. I followed him home a little later with strict instructions to not pick him up.

Axel had gone to Gloucester in the morning morning to pick up 20 pounds of shrimp for a dollar a pound (unpeeled), straight from the boat. So that is what we had for dinner, (not all of it). The refrigerators are now full of shrimp. We take advantage of the short shrimp season by buying large quantities and then we invite friends to share in the bounty and freeze what’s left.

Sita presumably arrived back from India. She called from New York where her plane was delayed so I did not get to see her before I went to bed and of course now she is sound asleep

The mechanics of the body don’t seem to follow simple cause and effect rules. I am searching for what triggered off my most recent crippled-ness. After paying attention to the tight Psoas muscle and doing faithfully my exercises it is more limber now. But then my gait must have changed once more triggering another muscle into spasms, tightness and tenderness. This time it is the Ileo-tibial band (ITB) which runs form the side of my hip to the side of my knee. Last night I tried to take my sock of my left foot, balancing precariously on the still weak right foot, when something happened with that muscle that made me stagger to my bed. And now, the morning after, it is so sore that it takes all my concentration to walk straight.

Currently, someone posted a request at the OBTS-Listserve about teaching system dynamics to students and did anyone have any interesting material. Now I think that I could be that material. My body appears to be one big systems dynamics mess; a headache for diagnosticians, but it’s also the source of its robustness, and its elegance. These days, when I enter Julia’s office for PT I always surprise her with what needs attention now. I can hear her think, ‘what is it now?’ The body parts distinction imposed by the insurance is pretty useless. Yesterday was an upper-body day but she ended up calming down the middle part of my body.

The word patience is beginning to loom large in my life again. I think when I was on painkillers I was much more patient. Julia reminded me that it was only 5 months ago that our bodies got all shaken up and that we should count on one year for everything to fall back in place. One year? Seven more months? In my next session with Ruth we will focus on my patience. It needs some attention again.

A full and long workday at MSH which included a birthday toast and then I had to rush off to PT while the rest celebrated the holidays. It is frustrating that I am missing all the end-of-the-day fun that is organized with some frequency these days.

Margaret Benefiel and Ken Haase showed up with a delicious Thai dinner when I came home from PT; a wonderful treat to have dinner delivered like that. It reminded us of the August days when this happened every night. We would not want to go back to that time but it nice once in a while to be spoiled like that.

And today Sita comes home from India. In fact she is already on her way after spending her last night in Delhi with our friends Nathalie and Sanjay. It appears that Sita is carrying a harmonium with her. This is a habit she started on our trip to Senegal 2 years ago when she carried a Cora back. She collects musical instruments. India must have been a treasure trove. We can’t wait to have her back.

This morning my right foot and left hand were numb when I woke up. It is very frustrating because if this happens as a result of the way I sleep I don’t know how to change it. I try to fall asleep lying on my back, but I don’t wake up that way. Luckily the numbness does tend to disappear quickly after I get up, except for the piece on the sole of my foot that has been numb since July 14th.

Yesterday Axel and I started the day, while still in bed, by getting on each other’s bad side. This meant a fight over money. These fights never quite get resolved because when we see each other’s hurt the fight stops and goes underground for awhile. This time, because we are literally and physically also on each other’s bad side, the kiss and make-up part was not as easy as it used to be because of Axel’s plastic splint contraption and his limited movement shoulder. In the past I could simply crawl under his arm and all was well again (if he let me). Such crawling now would probably add more pain; bad sides slapped together; aww, that hurts!

We did, some time ago, try to change our habitual places in bed so that we’d be on each other’s good side only to discover the power of habit. Apparently, over the course of the night, I inched back to my old place, slowly pushing Axel to the edge. He finally got up and took the wise decision to resume his old place, while I was blissfully dreaming on.

Yesterday was an intense work day for both of us, feeling very much like the old, pre-crash days. The only thing that is different is that we both are quite stiff by the end of the day of all that sitting.

Sook and Roger saved us from sitting some more in front of our computers in the evening and invited us to dinner with some friends. We discussed the upcoming primaries and argued for or against Obama or Clinton. If we’d held the election with us as the only voters Hillary would have won: imagine a woman in the White House!

Although it was a seated dinner, I got up after a while to do more exercises. Others joined in and we compared our stiff knees and backs. When we talk about joints in this new phase of our lives we mean something different than we did 30 years ago. Exercising will be the new rage, now that the baby boomers have come to accept that they have to do this in order to keep up their image of health, strengths and possibilities. Axel and I have a head start. We know that our exercise regime is for life, forever.

We drove back through a light dusting of snow and tumbled exhausted into our bed, on our usual habitual sides.

I woke up at 4:30 AM, my usual time for getting up and being in time for an easy commute. But today is not a commuting day so I turned over and slept another 2 hours, full of dreams about things healing, stalling or breaking down.

