Sylvia's Journal

A giant mosquito dive-bombed my ear and pulled me out of a deep sleep in the most unpleasant way. I prefer alarms. The damp weather is creating a super species. There’s blood on the walls!

Axel is taking Tessa and Steve to the train for a visit to the Federal building in Boston. Such fun! They are going to figure out how Steve can get his missing green card replaced. Its absence is what stands between him and all the job offers he is receiving. We wished them good luck. It’s a trial under the best of circumstances. He’s taking Tessa along as a safety blanket.

I woke from a dream that took place in Kabul where I discovered that my room had been broken into and my wallet taken; a wallet with my identity inside that was now missing. I remember being in denial (‘No! This could not be!’) but eventually reality sunk in, even if it was only a dream reality. Dread was the prevailing feeling, probably brought on by the conversation with Steve last night about extracting a new green card from the INS.

I asked for, and received, some more information about the ankle surgery. It has a name: corrective osteotomy and tendon transfer. The tendons involved are the peroneal tendon and the posterior tibial tendon. I looked it up on the internet and was taken to the Wheeless Textbook of Orthopaedics which had some very unappetizing pictures of the procedure. I also queried the physician assistent (PA) about the spots on my X-ray that were pointed out to me as evidence of AVN. “Now that this diagnosis is abandoned,” I asked, “what about them?” “Oh, these are just shadows,” I was told. From dead cells to shadows seems like a minor semantic distinction but according to the PA it was a significant one.

I had another intense day with too many tasks and requests vying for attention. The vacation looming on the horizon can’t get here fast enough. I drove to Cambridge to say goodbye to Aimee who has finished her summer school and is heading back home on Sunday. I picked up the sleeping bag and bicycle that got some good mileage in and around Cambridge and received a brand new printer in return. It came with the bright red Apple notebook she had bought and she had no use for it. Driving home I had a hard time, again, staying awake but this time there was no coffee shop in sight, so I sung to myself with the windows wide open trying to keep images of beds and comfy chairs at bay.

I had had expectations of hubby waiting for me with a Salade Niçoise, which he had promised over the phone. But he was not there, nor was the salad, as Axel was prospecting for work/networking in Essex. When he came home and put me to work on the potatoes, the Salade still in its conceptual stage, I stated my displeasure with having to participate in the meal preparation by criticizing him for a whole slew of other (irrelevant) things (a quiet explosion). To this Axel responded with an explosion of the loud and noisy kind, accompanied by much movement and slamming of doors, which included getting into the car. This set off an old childhood fear about accidents. My mother used to vent her anger and frustration by getting into her car and driving godknowswhere, leaving me petrified, waiting for the ambulance to bring her back in pieces.

Steve and Tessa witnessed the petering out of the spat which occurred at the dinner table with something only remotely looking like the promised Salade, good, but not a Niçoise. We talked about the art of fighting with peers (siblings as opposed to parents) which Axel, being an only child, never learned and I learned too well. Axel pointed to Tessa about the benefits of her fights with Sita; she only half believed him I think.

I withdrew into my room and finished the shalwar kameez dress (a subcontinent invention) that I have been working on for about a month now. With enough energy for only a few stitches a night it has taken awhile. It is now good enough to be worn in Africa and places where ankles and legs can be shown (the material used for the bottom part is a little transparent) but not yet in Afghanistan or conservative places – for those I still have to sew in a liner into the pants. It includes two scarves, a thin and purely decorative one for places where I don’t have to cover my head and a big wide one for places where I do.

Andrew came by and was served a supper that consisted of the leftovers of the pretend Salade Niçoise and vinho verde. He needed some company as he is home alone and lonely. We provided that company and in exchange I got a heavenly massage of my upper back and neck. The muscles and tendons are still whiplashed a year later, full of kinks and knots. Last night was particularly bad.

According to the certified neuropsychologist, Axel is very smart but something is wrong with his executive function and it has to do with his ‘memory to learn.’ We already knew this. It was, once more, confirmed by the neuropsychologist who Axel went to see at Beth Israel yesterday to discuss the results of the long and grueling neuropsych test he took some weeks ago. Suddenly the scientific debate on what to do about ADD (or executive ‘mal’ functioning) is in our living room. Pills or exercising and organizing the brain processes? He used to take pills but since the accident he has been off those and now it’s all about learning techniques that work around the handicap. He came home with a book written by a neurologist who watched her own brain collapse and then recover (stroke of insight). It is funny to think that I originally embarked on a career of neurpsychology but (a first) marriage diverted me from that pursuit. None of what happened would have happened if I had stuck to both. A lot of other things would also not have happened.

