When I posted this selfie the other day, Lisa rightly pointed out that that that  image of me, and the words accompanying it, were but a slice, a cheery “if I say it’s all okay, it will be so” slice, of my recovery from surgery.

Here’s another selfie, to complement:

That’s an arguably more honest representation of me, my position, and my mood, over the last week.

Here’s a list of some things that suck about recovering from elbow surgery:

• Constant vigilance about where I am, where my arm is, how much it hurts, whether there’s a more comfortable position for it. It’s exhausting.
• Not being able to drive, so relying on Lisa to get me from place to place.
• Pee-aiming is a challenge, so I end up peeing on the floor. Annoying and embarrassing.
• I spend an inordinate amount of time getting dressed and undressed. The wall-of-mirrors in our bedroom means I’m exposed to a broken, shrunker version of my body. I feel the opposite of attractive and virile.
• Eating with my left hand is slow and annoying and I end up dropping and dribbling.
• I’m afraid. Of infection. Of falling again. Of being fragile. Of getting old. Of being inadequate.
• Brushing my teeth takes twice as long.
• I can’t write or sketch. I can’t set type or carve lino blocks or bind books.
• I can’t swim. When I’m ready to swim, summer will be over.
• Being cared-for brings back a flood of hard memories about being a caregiver, many of them unprocessed, unresolved.
• Holding a hardcover book is hard. Turning pages is harder.
• I know almost nothing about the shape and speed of my recovery: it’s a dark tunnel of unknowns.
• Lisa has learned to treat me like I’m fragile. (Which I am.)
• I can’t tie my own shoes. Of all the practical things, that sucks the most.
• I’m tired all the time.
• I’m tired of people asking me how I’m doing. I feel guilty for how often I’ve asked others that, in similar situations.
• I realize the burden I take on of trying to convince everyone else that everything’s going to be ok. It’s exhausting.
• I can’t type, so writing this is taking an hour, on my iPhone, with my left thumb.
• Feeling like I ruined summer.
• Conflict about how something as positive as working out could derail me so severely. And how and whether I’ll return to the gym.
• Realizing the corrosive effects of relentlessly writing positivity into existence, for a long time.
• I can’t wash my left underarm.
• I have no choice but to sleep on my back. Which I can’t maintain for the whole night.
• Another. Fucking. Thing. Enough with the things: I want to move forward. I feel stuck. Again.
• I’m out of sync with Lisa. We move at different speeds. I try to manage her management of me, which takes energy I don’t have.

I have much to be thankful for. I am so privileged. I will recover. This is a grand adventure. I am learning so much.

All of that is true.

And it also sucks, big time. Remembering that can also be true is helpful. 

I’m now just over two days out from my radial head, replacement surgery, which happened on Sunday morning, just before lunch.

Recovery is going well: I haven’t needed anything stronger than regular-strength Tylenol since returning home, and my pain has never gone higher than 1 or 2 out of 10. That said, my injured arm feels currently more like a “thing that I’m carrying around” than it feels a part of me; I hope this changes soon.

I was discharged from the hospital around 6:00 on Sunday night, so my total stay in the hospital was about 24 hours.

My unit one  roommates were a fascinating lot, and spending a day with them was like being on the inside of an extended Patrick Ledwell comedy routine. Concentrated Islandness, in all its interconnected glory.

I’m spending my recovery time by the shore, in Lisa’s capable hands, reading, sleeping, reading, sleeping.

The first sip of  ginger ale I had after coming out of recovery tasted like ambrosia; food, in general, has tasted extra especially good for the last couple of days. Meals are the highlights of my days.

My elbow is wrapped in dressing, and then in a flexible bandage that I need to wear until a week from Friday, when I have a follow up appointment in the fracture clinic.

As life events go, it’s not on my recommended list. But it continues to be an unusual adventure.

As I write, I’m at the head end of my first overnight stay in a hospital ever. Not bad for being 59 years old.

I got the call from surgery scheduling at 12 noon: we were a “go” for arriving at the hospital for 4:00 p.m., for a late-day radial head replacement operation. Lisa drove us down from the shore—it’s a beautiful sunny day.

After some confusion at admitting—they had no record of me—and more confusion at Unit 1, where I was sent—they had overheard that I was there for a hip replacement—I got shown to my room, vitals taken, settled in for a wait.

To prep for surgery, I needed an IV port inserted on the left. This proved spectacularly difficult to pull off: two nurses, six jabs. But they did it. My veins, I learned, are tricky.