I had a 3:30 PM appointment for physical therapy yesterday and so I left MSH right after lunch. I had been very alert about walking the right way all day and by the time I parked my car I was ready for a perfect walk into the PT office. I did, but no one was watching. I sat down and read a few pages in my book when I was called in. At that time a stabbing pain, like an ice pick behind my ankle bone, stopped me in my tracks. I limped into the treatment room. So much for showing off!

This is the new phase of healing, sometimes I feel on top of the world and I think I’m done with the healing and then there are those setbacks with muscle pains and the site of the break/dislocation reminding me, with these stabbing flashes of pain, that it was not quite 5 months ago and that I have a ways to go.

Although it was neck and shoulder time for the PT treatment, Julia, breaching insurance policy, gave attention to the muscles in my leg as well as those in my shoulder. Both got a good massage.

I found Axel hobbling up Bridge Street in the darkness, on his way home from the station. He had gone to see his therapist in Brookline, a five hour trip from door to door if done by train, for a one hour consultation. He was exhausted and irritable from the long trip. There must be a better way. Nevertheless, he cooked dinner because I could not stand up all that long for cooking.

And while he was doing that I was reading in my new book about the battles that the 1940 women pilots had to wage to get into the male bastion of war and flying.

“The trouble is that some many of them [women] insist on wanting to do jobs which they are quite incapable of doing. The menace is the woman who thinks that she ought to be flying a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly, or wants to nose round as an Air Raid Warden and yet can’t cook her husband’s dinner.” (C.G. Grey, editor of Aeroplane Magazine, 1940)

It is true that I was incapable of cooking my husband’s dinner last night and I do have this thing about flying (no bombers though). But we’ve come a long way, as a society, in our thinking about what women can do. All that in a mere 60 years!

I never knew I had a Psoas muscle. It’s a big one that goes somewhere on the inside of my thighs. I also learned, from experience, that if you don’t ‘toe off’ well all sorts of muscles in your legs and hips get out of whack. In my evolution from walking with my big black moon boot to walking on regular shoes again, I managed, without the physical therapist noticing, to cheat on the toe off. Instead of flexing my foot (ankle) I did (do) something that looks like a swerve as I bring my foot forward. As a result my psoas muscle has gotten tight or short and leads to more limping, just when I thought I could walk normally again. The mechanics of my body never cease to amaze me. There is no cheating.

This new development thus calls for a new set of exercises. There is one that requires lying on a kitchen table and dropping one leg while holding the other knee; and there’s another exercise that is slightly indecent.It requires assistance from Axel. I won’t describe it here but he will like it.

Axel is making terrific progress with his left arm. He can raise it quite high now. He can’t move his fingers yet but he can raise his wrist so it is level. We have noticed quite a bit of progress just in one week. If he wanted to (and doesn’t wear his splint) he could fool anyone that his hand is completely normal. Now that he is driving, the improved movement of his arm and hand comes in handy. Our spirits are quite buoyed by this. The nerve is regenerating. It must be the no-alcohol diet; the nerves are not being distracted by these nasty neurotoxins!

Yesterday I went to Cambridge again for a three-quarter day. Sitting in front of a computer and two hours driving is wreaking havoc on my upper back, neck and shoulders. The muscles, tendons and ligaments remember the trauma and are clearly not done with it yet. My computer-centered lifestyle is not helpful and requires constant alertness. I have to watch my posture and pull my shoulder blades back; but even then it is hard to get comfortable. I look forward to the Tuesday and Thursday sessions of PT when that part of my body gets attention with a hot pack, ultrasound and massage.

I also need to be alert as I drive home. I nearly drove into the back of the car in front of me on my ride home yesterday afternoon. Its driver decided, quite abruptly, to let a gaggle of Canada geese cross Memorial Drive. For a split second my mind imagined another crash and its aftermath: car out of commission again, and me probably too, with muscles that would scream ‘enough!’ Both Axel and I have this fear of a car crash now. It’s funny that I feel quite safe when I am up in the air; but on the road I don’t. I think it has something to do with control, and the number of cars. There’s much less traffic in the air. On the road there are too many turkeys, in addition to those Canada geese.

English speakers, just bear with me for the next few lines. Today is a rather special day in Holland that requires a rhyme.

Een klompje met wortel bij de haard
Wachtte op een bezoek van Sint en paard
Maar vanochtend was het klompje leeg
Zelfs geen koekje van eigen deeg

Het zijn vast die terrorist wetten
Die Sinterklaas hier beletten
Om stiekum huizen binnen te gaan
Daar hebben ze echt een hekel aan

Stel toch eens voor, zo’n zwarte piet
een blanke die je van roet voorziet
Politiek is dat hier niet erg korrekt
slavernij die door een traditie lekt

Hier wacht men op Santa uit ’t Noorden
En weet niet van rijmende woorden
Men koopt zich wekenlang dol en daas
Geef mij maar Sinterklaas!