Axel is functioning quite well with his handicap and to prove this, he was inducted into town officialdom last night at his first attendance as a member of the Manchester Community Preservation Committee. It is a good place for him where he can combine his love for preserving what is worth preserving in the town with his knack for bringing people together around a common vision. I watched him and others, years ago, campaign for getting the CPA approved in Manchester. It took some perseverance but in the end they succeeded. This is where I learned, by observation, about the art of coalition building. I still use those notes in my teaching.

I spent another whole day at work plus too much time in traffic. It is supposed to be lighter now because of vacations but when I left at 3:30 it did not look that way. Two hours later I was home. Halfway through my commute I had to stop for some strong medicine (coffee) because I was practically falling asleep over my steering wheel. The coffee place is, strategically, situated in a bookstore. I was able to confirm Axel’s observation that there are lots of books out there about brain. A quick scan of the ‘hot book’ table shows ‘green’ and ‘brain’ to be the hot topics of this summer’s reading. We’re not doing great on either but we are working on both.

I went to bed late because I was listening to the videotaped launch of a program that is focused on giving women in developing countries a business education. It is backed up by much wealth and years of research that proves something most of us intuitively know – when you educate women and give them opportunities to improve their economic status, the multiplier effect is huge. This morning we are meeting with some people who are involved in this initiative and see if we can join forces somehow.

After the intense last four weeks I was ready for some downtime this week but there are too many meetings, already postponed or involving outsiders, that require my presence. Somehow the formula ‘mostly vacation and a couple of hours of work’ that I had in mind is not quite working. Although I slept in yesterday – all the way till 7! – and we went for a long walk, and I arrived at work around noontime, I ended up spending 6 hours in the office and another 2 working in the evening. I have blocked out the last two weeks of August on my Outlook calendar to keep meetings at bay and enjoy a real vacation (mostly at home), before heading out to Africa again in early September.

I woke up this morning about an hour before my alarm was set – some would call that in the middle of the night. My brain was instantly awake and a thousand thoughts and questions were swirling around in my head. Why had the ankle doctor first made the diagnosis of AVN that gave me such a fright, two weeks ago? What were those tiny half moon dark spots on the X-ray that he pointed at as evidence for AVN of the talus? What are they now? How do my symptoms suddenly become obvious indicators of the split tendon, when they haven’t changed and weren’t obvious symptoms of anything before?

Part of me wants to simply surrender to the expert’s diagnosis and go with the flow, meaning surgery later this year, and not have to acquaint myself with a new doctor and get that second opinion; but another part of me has too many questions that either I did not ask or that weren’t answered. When someone is going to put a knife in your body you want it to be in the best possible hands. I think I’ll send the MRI CD to one of my orthopede friends in Holland to see what they’re seeing over there. It’s elective surgery, so there is no hurry and a little extra research won’t harm.

Thunder and rain storms continue their pattern from July without mercy. I am glad we are not camping somewhere and dealing with a wet tent all the time. But we have our own dampness problems. All our gutters were clogged. We finally cleaned them out, a piece of maintenance that had been skipped last year and, as a result, led to flooding in the basement.

One thing led to another. I cleaned my office yesterday. This was partially spurred on by the fact that you could no longer enter my office without climbing over piles of books and other stuff, and partially because of the mold that was beginning to grow on stuff exposed to the dampness that came up through the floor from the cellar. This included the Mauritanian CD box that Anne gave me some years ago. Its brown (untreated) leather was like a Petri dish and grew white fluffy mold all over; cloth-bound books also showed colorful signs of mold. It is no wonder that Axel has these sneeze attacks when he walks into my office. I think he was ready to do the cleaning himself. He also urged me to get rid of books; “you’re full,” he says, repeatedly (I could say the same to him).

The only thing here that loves all the rains is the garden. We have zucchini the size of baseball bats, the beans are reaching to the sky, the raspberries keep on producing and the blueberries are turning purple one at a time (to be promptly eaten). The asparagus bed has transformed into a feathery forest and the lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, onions and chard are flourishing. The resident bunny, supposedly, is also doing well as leaves up to a certain height, are vanishing as quickly as they grow.