And then we waited.

After a couple of hours, an unusually-casually-dressed Dr. Wotherspoon appeared in the doorway, contrite, apologetic: they’d come close, but lost the surgical suite to general surgery at the last minute; my radial head replacement would need to wait until Sunday.

I was given the option of heading home and returning Sunday, or staying the night.

To my surprise, I choose to stay. I was exhausted, hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours, and, as I told Lisa, “if you’ve been waiting in line for Springsteen tickets all day, and reach the head of the line just as the wicket closes for the night, you don’t give up and go home.”

Besides, I’m kind of fascinated by my roommates: three older women, all, it seems, recent recipients of new hips.

“Gertrude,” I just overheard the nurse say to my neighbour (name changed), “I’m going to give you some Senokot, to help you poop.” 

All hail clarity.

My roommates are tended to by visiting  children and grandchildren. There is much love, much care, and tremendous patience all-round.

By comparison, at least right now, I’m a very low-needs patient.

Lisa went out to pick up supper for us at Sam’s (I’m allowed to eat again until bedtime). I managed to wolf down a chicken shawarma and fries with one arm out of commission, and the other encumbered by my IV port (left in overnight: we’re not going through that again!). We dined al fresco in my bed.

Right now, at 8:30 p.m., the nursing shift has just changed and evening ablutions are underway: there’s a lot up to and fro and in and out (my bed abuts the sink-and-gloves station, so I’m in on all the action).

Lisa headed back to the shore to get a good night’s sleep; she is a loving caregiver, and watching her in that role gives me new perspective on my own time in that chair.

I’ll tuck in for the night soon, hopeful that my position in the surgery queue holds for the morning.

“Do you need coffee in the morning?”, he asked.

“Yes,” I replied, with some urgency.

“Do you take anything in it?”, he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“Ok. Get up at 6:00 and have a cup of coffee, but don’t eat anything. Then stand by for a phone call.”

Instructions both for awaiting notification from the Nobel committee and from same-day surgery scheduling. 

Ten years ago in April, I wrote this to friends and family, in a regular newsletter about Catherine’s cancer treatment, subject line The Bones are Alright:

After a bone scan a few weeks ago (after which Catherine was warned not to sleep too close to me lest I become irradiated), Catherine had an appointment with Dr. Wotherspoon, the orthopaedic surgeon, today at the hospital to learn more about how her bones are doing.

After a brief bit of confusion – there was another Catherine Miller in the clinic to have a cast removed and the nurse seemed insistent, for a moment or two at least, that Catherine must have a cast removed; only a birth date comparison convinced her otherwise – Catherine (our Catherine) had an X-ray of her spine
and of her femur, and then we got to review these, along with the bone scan, with the doctor.

The good news is that nothing’s changed in Catherine’s bones: there’s no sign of any additional cancer in any additional bones, and the spots on the femur where cancer is thought to be present haven’t gotten any worse. Which is exactly the news you want to hear.

By happenstance, the selfsame Dr. Wotherspoon is now  my orthopaedic surgeon, treating the elbow I broke two weeks ago. 

After a CT scan on Monday, I had my follow up appointment with him today. His formal medical diagnosis: my elbow is “pretty smashed up.”

The actual formal classification for radial head fractures has its roots in a 1954 paper in the British Medical Journal by Mark Mason, Some observations on fractures of the head of the radius with a review of one hundred cases. 

In the Mason classification system, radial head fractures are classified like this:

Type 1 — Fissure or marginal fractures without displacement.
Type 2 — Marginal sector fractures with displacement (Segment of the lateral border of the radial head is separated from the other quadrants, is impacted and depressed, or is tilted out of line).
Type 3 — Comminuted fractures involving the whole head of the radius.

Coming out of the ER a couple of weeks ago, I was left with the impression I probably had a type 1 fracture; my guess, although it was never said out loud today, is that I actually have a type 3 fracture. 

Both the x-ray, and the CT scan, show that my fracture is comminuted—“pretty smashed up”—with at least three pieces of bone and evidence, floating around. 

As a result, sometime this weekend, the radial head in my right arm will be replaced with a titanium one. I’d hoped that this might happen today, but there was no room in the schedule, so I’ve been told to have a coffee at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, and then stand by my phone waiting for a call from surgical scheduling.