Today Sint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) visits Holland. Last night on the other side of the Atlantic, little Dutch kids put their shoes, boots or wooden shoes (traditionally) near the fire place (or if missing, near a heat source). They fill it with straw and carrots for Sint’s horse. Black Peter will crawl down the chimney and put presents in the shoes. At least that’s what I believed happened and what I did when I was little. Tonight the grown ups and the kids who have figured out who really gives them their presents, sit around a basket filled with gift-wrapped packages in all shapes and sizes. The basket was delivered on their doorstep after a loud knock on the door but with no one there when the door was opened. You then say ‘Thank you Sint and Piet’ into the empty street. Each package has a poem attached, supposedly written by Sint and/or Piet, in rhyme. They will write whatever there is to say about the recipient of the package, good or bad. The package itself may or may not contain a real present. When it doesn’t, it usually requires a search to find the real present someplace else in the house.

Sinterklaas is another of these rituals that is hard to explain to outsiders. It was always my favorite event. Technically speaking it is not a holiday. You don’t get the day off like you do for Christmas. I do miss it here when December 5 comes around. We still celebrate it, when the girls are back, on Christmas Eve. We start around midnight because it takes us all day to get our rhyming and surprise packaging done.

Axel did get a present yesterday, but not from Sinterklaas. He was able to retrieve his driver’s licence from the registry of Motor Vehicles in less than fifteen minutes. Hats off to the registry! Armed with his license we then picked up the car at the garage. It is fixed in the way that old people are fixed after they get another piece of their body replaced; things will be OK until the next thing goes, which could be anytime. We keep our fingers crossed that this ‘anytime’ is not in 2007. Replacing a car is one thing we cannot quite handle at this time, nor any more big repairs like this.

With the car back Axel did something that he dreamed about for the last couple of months: go to the grocery store on his own and buy exactly what he wanted. It was a great feeling of freedom, he reported after he returned several hours later. This simple pleasure of shopping on your own!

This was supposed to have been the first full week of work, or mostly full. I think I will continue to need some down time on Mondays and Fridays. ‘Full’ means three days of commuting to Cambridge. But the car is still in the garage and we don’t know when it will be fixed. I did the calculations for train travel and decided to stay home and have my planned meetings by telephone. It’s not a great sacrifice even though I enjoyed being in the office last week. I won’t miss the commute.

The snowstorm that first brought rain and sleet and later snow kept me inside on my birthday, except for one sortie to the physical therapist late in the day. I told Julia that after her last intervention, painful as it had been, I had limbered up considerably. Of my own free will I requested a repeat. The appointed 30 minutes stretched out to one and a half hour with much mobilization exercise, topped of with a 20 minute (stationary) bike ride and the usual 10 minutes of icing. The last half hour means I get much reading done which is part of the attraction. I am fully immersed in the experiences of the spitfire women.

Neighbor Ted was our physical therapy appointment driver. He took Axel to Peabody and later me to downtown. I had planned to take the bike but the weather was too nasty and he would not have let me. What would we do without our neighbors!

I had a nice Skype conversation with Tessa. Because of the fancy computer she has I see her on my screen (and everything/everyone else who happens to walk by her). This is something I remember from sci-fi movies a long time ago, the picture phone, and here it is, as if she is right there with me. The florist delivered her gift, a small square bouquet with a ribbon that looks like a wrapped gift box, quite nifty. It sits in front of me, the gift that never opens.

Sita is busy with her scribing in India. She sent me her birthday wishes on December 2 because it was already the 3rd for her, confusing Tessa. Sita is having a wonderful time. I don’t think she has set foot outside the fancy hotel yet but hopefully, after all is over, Nathalie will show her another side of India; a side that is probably not represented as the high and might meet at the Taj Palace Hotel to discuss India’s economic future. She sent us the front page of a newspaper with her at work. Axel discovered that you can see her at work at http://www.pbase.com/forumweb/india2007&page=all

Axel had planned a festive mussels and fries dinner but being without a car, he had to make other plans. He cooked a spicy stir-fry beef instead that left the house in smoke and me coughing but it was worth it when the smoke cleared, the coughing stopped and we sat down for dinner. We shared the Belgian Duvel beer that Gary gave Axel sometime in July, half a glass each. It reminded us of how much pretense there is in a pretend-beer.

Axel went to a town event in the evening with his buddies. Afterwards they always land in a bar. Being on a no (sometimes interpreted as low) alcohol regime I wondered how he fared, but did not stay up to find out.