Part of the indoor activity was the setup of my new (old) desktop that I won in the lottery at work. MSH periodically sells its surplus of old computers via a lottery and I now have, for the first time, a desktop all to myself. I installed Flight Simulator on it. I used to have it on my tiny laptop but I crashed all the time and finally gave up. Now I have a screen that actually allows you to see where you’re going and I am ready to try it again. I also organized my photos and disentangled all the personal stuff from the work-related stuff on my MSH computer. In between I did some MSH business and discussed, among other things, virtual platforms to keep our colleagues and their counterparts in Afghanistan connected and in learning mode. The escalating security problems make it increasing difficult for them to meet in person. We think we might be able to help, from a distance.

This morning Axel and I went to the orthopedic doctor, the one who looks like he’s just graduated; a skier I imagine, or a tennis player. This time I did not have to wait long. He stepped in saying that he had both good and bad news. He started with the bad news: surgery is needed. This did not seem all that bad given that I had come to terms over the last two weeks with that prospect. The good news then was really good: I do not have AVN but rather two tendons, the posterior tibial tendon and one on the other side (anterior?) that are damaged. Each must have split lengthwise in two parts at impact; one strand of each tendon had slipped over the bone to the other side. This explained a lot of the continuing swelling, neuropathy and inability to move my ankle in certain directions.

I asked about the surgery and whether he has done much of that sort of surgery (he looks so young!) and he assured me that it is something he does often, a common type of surgery with very high chances of success. He predicted that one day everything will be OK again and I can walk and dance and row and fly as if nothing happened. I had begun to wonder about that.

He painted a picture of 6 to 8 weeks in a non weight bearing cast and another 6 or so in the plastic boot. It is good that we kept all of our medical supplies. The plastic boot has been mildewing in the basement and the crutches are stashed away up in the attic. Whether I need a wheelchair (and thus ramps, furniture moving) depends on my facility with crutches during the first 2 months. All in all he predicts that I am in for 3 to 5 months of some form or other of disability. It is elective surgery and so I can set the timetable. I am thinking mid December when the world slows down and when it would be a good day to be home. I used up all my vacation and sick time last fall and could use a few more months to replenish the kitty.

This morning we woke up in Kent, a small town in the northwest corner of Connecticut, in Joseph and Cynthia’s house that is nestled in the woods and overlooks a lovely lake. I got to try out a handmade canvas over woodframe Inuit kayak built by Bob who knows a lot more about kayaks than we do. I stayed upright despite its tippiness. I may be defective in the ankle, but this required flexibility in the hips. That I can do.

On Saturday Alison chauffeured us from Somerville, through torrential rains, picturesque villages, lovely rolling hill farmland, and past many manicured lawns into this far corner of Connecticut. Others had streamed in from Maine, Manhattan and DC. The occasion was the silver jubilee of a literary/wine drinking society founded in Chumleys, after work one day, 25 years ago when we were young and silly and the founding members were working in the same organization in Manhattan. The society derives its name from a southern writer who published only one book, we believe (Never Enough) and the cover made it into Chumley’s bookjacket gallery. The nice thing about this society is that when we get together for the annual general meeting (AGM), we still get to be young and silly, despite our grey hairs and elevated organizational positions (some of us). And now there are even retirees. Our annual meetings have taken place in New York, in Manchester by the Sea, on Long Island and even Southern France. A quorum of 7 people is always reached. But we can have twice as many present if the time and place is right.

It’s a flat organizational structure; there are no elections, no positions and no dues. Membership is very exclusive, you have to be asked in or marry someone who is already in, those are the only ways to become part of this exalted society. Absence at the AGM is risky because gossip about absentees is allowed, even encouraged, especially if the reasons for absence are not considered compelling enough. After the rains stopped we moved outside and started with the agenda that includes a roll call, and educational activities on wine and literature. Gossip and scolding (public shaming) are standing agenda items. We always start the meeting and then never quite end it because we are all very easy to distract. Axel, with his impaired executive function fits in beautifully since everyone else acts as if they were, at some point in their life, in a crash as well. We pretend to apply Roberts Rules but never do it quite right and sometime over dinner we drift so far from the agenda that it is forgotten entirely. We are OK with this since we know it will be picked up one year from now at our next annual meeting.

Axel and I had cleaned out the barn, once again, and assembled a pile of books that we no longer needed. Among other things we found a book written in 1942 about personal leadership that contained some good (and several politically incorrect for this day and age) passages that lent themselves well for a public reading by Axel. The wine descriptor quiz that we assembled during the ride over proved that there are very few adjectives that do not apply to wine. Everyone learned that diesel/petrol is indeed a descriptor of some wines which is only undesirable if it overwhelms, according to our source, plucked from the internet.

