Sylvia's Journal

The fifth snowstorm since I landed nearly 3 weeks ago has announced itself. This is why some of my colleagues like to travel to assignments in warm places this time of year. Many people are getting very impatient for spring but I know it is a long way off here in new England. March here has nothing to do with spring.

But I don’t mind the winter and the snow. I actually like snowstorms – at least under certain conditions: I don’t have to be on the road or have a flight to catch (or land), our snow plow contractor shows up, we have dry wood for the fireplace within reach and the electricity stays on.

Snowstorms greatly advance my knitting. I completed another sweater for Faro from the wool Sita and I bought at an enormous wool/knitting warehouse that happens to be in her neck of the woods. I was like a kid in a candy story and spent a chunk of my Kabul danger money there.

Both Axel and I have body parts that need healing: his thumb and my foot. Both of us started off a little too enthusiastically exercising our tender parts too much and too quickly. Now there is push back and we are told to back off.

My impatience makes me forget that the body heals at its own pace. I should know better. But I want to walk, hike and ski (cross country) again. The ankle doctor told me I should count on a half year for 90% recovery and a full year for a full recovery. I am only 3.5 months into the process.

My physical therapist creates adjustments to my exercises to avoid the pains and aches that have surfaced and counsels ice packs more often and short ‘ice-naps’ with my foot elevated above my heart. “Can you do that in your office?” she asked me. I surveyed the office landscape in my mind, searching for a place. I think I can find one where I have a view of the outside and no one has a view of me.

Axel and I watched and listed to Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo. I had downloaded from our Manchester library the unabridged (English) narrative while still in Kabul, for the long trip back. The download took an entire night, 42 parts, each about one and a half hour of narration. It took me another two weeks after I landed to finish the book. The snowstorms helped. There is nothing like sitting by the fire, knitting and being read to by a superb actor.

Axel got us started, in parallel, on the French mini-series, starring Gerard Depardieu as the count. Some members of my family call him Gerard Depardon’t which irritates me mildly – just because they can’t pronounce dieu it doesn’t mean it is funny. I told them the joke, if it is one, would not be understood in Europe. Ah, American humor. I suggested to call him Gerard Depardiable, but that is not funny; it is, in some ways, the role he takes on.

Listening to the 60 hours of English during the day and then watching the 6 hours of French ( spread over the two weeks as well) was interesting. I pointed out the many liberties the script writers had taken – which I suppose one has to when having to reduce a story by 90%.

The story is a classic indeed, leading to many conversations around the dinner table about justice, righting wrongs and taking the law into one’s own hands. But in the end I think it is about life’s purpose, happiness and the toll that anger and revenge take. As for the writer, we can’t imagine how someone can write such a long book with a quill pen and ink. And to think it was only one of many books he wrote. On to the three musketeers!

As I am progressing with my physical therapy, I am learning much about the intricate design of the human foot. My left foot, having been packaged for the last 3 months, is protesting about the sudden activity it is required to engage in; especially the many little tendons and muscles that have been inactive for so long and now have to compensate for part of the foot unable to move at all.

I started to do my PT exercises with too much enthusiasm which backfired as muscles protested, sometimes in unexpected places. That’s how I learned about how everything is connected to everything, foot, knee, hips.

This week I started to explore the commute to my new place of work. I am helped in this by the social navigation app ‘Waze.’ Based on input from 1000s of Wazers it computes the least obstructed way home or work; as a result every trip is different. Waze was celebrated in this month’s Fast Company as one of the top 50 innovators. It certainly helps me get home as fast as possible. My commute has greatly improved now that I work north of Boston.

Axel went out to the woodpile over the crusty snow in order to supply us with wood for a night of sitting around the fire. He had put on his snow shoes as the snow was knee deep. A few minutes later he came back into the house, without wood and with his thumb bent in a funny way. He had fallen through the upper and middle crust and caught himself with his thumb up.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the emergency room of Beverly Hospital where we spent the next three hours with various professionals attending to his thumb. At 10 PM his thumb had resumed its regular shape, albeit swollen and painful.

Our daughters, who were kept informed via text and pictures of our latest hospital adventures, are getting a little tired of these kinds of updates and wished us well.

We can only be grateful of this mishap not being more serious and of course having a health insurance card.

