Another Short Film, For Your Viewing Pleasure

When they took out my femur, they seem to have also taken out my ability and desire to write novels, and replaced it with an ability and desire to draw little pictures and make them into movies. Here is my latest effort, about living with the pain before the surgery---and my return.

It's called Bone on Bone: An Alarming Deportation to the Kingdom of the Ill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv1iK57CSD8


It's got music!

A Higher Brain Function Returns

One of the more surprising and quite pleasant side-effects of having a THR turns out to be the return of my memory.

I didn't realize this until last week, when I was talking with my old pal Alison on the phone. She was complaining about not being able to remember things the way she was able to when she was (okay, when we were) younger.

I heard myself saying (in that way we say things we're not aware of until they're coming out of our mouths) that my memory has recently improved, and as I was saying this, I realized what had happened: my memory was shot to hell while I was in pain.

I didn't even really notice this while it was happening; well, that's not true. There was a Certain Person in my life at the time who had one of those steel-trap memories for everything from the name of an old movie (And all the actors in it. And the director. And the year it was produced) to the date of a conversation. And to every word of that conversation.

I thought it was just that in comparison to Court Reporter, I looked like the victim of early-onset Alzheimers'.

I did worry about it.

But now, I suddenly realize that I'm able to remember all the things I want to---okay, except for the occasional detail. Sometimes I reach for a word and it's as hard to grasp as a greased pig. But I no longer feel like a doddering amnestic idiot. Or at least no more than anyone else, you know, my age.




So, at nearly six months post-op, I am happy to say that I think pain is
an amnestic---which makes sense. You're so preoccupied with the pain, with dodging it, managing it, running from it (okay, not running, limping from it) that it's a wonder you can even remember your name. And when the pain is gone, your faculties come rushing back and you're free as a pony! Free as a pig!

Blue True Dream: the movie!

I got home from the artists' colony feeling refreshed, invigorated, ready to roll, and rolled right into a sore throat that flattened me for a few days, but what's a sore throat for someone who's had her femur sawed off a replaced with a metal post? Nuthin'.

One of the very best things about being at Djerassi was working with the other artists. And now I can show you the movie I made with one of them---Peter Gossweiler, Brazilian drummer, videographer, and all-round remarkable creative genius---about getting the cortisone shot.

Next time you have a little over six minutes, you can see it here:
http://www.vimeo.com/7286799

Here's one of the illustrations for it, called "I Tried Various Treatments."

Now, what will I wear to the Oscars?

Speaking of which, last week I went to the opera, and wore high heels (and my really spledid little dress which, faithful readers will recall, I bought in Vermont this summer when going out in heels was still a distant fantasy) ---I'm happy to report that even after a very long evening in heels (Der Rosenkavilier, 4.5 hours) my leg and hip were fine.

My leg was fine; it was just my left foot that was hurting. It is still hurting now, almost a week later, but seems to be getting better, not worse. If it isn't much better by early next week, I'll troop back to the podiatrist, though I'm afraid he'll tell me I have to get custom orthotics, which will cost me a bundle, so I'm waiting to see and have gone back to good old clogs or sneakers in the meantime.

But, yesterday, a huge gym workout, big bike ride, PT exercises, the works, and then dashed up the stairs, dashed down the stairs, just like anybody.

Next week: I have been called upon to fulfill my civic duty serving as a juror, a task I'm happy to do except I'm wondering how I will get any work done there, in the halls of justice.

How could it be FIVE MONTHS already?

It is five months to the day: May 8 to October 8. Five fun-filled months.

 I just took my little morning walk, which is up a hill, and I mean UP, like a 75 degree angle, up into the misty foggy California air. I saw a Harris' hawk, and a song sparrow, and some very fresh scat on the road which looked at first like it was from a coyote but then I thought, Oh God, it could be from the mountain lion

 that Tamara saw the other day. 

Okay, she heard it. And thought it was probably a mountain lion, but still, it probably was a mountain lion, and I am too young to die.

Nevertheless, I continued onward, because, you know what? It didn't hurt to walk uphill. It felt great!