We ended the evening with a slideshow projected large on the wall, of our own silliness. It was captured on various cameras throughout the afternoon and into the night. We also got to see what transpired in Southern France last year, the meeting that we had to miss, given our condition in early September 2007.

I went to bed long after my habitual bedtime and woke up, not surprisingly, long after my habitual wake up time. In Dutch we call this sleeping a hole into the day. At midday Alison ushered us back into the car and we drove, once again, through torrential rains, picturesque villages, lovely rolling hill farmland, away from the manicured lawns back to the clutter of Somerville and tall wet grasses of Lobster Cove.
 

Lobster Cove is empty this morning. No more than a small puddle in the middle. We have missed the mussel meals. I woke Axel up to investigate where they had gone. It was little early for him but the cool morning air and the cold water woke him up. He reported that they were either washed away or buried. I followed him at a distance and took pictures. Even though it is an overcast morning, it is beautiful. There is no horizon. The white sky is fused with the far away waters of the sea.

Fusion. I wrote to a fellow rower who was also in a plane crash and had her ankle fused. She wrote back that she had to give up some things, like running and swimming (her fused ankle works like an anchor) but that by and large it was a good thing and she can still row and ski. Willem, my brother consulted his medical confreres and a top athlete and all indicated that fusion is a very viable option. I am also told to avoid ankle replacement as long as I can.

Yesterday morning we closed the course with some serious stuff and then we had fun. I had made a slideshow of pictures taken during the course and inserted text and thought balloons. Making the slideshow was as much fun as showing it. In a more serious exercise the students talked about each other and themselves as they struggled through ambiguity, mismatched agendas and the stresses of balancing their personal lives with their academic ones. We celebrated the course closing, their 8 credits and the personal transformations that happened with a meal in an Indian restaurant, in between speeches, certificates, personal awards and many words of appreciation. My headache and nausea were less severe than they were on waking up but still interfered with my enjoyment of the meal. I was exhausted and my body kept telling me that – but what can you do when you still have to get your car, drive home and then have people coming for another birthday dinner for Axel?

Our friends Anne and Chuck came for a private birthday dinner party. We sat by the cove toasting to Axel’s 62st and to my mother who would have turned 90 yesterday. When the mosquitoes came out we equipped Chuck with a mosquito zap racket. He made them disappear doing mosquito tai chi, which took the life force out of them, and then we killers went inside.

The birthday boy himself did the shopping, cooking, serving and cleaning up, so I just sat there and enjoyed the spectacularly simple and tasty meal (fresh swordfish and tuna kebabs with arugula salad and the first native corn of the summer). We talked about wine descriptors, improvisation training and a thousand other things that happened in the months we haven’t seen each other. And then I tumbled into bed and a deep sleep with disturbing dreams about someone dear and close who died suddenly.

Today is the last day of the course and I was up early to finish the preparations for the students’ sendoff into the summer, internships, careers and whatnot. Today is also my mother’s birthday which coincides with Switzerland’s national holiday. My mother spent part of her childhood in that country and we spent many vacations there, often at this time of the year. When I was little I always thought that the Swiss were celebrating my mother’s birthday. I was very proud of her then and still am today.

Today is also the last day of an intense month of work and part of me wants to roll up into a ball and go to sleep for a long time. My body is starting to protest the long days and short nights and has sent me a searing headache and nausea as a warning shot across the bow this morning.

Yesterday I drove in to work and then back home with my colleague Cary in her brand new eco-friendly car that had communications and entertainment equipment integrated in a way I had never experienced. I was very impressed. In our 12 year, eco-unfriendly car nothing is integrated; in fact, things are in various states of disintegration.

I holed up most of yesterday in a conference room where some students were working on their final papers while others were meeting with various colleagues about topics or countries of their choice. We had a conversation about careers and how to balance them with families, a question with intense personal relevance for all of the women in the room. Later we reflected together on the course and how to make it better next year, if there is another one. Three years ago MSH embarked on this experiment with BU and we agreed to run three courses. That is done now. What’s next is to be seen.

I had driven home with Cary as part of a plan to go to an outdoor concert at Castle Hill in Ipswich, where she lives. Severe thunder and rainstorms interfered and we ended up at her house where I finally got to meet her husband as well as some other relatives. Other friends we have in common joined us and we ate the various picnic contributions that everyone had brought sitting around the kitchen table while the rain and thunder cracked and poured around us.

Back home we both tumbled into bed exhausted and fell asleep instantly. This morning I put the final touches on a slideshow that will serve as a souvenir for the students of this course, their professors and classmates. I will show it at the end of the morning, before our final lunch together when we will bring this course to its formal end.