And so, on February 17, after months of being a care receiver, I became the care giver for a change.

I received my marching orders from my physical therapist: writing the alphabet in the air with my fused foot, a semi-squat side step with my feet tied with elastic and balancing on my left foot, first with eyes open and then, if too easy, with my eyes closed.

I slipped into my ortho boot to recover from the workout and we set out for Easthampton in a light snow. West of Worcester we could see the areas worst hit by Thursdays’s snowstorm, always quite beautiful in the aftermath with all the hard edges soften under a foot and a half of snow.

What a joy to see Faro. It was mutual. He kept muttering, opa, oma, opa, oma…and then we got to read and play and empty baskets full of toys on the floor. Faro is now stringing words together that start to look like sentences, like ‘books on the floor,’ or ‘where is opa now?’

I did my exercises once and then was sore for the rest of the day. I am on the mend but not quite as fast as I wished.

Jim cooked us a nice dinner which we shared with friends of theirs and then I hooked off when the evening just took off, to rest my foot and catch up on sleep.

Axel got up early to drive me to my new office for my first appearance there, but also my last for a while. I won’t be back until February 12 which seems a long way off. Next time I come here I should be walking without crutches which I plan to leave behind in Afghanistan.

Axel was probably as curious as I was about the new location, the new commute and my new digs. Still getting up early to commute someone else to work is pretty nice. He’s been the best nurse, cook and bottle washer one could imagine over the last 7 weeks. By the time I come back I should be able to take back some of the chores when I am two-legged again.

The office is nice for extraverts and a little challenging for introverts. It’s one big office garden with light coming through enormous windows from all sides – an artist’s paradise. I felt my spirits lifted the moment I stepped in. I am on the outer band (bank?) of cubicles, looking out over the Tufts Boathouse, just a few yards away and behind it the river. It’s a better view than from our Cambridge location because I had to standup to look out of my window there. Here light and view is a common good, everyone has it. Only one office has no glass walls – it will be our meditation room every Tuesday from 12 to 1. And I suppose the lactation room is a bit more private but I wouldn’t know where it was.

There are only a few people with offices, mostly the top 10 people and a few directors who need privacy because of their work. But even those offices are transparent, with floor to ceiling glass walls only the entrance door is not – there is no hiding, no unnoticed nose picking, yawning or playing cards – we preach transparency and now we practice it as well.

I unpacked two of my three moving crates – everything is on wheels so this was easy. One crate is left. It is full of 27 years of pictures and negatives documenting my MSH journey as well as many of my fellow travelers over the years. There are a few left of those I started with; they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I don’t know where to put these pictures. we were all given very little storage room which is a good thing in this age of electronic files. Most of my physical files are nostalgic remnants from my early years at MSH; documents that makes me realize how far we have progressed.

The limited storage space is intentional. We were supposed to have uncluttered ourselves before the move but I never got around that before the operation. It’s a chore for when I have nothing else to do – sorting through everything, to keep or not to keep. Such things are difficult. Sita gave us a book for Christmas that is written by an ‘unclutter coach’ – I had no idea that that is a coaching niche. Clever!

While I am getting used to my freed new ankle, the reality of my upcoming travel to Afghanistan has begun to set in – practical things so as how to carry things when on crutches and only allowed 50% of my (usual) weight on the left side.

The good thing is that business class travel has been approved and a ticket is being purchased. I should have no worries while on the plane – but it is the spaces and times in between that concern me a bit. I have asked for wheelchair assistance and trying to imagine if I ever saw a wheelchair at Kabul airport. And would I be parked for several hours in a wheelchair outside a gate? Would there be someone to push me to the bathroom if I need to go or leave my stuff with? And what stuff should I hand carry – not the usual heavy backpack probably. I have all these questions one never thinks about when both legs are working.

Packing for my trip is also going to be a bit of a challenge. Usually I make multiple trips up and down the stairs, carrying stuff this way and that. I have to be a lot more organized and, with this in mind, have started to make lists. It’s winter in Afghanistan, which is always a more complicated packing task and also makes for a heavier suitcase than usual.
I feel I am making some progress on the healing. Only occasionally does my ankle hurt, mostly my leg is stiff and weak. I am practicing walking, with 5 to 10% of my weight on the foot (presumably my level of comfort will tell when I am going over 10%). And each time I get up I have to decide, scooter or crutches?