Dr. Wotherspoon’s last act before I left was to formally mark the arm involved, presumably standard operating procedure to avoid replacing the wrong radial head: 

Although I’m impatient, anxious, and confused about how to settle in to being on the end of caregiving than I’m used to, I am, yet again, grateful to live in a country with socialized medicine, with quick access to a skilled surgeon, and the wraparound support of friends and family.

Step One: Look on top of the printer. Is there a cat?

The Access Guide for the 2025 Pride Fest is such a commendable document, packed with detailed, practical information for every event.

Here’s the information for a “Speed Friending” event that Olivia went to last week, for example:

• The venue has a ramp entrance.
• Gender-neutral washrooms are available on site.
• The space is air-conditioned and an air purifier will be in use.
• Attendees are welcome to move around, step outside, or take a break at any time.
• The event is not mask-mandatory but is highly encouraged.
• The venue is a scent-free space. Please avoid wearing
  scented products such as perfume, cologne, or heavily scented lotions.
• Refreshments will be provided after the event.
• Fidgets and noise-cancelling headphones will be available.
• An Access Toolkit with sensory and support supplies can be accessed by speaking with a volunteer.
• There is a parking lot with limited space at the venue, as well as street parking available.

All festivals and events should have something like this. 

Following along from my visit to the ER last week, and learning I’d broken my elbow, I had my appointment at the Fracture Clinic with Dr. Wotherspoon this morning. After a follow-up X-ray, he concluded that I likely require surgery.

Most likely this will involve a radial head replacement with titanium. It’s a simple surgery, done under anaesthetic, that takes about 30 minutes. It’s got good outcomes.

All of this is contingent on a follow-up CT scan, scheduled for Monday evening, that will give him a deeper look at things.

I have an appointment for next Friday morning to review the CT scan, and possibly roll right on into surgery. If not Friday, then likely the weekend. Recovery takes 6-8 weeks.

This is all a surprise, given that I thought this was a “simple” fracture with an “easy” recovery. But I’ve never been put off by surgery, and… TITANIUM ELBOW!!

The most immediately practical outcome of today’s appointment was that I received a new, larger sling. The one I’d been given in the ER was a “medium”, and I now have a “large.”

Otherwise it was helpful to get guidance that, in this liminal period, my best strategy is to simply let pain be my guide: I’m not in imminent danger of my arm snapping right off. 

Here’s a list of things I’ve discovered are particularly difficult to do with one hand:

• Use a pepper grinder.
• Get shampoo out of a shampoo bottle and onto my hair.
• Tie my shoelaces.
• Take a frozen pizza out of the oven.
• Use a laptop to write a blog post. Like I am right now.

I know this because, a week ago today, I fell off a box, and broke my elbow.

Here’s a blurry capture from a video taken a few minutes before it happened:

That’s me, flying through the air, jumping up onto a 20 inch high wooden box. 

I was in the gym for my regular 5 p.m. Thursday workout. We’d completed the warm-up, and the strength section, and had moved onto the “workout of the day,” described like this:

4 SETS FOR TIME
20 Box Jump Overs (20)
20 Push Press (75/55)

-Rest 1:30 b/t Sets-

(Score is Slowest Set)

To translate that into human language: the workout consisted of jumping up from the ground to a 20 inch wooden box, and stepping over the other side, 20 times, followed by lifting a barbell into the air, overhead, 20 times. Then repeating, for a total of four sets.

With the value of hindsight, I see that the possibility of an injury was heightened that afternoon: it was about 30°C out, and not much cooler in the gym. I was two weeks into an adjustment to new eyeglasses lenses. I was wearing a set of slightly-more-cushioned running shoes, that I hadn’t done box jumps in before. It was the end of a hot, busy, hectic day.

I had completed two rounds already, and had just started the third. After 55 box jumps, on number 56, my toe caught the edge of the box, and I went over hard, onto my right side. 

I don’t remember a lot of the details, but it’s not something I’d ever wish to repeat: it had elements of “falling out of an airplane” nightmares, mixed with what I imagine it to be like to get hit hard in the boxing ring.

I landed on my right arm. 

It wasn’t immediately obvious that I’d broken anything: nothing was sticking out, there was no bruising, no blood. I thought I might have gotten away with just a sprain. I was well supported by my coach, who gave me space to get my bearings, and then led me through the possibilities. She ended up driving me home, in my car, because I was pretty sure it wasn’t safe to drive, and, indeed, I don’t think I could’ve managed it anyway (driving is another thing it’s particularly hard to do with one arm).

