Live From Toronto Western Hospital

Today is September 27, 2016, one month and ten days since I had my surgery. I'm sitting in the pleasant atrium of Toronto Western Hospital.

I have an appointment with my surgeon, Dr. Mahomed, in about 45 minutes. I got here early so I could avoid the crowds on public transit. 

As they never have before, able-bodied people who take the seats on the streetcar reserved for disabled people really piss me off.

This wasp covers graffiti that covered the original mural painted by Nick Sweetnam more than a year ago. Behind the wasp are the container gardens photographed to accompany the Hot Dry Summer post.

I'm here so my surgeon can check on my progress and take the requisite sacrificial vials of bodily fluids - blood and urine I think.

I will ask him the following questions:

What is my hip made of (for the curious)?

Will it really set off metal detectors at the airport every time?

What are future signs of trouble with the hip that I should be on the look out for?

I hope to never need this kind of surgery again, but if I do, can I give your office a call?

I will give him the following feedback:

The information provided about before, during and immediately after surgery was welcome and really helped me understand what would happen.

But, I would have found it very useful if there had been perhaps an equal amount of information about post-surgery rehabilitation.

The "don'ts" I was given - don't turn your feet in or out, don't bend your hip past 90 degrees, don't cross your legs, don't reach toward the bottom of the bed to pull your covers up - seemed focused on issues I didn't have.

I would have liked to have been told when I could safely stand on my feet and walk more than tens steps without doing myself more harm than good.

I had to estimate how much time I would need to take off work long before the surgery. I made that decision with almost no information. 

It's fortunate I'm a good guesser.

Check future posts for the answers to these and other questions, and for the good doctor's reaction to my feedback.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Back To Work Week After Next

Time flies. I have only a bit more than a week left in my hip holiday.

Before my surgery, because no one told me about the likely progress of my rehabilitation, I thought that by this time post surgery I would be in my second week of a short-term membership at Curves, riding a stationary cycle to get the strength back in my legs, and working with weights to bring the rest of my body back into shape.

Nope.

That is not to say that I am doing badly. I used the morning of my birthday this past Friday to see my physiotherapist, Mariam, and talk about how I was doing and what I was going to do next.

She was very pleased with my progress and said I was doing fine. She wants me to still walk with a cane so that the muscles continue to build strength the right way.

She mentioned that it was nice to see that I was so motivated. 

I understand how some people might not be motivated to do their therapy, but it is absolutely out of the question that I wouldn't be. 

I am happy that I am out of pain, but I also want to be active again. There's only one way to do that.

***********

The Ruler of a small but pleasant realm is pondering her next steps after a disastrous showing by the Wordsmiths.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

While We're On The Topic

I imagined those two girls who bothered me about my shoes were more more popular than me because I spent many years not being popular.

Mine was an armed forces family. We moved a lot. So I was always dealing with new groups of kids, kids who had lived next door to one another since the day they were born.

I was born and spent my early childhood in British Columbia. Then we moved to Winnipeg and I attended kindergarten in the basement of a house on Ness Avenue and grades 1 through 3 at Strathmillan School. 

Then we moved to Edmonton and I attended grade 4 at Prince Charles School, grades 5 and 6 at Prince Rupert School, grades 7 to 9 at McDougall Junior High School and grade 10 at Victoria Composite High School. 

Then we moved to Trenton and I attended grades 11 to 13 at Trenton High School.

I remember it was always a little tough finding and holding onto friends no matter where I was, but Edmonton was the worst. I don't recall being bullied in Winnipeg, and all that was behind me by the time my family moved to Trenton, but, from grades four through nine bullying was just part of my day.

I recall with neither rancour nor trauma, only crystal clarity, one spectacular example.

For our first year in Edmonton, we lived in a house on the corner of 120th Avenue NW and 122nd Street (see here for another story at that address) which put us in the catchment for Prince Charles Elementary school. I think it was the only school that all four Clark girls attended at the same time.

I'd made a friend with a girl whose name I can't recall who lived right across the street from the school, but she moved away. I then made friends with Heather whose house was on my way to school. I would call on her and we would walk the rest of the way together.

But, I had a rival. Bambi, another of Heather's friends, couldn't stand me. There were many fights and a final falling out. 

I had been on the outs with Heather and Bambi for a long time when, on the last day of school, they came skipping (seriously, skipping) up to me in the girls' playroom. They said they wanted to be my friend. All was forgiven.

I was completely happy.

I joined arms with them and we skipped together out the playroom door, across the asphalt tarmac and out onto the large turf playing field surrounding the school.

Suddenly, Heather and Bambi relinquished their hold on my arms, gave me a push, and ran like hell away from me. I managed to keep my feet and turned around, confused.

Right behind me were two of the big boys in my class (they were a couple of years older than the rest of us, having been held back a time or two). The biggest one grabbed me by the arm and socked me in the face with his fist. Then they both ran away.