 

For those of you

 facing down the surgery (O! be brave, you soldiers off to battle with Medicine) or recovering from it, I'll be even

 more specific: I am back to just jumping up from a chair without thinking about it, or dashing out to the driveway to catch the UPS man, or walking  without worrying about the pain kicking in.

Granted, since I'm sequestered in Artists' Prison here in California for a 30-day sentence, I can't test out my normal lifestyle of being on the hoof in New York City. But here's what I do: I start each day with a little yoga routine, then most mornings I take a break from my hard labor and have a little walk up the road. On some mornings I don't make it too far, because

 the leg pain kicks in, but by the time I get home, it's gone, and I'm fine the rest of the day. Other mornings, like today, I strike on up there like a madwoman, and walk easily for about a half hour.

Other exercise: still going to the gym for 45 minutes on the bike followed by my PT regimen, which is really the hard labor. And on the bike I go up to a level 12 for most of it, even nipping up to 15 for a few minutes. I mean, I am a sweaty mess a the end, but a pain-free sweaty mess. One of the songs on my headphones, all this time, has been a hip hop song called "Locked Up," as well as one which goes "That which don't kill me/can only make me stronger/ you should hurry up now/'cause I can't wait much longer."  

In case you're wondering, there is a peculiar sub-culture among artists and writers, particularly in America but spreading like a virus of goodness around the world, in which we apply to go to encampments, where, if we're lucky and chosen, we stay for roughly 30 days, and are fed and housed and nurtured. We are expected to just work on our art, or writing, or other projects. Sometimes, spontaneous collaborations blossom. I'm kidding, of course, when I call it prison, because it's lovely, and this

 one---the Djerassi Resident Artists Program--- is nestled in the hills of 

Northern California, by the coast, and is populated with some very imaginative artists.

One of them, Peter Gossweiler, a brilliant Brazilian musician and performer and

 videographer, made a movie of my drawings! I'll post the link to it here when it's really done. It's very short, under 8 minutes. 

And another good thing: do I dare to dream and hope? It appears that my right leg muscles are beginning---just beginning---to look a little more like muscle and a little less like, you know, mashed potatoes. No one can verify

 this, because I have imposed a ban on anyone except the rare health professional from seeing my leg unclothed. 

At Twenty Weeks, I'm Still Not 100 Percent

Okay, twenty weeks is, by my reckoning, almost five months. If you have four weeks to a month, and yet today is not October 8, but my surgery was on a Friday and yesterday was a Friday, and my surgery was on May 8, it's like almost five months. 

The fact that I am calculating this indicates one thing: my leg hurts again! 

I haven't even been updating this almanac because I have been so un-preoccupied

 with pain, so here is a quick update: I've been swimming like crazy, and feeling just great. No pain!

I mean, crazy swimming! I

 am a monster in the water. I am a madwoman swimmer! I leap into the pool and burn down the lane, turn, burn back up again. The lane is 25 yards long, and I burn it up 42 times---I mean, 42 laps, up and back, up and back, up and back. You get the picture. It takes me like 5

0 minutes---I mean, 50 minutes of flat-out, water-burning, sea-monstering swimming.  It's more than a mile!

So I didn't do my physical therapy exercises for a couple of days. I'm supposed to do them every other day, and I skipped one day, not doing them for three days in a row, days on which I swam like a depraved shark. 

Then, yesterday, I buckled down and did 

them.

 Of note: here I am in artists' prison---oh, don't worry, that's a joke. Here I am at an artists' colony high in the mountains

 of northern California, where it has been hot, like 90 degrees, all week. And as lovely and perfect

 and peaceful as this place is, the one drawback is that apparently no one has told the foundation about the recenet

 invention of air-conditioning. So by noon it's 90 degrees and not 

one little cool spot in which to settle. And so there isn't much walking being done around here, at least not by me. It's too hot, for one thing, and too hilly, for another thing. (of note: the composer/performer vegan musician from Brazil and the easy-to-laugh photographer artist from Korea have been hiking nearly to the point of heat exhaustion. And the sound installation sculpture artist and the essayist from the Bay Area have been seen actually running in this heat. Go figure.)

But more to the point, there is no exercise bike. So I can't do the biking that I really should be doing. How important is the biking?Does swimming take the place of biking?  I don't know. 