Once I got home, I put some ice on my arm, and set out to get supper for my mother and I (I was living with her for the week, while my brother and sister-in-law were on vacation). Fortunately, the day before, I had prepared enough salad for two meals. 

Here’s a photo I took of my arm, after we’d finished eating:

As you can see, it doesn’t look particularly injured. Although, by this time, it was feeling particularly injured.

My sister-in-law, Karen, bless her heart, offered to jump out of her vacation, and drive me to the emergency room. Before I left, my mother helpfully tied my shoes (this was the first time my mother had needed to tie my shoes in more than 55 years).

The timestamp on my ER registration form shows 8:52 p.m. At the time, the estimated wait time for a non-life-threatening injury was 10 hours or more. I reconciled myself to settling in for a long night. 

After a short, wait, I was ushered into the triage room, my vitals taken, a description of what happened noted, and I was sent, immediately, for an x-ray.

The x-ray technician, while capable, seemed initially to pay little heed to the notion that my arm couldn’t move in the usual ways that arms move. Ultimately, adaptations were sought; the ER has its own x-ray suite, and it seems to have a Meccano-like flexibility.

After the x-ray, I was sent back to the waiting room, but then almost immediately called back into the triage room for a shot of Toradol, and the offer of a sling, which I accepted gratefully.

Here’s me at 9:30 p.m., slinged up, and wearing a mask (because Karen, wisely, noted that there were a lot of coughing people in the waiting room).

A few minutes later, I decided it was time to read Lisa in on the situation – she was away visiting friends in Montreal. Here’s what I texted:

I’m in the ER. I’m ok, just settled in for a long wait.

In my workout today we were doing box jumps, and around about #50, my foot caught the edge and I went down on my right side, hard.

It wasn’t clear whether I’d broken anything or just sprained. C. drove me home in my car. I put ice on my arm. Over the next hour it became clear that injury is centred on my elbow. I can’t fully extend my arm and I can’t rotate my arm to point my thumb up. Pain when sitting still is 2-3/10; pain if I move the wrong way is 7/10.

I’ve had a X-ray and the wait time is showing > 10 hours. The X-ray tech couldn’t tell me anything but I got called back to triage for pain injection and the nurse said “yeah, it’s something” and when I asked “so, if I give up go home in an hour is that a bad thing” he said “don’t go home in an hour—you’ll be back.” So it’s clearly something.

She texted me back, among other things:

At that moment, that was exactly what I needed. I felt (a little) better.

With my phone dying, and no electrical outlets obvious in the ER waiting room, I settled in for 10 hours of quiet meditation.

At some point, the triage team came out to do a roll call of patients: five or six didn’t respond when called; I assumed they’d given up and gone home. The 10+ hour weight on the status board didn’t change, though.

By some miracle, after waiting only a couple of hours, I was called into see a doctor. He told me I’d had a radial head fracture, and explained a little bit about the bones in the arm, and what had happened. 

Because the fracture wasn’t displaced – the parts of the bone were still aligned – I didn’t need a cast, or surgery, and the only treatment was to keep the arm immobilized, and let it heal.

He told me that I would be automatically contacted for an appointment with the fracture clinic, and that they would follow up with what comes next.

By 11:59 p.m., I was waiting in the parking lot for, bless her heart even more, Karen to come and pick me up and take me home:

That first night was a difficult one for sleeping: I managed to find a somewhat sustainable position on the couch, with my arm in the sling. I was still in a fair amount of pain, and I think this was made more noticeable as the shock was wearing off. In the end, I got three or four hours of sleep.

Midday on Friday, I got a text about my appointment at the fracture clinic: it’s set for tomorrow, just before lunch.

Lisa returned home late that night, and has proved a great source of emotional and practical support. The love of a strong and capable partner can work wonders, I know now more than ever.

My pain has gradually subsided to the point where, when my arm is in the sling, or resting beside me, I don’t feel pain at all. I still can’t rotate my wrist, and any attempt to do so brings immediate feedback. I’m not even trying.

While, there are, as I wrote to begin, a whole bunch of things I’m discovering are a lot harder, or impossible, with just one arm, one hand, it turns out that there’s a lot that I can do. Being in good shape means that it’s pretty easy to squat down and pick things up, for example. My core is in pretty good form, so I can get myself up out of bed without two arms.