There were no repercussions. It was the last day of school. I'm not even sure I told my parents.

Bambi and Heather's planning, however, was impressive. This bullying was scripted, choreographed, strategically timed and included accomplices. 

Six years later, I saw Bambi again. She was working in the coat check room at the Bonanza Restaurant, the place where my friend Jill Parry and I used to hang out on Sunday afternoons, eating bacon cheeseburgers, drinking banana milkshakes and smoking Players cigarettes. 

I recognized Bambi right away. 

She did not remember me at all.

Thanks for reading.

Karen

How To Be Unpopular

With lots of time on my hands, I find stray memories bubble up from the depths. Like this one:

Many decades ago, when we lived in Edmonton, my Dad took me and my older sister shopping for shoes. This was against the natural order of things. Mom did the shoe shopping, usually with all four of her girls in tow. When mom shopped the watchword was cheap. We couldn’t spend a lot of money because we couldn’t afford it.

Why Dad took me and my biggest sister shopping, I can’t completely recall. We may have had a Brownie ceremony to dress for. Father was a military man. He would have cared about how we looked in our Brownie uniforms.

We went to Woodwards in the Westmount shopping mall. I remember finding a pair of women’s shoes my feet were just big enough to fit into. They were tan loafers with a two-inch heel and a brass-toned decoration on the vamp. They were $16 – a serious amount of money for a pair of shoes. 

Dad was magnanimous. If I liked the shoes, he said, I should get them. So we bought them and took them home.

I was very proud of those shoes. I thought they were beautiful. All my friends heard the story of how my dad had bought them for me.

One day, I was walking home after school when a couple of girls from my class came up to me. I knew who they were but I did not hang out with them. They were more popular than me because I thought everyone was more popular than me.

They said they liked my shoes. 

My thoughts went to the story of how I had got them, how my Dad had broken all the rules and how expensive they had been.

They were not on that wavelength at all.

They completed their taunt – and it was a taunt – by saying that they had given a pair of shoes just like mine to the Goodwill the week before.

Here’s how clueless I was. I did not follow them.

I was only dimly aware that there was such a thing as Goodwill. I had not been taught, as those two girls evidently had been, that it was shameful to be poor.

It dawned on me later, after they’d walked away from me, disgusted at how dense I was, that they were trying to pick on me. 

The Goodwill joke must have been a favorite of theirs because, not long afterward, they came along and tried it on me again.

I gave them their own back. I said my mother had the week before dropped off to the Goodwill the coats they had on. 

They were enraged. They shouted at me for being mean and rude. They walked away, even more disgusted with me than before. Those girls never spoke to me again.

Overdoing It

There's a difference between being physically active and being athletic. 

Physically active was what I was from shortly after my forty-fifth birthday in September 2002, when I took up yoga, to March 2015, when arthritis put an end to all that.

Athletic is what I have never been. 

Athletes have talent. They are brilliant with their bodies. 

I am the opposite of body brilliant. I am a klutz. Clumsy. An accident looking for a place to happen, and famous in the family for being so. It was one of my father's last jokes as he lay dying from liver cancer. When there was a crash in the hospital corridor, Dad asked, even while under heavy sedation, "Is that Karen?"

Hilarious.

Anyway, the combined effect of my desire to get back to being physically active and my talentless body is that I think I have overdone it. I'm in a lot of pain right now from too vigorous physio and too much walking. Phooey.

**********

The Ruler of a small but pleasant realm was in her chambers with the Wizard, her most skilled improvisor. With them were the five Wordsmiths, all looking tan and rested from a week in the dungeon.

"What have you got for me?" said the Ruler to the Wordsmiths, making a show of her low expectations, despite discovering the week before that the Thing coughed up, at the rate of once every twenty days according to the Wizard's calculations, a gem of surpassing beauty and unfathomable value.

This good news had travelled all the way up to the Ruler's boss to the fifth power, The Greatest Ruler. 

Our friend the Ruler had received much praise for her part in the management of the Thing. She had to work hard to hide her good mood from the Wordsmiths.

"I think you'll like what we have to show you," said Hank, the head Wordsmith.

"The Pokemon concept tested well with focus groups. We've done a complete profile for the Kingdom's new mascot."

"And you've had time," asked the Ruler, suddenly over her good mood, looking at the illustration handed to her, "to hold a children's drawing contest?"

"Um, no," said Hank, "That's Dorf's concept sketch of the Thing's public image."

"Ah," said the Ruler.

"We'll clean it up," said Hank. "This is just a draft."

"I see," said the Ruler. "Is it impaled?"

"No, ma'am," said Dorf, leaping to the defence of his work. "The black parts are his wing and his tail."

"His feet are webbed?" asked the Wizard.