We started 2014 with a whopping snowstorm which has left us 2 feet under. A front loader was needed to clean our driveway; ordinary snow plows attached to a truck no longer sufficient. It made for a cozy time inside and productive workdays thanks to the power lines holding the weight of the snow. The cove is a cauldron, waves of 4 to 6 meters and a very high tide submerged parts not usually submerged. We hope we didn’t lose more land – we won’t find out until spring, when the storms subside.

The pink cast was sawed off by what looked like a stick blender with a small circular saw. I couldn’t see any safety device that would keep it from going through the cast, the cotton layers underneath and then in my leg.

The young assistant who did the sawing giggled at my nervousness, assuring me that it was safe. But I was not convinced, especially when I could feel the pressure of the metal on the cotton, pushing into my leg. Her supervisor, I assume, came to check in on her and took over the job, maybe she was too careful. The supervisor pushed harder on the saw and I could feel more pressure on the cotton. I forgot to breathe, Axel discovered from across the room, documenting the whole process on his iPhone.

And then out came the shriveled leg with its skin looking like old parchment. The purple markings of where to cut where still as clear as they were on surgery day. The place that had felt like it was jabbed by an icepick for the last 6 weeks was unblemished – the jabbing had been done from the inside by nerves frantic looking for new pathways. The loss of sensation on the left side of my foot has diminished only slightly. We were told it was to be expected and would continue to diminish over time. I know the self-healing power of nerves from watching Axel’s limp left arm and hand come to life slowly over a year after the accident.

I have now entered phase 3 of the ankle fusion process: six more weeks in an orthopedic boot with increasing levels of weight bearing: 25% the next 7 days; 50% the week after and then gradually to full weight bearing.

This means the crutches and knee scooter are still important aids apart from the boot – no standing or walking without a boot until mid-February. It also means that I will have to travel with crutches to Afghanistan, 8 days from now. It was not quite what I had planned but it is too late to turn back, unless the business class upgrade that I requested is disapproved by our benefits manager. In that case I will stay home and continue the healing here.

Four more days, and soon I will be counting the hours till cast off. The last 8 days went fast, as expected, because of the Christmas distraction.

The day before Christmas Eve everyone arrived from Dorchester and Easthampton. Furniture was pushed to the walls to make room for the Christmas tree plus Faro and the two dogs, allowing just a little opening for me on my scooter.

We celebrated Christerklaas, starting at 11 PM on Christmas Eve, one hour earlier than usual. Despite last minute signs and groans about not being able to do much this year, everyone pulled through with poems (or prose in some cases), fantastic constructions as fake presents pointing to the real thing.

The gifts and poems this year were about cooking, knitting, and feasting the eyes this earth’s amazing landscapes, plus some chocolate on the side. The center piece for Faro was a shiny black baby grand piano, various trucks and books for opa and oma to read to him (we are currently quite taken with David Wiesner (Tuesday, Flotsam, June 29, 1999).

By 1:30 AM enough of us were yawning to suspend the festivities. We have exhausted young parents in our midst now – no matter how late they go to bed, Faro will wake them up at about 7:30 AM at the latest. We had only made a small dent in the pile of presents under the tree and the poems dangling from its branches.

We continued late the next day, Christmas Day, when everyone had emerged from their various quarters and Faro was fed and ready for his nap. Axel and I gave each other ‘non-thing’ presents – a massage and a two day trip to Maine with a visit to Axel’s favorite museum in Rockport and maybe a side trip, if we can swing it, to one of Axel’s Afghan student who came up from New Mexico to visit his American parents for the holidays.

Tessa, Steve and the dogs have returned to Dorchester, leaving us to enjoy a few more days of Faro and his parents before they too return to their home, after a visit to the New England Aquarium on Sunday morning. By then, I am sure, time will slow down again, but then I will be down to 48 hours.

In the meantime my office has moved from its prime Cambridge location on Memorial Drive to Boston’s northern suburb of Medford – a shorter commute for me in distance; no longer require traversing the Tobin Bridge into the city. Next week I will start experimenting with the best route.