Things like getting dressed and undressed, having a shower, really anything that requires previously-simple gymnastics, have become an exercise in careful patience. 

It’s not the pain, or even the discomfort of the sling, that’s the biggest impact of the injury: it’s the hyper-awareness required to walk through every day life, always mindful that  a bump or a reach could make things a lot worse. 

My friend Dave, no stranger to the broken elbow, sent me some really helpful advice, which has stood me in good stead so far:

Also, do the physio. You’re already in the habit of working out, which is good. But every minute of physio pays off, because your elbow won’t be the same for a long time, unfortunately. Accept the help. Do the physio.

OH! Also! Because we both grew up in the broken bone=cast era, I found I took my break much less seriously because I didn’t have a cast. Take it seriously. It ain’t a sprain. A fracture is a break. You have a broken bone, and you need to treat it like one.

I’m doing exactly that. Trying really hard.

Lisa arrived back from Montreal with reports of all manner of interesting conversations with old friends. One advised that, confronted with some discouraging new circumstance, like, say, breaking your elbow, you can be angry, pissed off, resentful, and mope around, or you can see it as a gift, a set of new experiences, a way of building empathy with others, a kind of adventure. 

I still have my angry, pissed off, resentful, mopey times, but it’s also a kind of adventure. Not the one I would’ve chosen for this summer, but an adventure nonetheless.

I’m grateful to the volunteer in the ER who got me a pillow, to the triage nurse who was kind and compassionate, to Dr. Twiddy for answering all my questions, and sending me on my way. 

I’m grateful that I live in a country where I didn’t have to think at all about money before heading to the emergency room, because of public healthcare.

I’m grateful to my sister-in-law, Karen, for love and support and logistics, to my brother Mike, for love and support and logistics, to my mother for love and support and tying my shoes when I needed it.

I’m grateful to Lisa’s mother for dropping off a chicken, and to Lisa’s father for dropping off a book.

I’m grateful to Lisa for all the extra driving and shopping and bed-making and cat-feeding and schedule-arranging and washing machine fixing, for the care she takes to not bump my arm in bed, and for simply, lovingly, steadfastly, being here. 

In An app can be a home-cooked meal, Robin Sloan wrote about “home cooked” apps:

I made a messaging app for, and with, my family. It is ruthlessly simple; we love it; no one else will ever use it. 

I am spending this week at “CatCamp,” the label Lisa and I have for staying at the house shared by my brother Mike, my sister-in-law Karen, and my mother, while Mike and Karen are away. I’m here to care for their cats, and to care for Mom.

Mike, every inch the documenter that our father was, prepared a detailed Word document outlining what needs to be done every day; things like this, about Elsie the cat:

She will have wet food first thing around 8am, and then maybe every 3 or 4 hours thereafter.

Because I’m taking most of this CatCamp solo, while Lisa and L. are away, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything, so I had Claude cook up an app for me, with this prompt:

This is a Microsoft Word file that my brother Mike sent me today. They are away for a week, and I am staying in their apartment, taking care of their cats, Rover and Elsie, and taking care of my mother, who lives in the apartment downstairs. You will see that, in the Microsoft Word file, there are a variety of things that need to happen every day. Mom needs to take her medication in the morning, and at supper, the cats need to be fed, the plants need to be watered, etc. I would like you to create a simple web app – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – that I can use, every day, to keep track of whether I’ve done these things. I would like to open up the app every day, and have the status of that days task to be presented to me. I’d like to be able to check off the tasks and have them visually displayed as having been completed, I would like the status of each task on each day to be recorded somehow in a file. I would like to be able to move back-and-forth between the days using some kind of navigation in the header.

It did exactly what I asked, on the first try:

I wanted to run the app on my iPhone, not my laptop, and so I needed a place to host it. I could have self-hosted, but Claude recommended Netlify, so I decided to try that out, as it’s free. 

Using “Netlify Drop,” I simply dropped the HTML file that Claude provided into a browser window, and was given a URL to run it from. Presto.

Perhaps this isn’t as much as a “home cooked” app, in the Sloan sense, as much as a “catered” app, inasmuch as I didn’t spend much time in front of the stove. 

I still believe in the intrinsic good of learning to use the tools, that all the good learning takes place in the iterations, the smashing your head against the wall when things are working, and figuring out why. I did that, millions of times, over a 40 year career as a coder. 

In this case, I was willing to let the robots do the work, so I could get on with washing the cats’ water bowls.