"No, sir," said Dorf, "those are stylized bird feet. Like a cartoon character."

"Of course," said the Wizard.

Hank thought he could still save the meeting.

"We call it 'Diggifly.' That's because it can - or will - dig and fly. It has the capacity to learn new moves as it grows. 

"We have already given it quite a few: Sunny Day, Hyper Beam, Frustration, Dig, Bulldoze, Rock Slide, Swagger, Hidden Power and Secret Power, and there's more where those came from.

"With these moves, Diggifly will be able to defeat all the other monsters in the kingdom."

"Defeat all the other monsters," repeated the Ruler, gathering her thoughts about what else she might say. 

"Is that what it does? Fight other monsters? 

"What about the gems? What about its song?," she asked.

"Didn't test well," said Hank. "People get Pokemon, not that other stuff."

"At least we have a name," said the Ruler. "Butterfly did you say?"

"Diggifly, ma'am," said Dorf.

"Right," said the Ruler, showing the five Wordsmiths the door. "Thank you all so much for your hard work. We'll review these materials more closely and get back to you."

To be continued ...

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Benchmarks and Notes on Physio

Benchmarks

I went out for a coffee yesterday with my friend Sherree. I met her at the Rooster cafe on Jarvis Street, across from the big Rogers complex. 

I walked there, with no lurching.  

This feat - which Sherree calls the Karen Olympics - gives me information to set some benchmarks.

My pre-arthritic daily walk included the distances to work, to yoga and then back home, about 7 kilometres total. Depending on the traffic lights, it would take me about 20 minutes to walk to work,15 minutes to walk to yoga and then 30 minutes to walk from the yoga studio back home. My approximate average walking speed was 6.5 kph.

Arthritis made me stop going to yoga by March 2015, so my post-arthritic walk was to and from work only. My daily distance was 4 kilometres. Total walking time was about 55 minutes. The walk home was slower because I was tired and the pain killers had started to wear off. My approximate average walking speed was 4.4 kph.

My post-hip-surgery walk to the Rooster and back was 3 kilometres. Total walking time: 85 minutes. My approximate average walking speed was 2.1 kph.

While it is possible for me to walk 3 kilometres, I pay for it the next day, and have to retire to the "Fortress of Comfy-tude," which is what Bruce calls the configuration pictured below:

That's four pillows for my back and one for my knees.

Notes on Physio

My three times a day set of seven exercises entails both repetitions (15, as illustrated) and holds (5 or 10 breaths). It is hard to count both. So I have made myself a repetition counter made out of a six-folded piece of paper. It is lightweight, recyclable, biodegradable and comes in any colour you like. When it wears out you can make a new one for the price of a single sheet of paper. 

This is how it works: Hold the counter in whichever hand seems most comfortable. Put your thumb over the number 1. After you've completed a movement, move your thumb down one number. When your thumb gets below your target number, you're done and can move onto the next exercise.

Two of the exercises are worthy of note. One is the standing squat. It is most like the yoga pose called fierce pose or Utkatasana if you're a yoga teacher. This is the one where I lift my arms in the air and don't hold onto a support like I'm supposed to.

This exercise, the standing leg side lift, is the one most likely to make me burst into tears.

Thanks for reading.

Karen

On the Other Hand ...

Some of my readers may have noted that it will be my birthday, September 23, when I next go to see my physiotherapist at Toronto Rehab.

When she proposed the appointment, I said so to Mariam.

She said, "Oh, we can reschedule. People never want to have a physio appointment on their birthday."

Mariam's take is that people hate physiotherapy, and, especially on their birthdays, would really rather not do it.

I didn't reschedule, but Mariam has a point.

The morning's the worst. My body's had a whole night to rest, but also to stiffen up and grow sore where the muscles unaccustomed to such treatment have had time to lodge their complaints.

So I procrastinate. For example:

• I'll take a very long time to make my bed. Gotta get those hospital corners on the sheets just right. And arrange the pillows.

• If it's a nice day, I'll open all the windows.

• I now have blog readers in Pakistan, so I'll check and see if they have visited the site in the last four hours.

I do eventually get around to it. I do the easy movements first to warm up. Once I get going, I'm committed to doing the whole set. But some of the exercises are tough.

So I give myself little pep talks. Out loud.

• "Keep the weight in the leg!"
• "Tuck that right hip in!"
• "Good job!"

When the physio session is over -- seven different exercises, which now take about twenty five minutes to do -- I write it all down in a chart. This feels scientific.

The midday and evening sessions are never as tough to get started on as the morning. I make them harder: I hold the poses for ten seconds instead of five. I lift my arms over my head instead of holding onto a support like I'm supposed to. I pretend I'm in yoga class.

At the end of the day I decide whether I will increase the next day's repetitions. If I waited 'til the morning to decide, I'd still be doing 5 of everything.

Thanks for reading.

Karen