So yesterday, without a warm up, I did my routine with the ankle weights, and I did my single-leg bridges, and my side-stepping with the rubber band thing, and my step-down and hip hikers. Bore, bore, bore. But I did them. And then my leg was killing me, and now, the next day, it's still killing me. So I'm thinking I may have to find the YMCA around here and add biking and a much more serious PT to my exercise plan of swimming like mad. 

But the swimming ! O happy salty water! Here in California (and maybe other places, too) the water is chlorinated, then de-chlorinated with saline before it circulates back into to the pool, so you feel as if you are swimming in the ocean, and afterward your skin doesn't feel like chlorinated plastic wrap but feels burnished by healthy goodness.

 Plus, the pool is outside! And enor-

mous! It's in one of those very well-to-do Northern California towns, where the men and women are all very fit and blonde and 

 and the children are all very tanned and blonde and everyone seems smug and gleeful at the same time, even as you feel the tremor of discontent rumbling beneath the surface like the threat of earthquakes. 

It's kind of like living in an Edward Hopper painting. 

So I'm going to find a YMCA but also continue my schedule of swimming in that salty delicious water. 

What Good Is A Book?

One question that has come up in all this (pain, pain, treatments, pain, surgery, pain) is how the hell are you supposed to get through it all? There are the usual props: Vicodin comes to mind first off. But then there are comedy re-runs delivered by Netflix, take-out meals, the comforts of your personal feline comfort devices.

Plus, reading. While I was recovering, I read The Magic Mountain, one of those old war-horses of literature that people either love or hate. It was very long. And it takes place in a sanitarium where people are, you know, recovering. Get it? I thought it would be perfect. So I read it. The whole thing, all 706 pages of it. 

And then I wrote an essay about it. And now it's published, and you can read it, here:

http://www.fictionwritersreview.com/

And yes, it is illustrated with my charming watercolor drawings. You can even post a comment on it at Fiction Writers' Review. 

And thanks and kudos to Jeremiah Chamberlain, my editor there---such a careful, thoughtful editor, who really pushed me to develop the essay, encouraging me to explore the side paths so I could get to the other side of the mountain. It's really a terrific magazine.

Happily Exhausted, I Debut as a Stuffed North American Mammal

I guess I missed my fourth-month anniversary, and I’m not complaining, because the reason I missed it is that I was too busy doing things, things that involved using my legs, things like, you know, walking.

The podiatirst told me to get custom orthotics, which would cost 575 U.S. dollars. Are we surprised that insurance doesn’t cover this? No. Later, at PT, Stash sold me a pair of not custom, just one-size fits all, for twenty bucks, saving me 555 dollars. Later still, I found a place that sells something called Lynco which so far are working very well indeed.
So here I am, doing things like racing around. Two of my best friends have new books off the presses, and if you know anything about publishing, you know that right now nobody can get anything published, you can’t even get a menu published, so these must be very good books indeed. And they are. I’ve read them both, while riding the subway, because I am so pressed for time right now, because I’m racing around doing things that require the use of my limbs.

I even flew to California, and boy are my legs tired. When people don’t know what to say about your hip replacement, they tend to make a standard joke about how you will now set off the metal detector in the airport. It could be funny, I guess, but I found it oddly moving---not upsetting, but I felt like crying as I walked through, and the man started to send me back when the bell rang. I told him I had a hip replacement. “Step over here, bionic woman,” he said, and that made me like him, and he waved me into a glassed-in booth. I could see my bag over there on the belt, and everybody looking at me like I was in a museum diorama.

He called for a female guard, and this very pretty, very pregnant, very nice guard came over and released me from the booth, then took me to the side and frisked me with the wand, and sure enough, it did go off when she passed it by my hip. I asked to wave it by again, and it went off again, and we both laughed, and yet I felt for the first time the reality of what I’ve done---there really is a metal post in my body, where my own natural bone, the bone I was born with, my bone, once was.

Later, once I arrived, it was hours of waiting for the rental car, even though (or because?!?!?!) I'd reserved it a month in advance.

And still, no pain. At all. Which made me much less cranky than I should have been by that point.