Extension, flexion, supination, and pronation: the four elbow-involved tasks, the tasks my elbow, newly Steve Austined, resists.

The road from here, now that surgery is done, my new titanium part installed, my incision well-healing, is to therapeutically extend, flex, supinate, and pronate, and in so doing rebuild my range of motion.

Right now my range of motion is frustratingly limited, limited in a “that’s it, I’m fucked” way that requires deep belief in the little-by-littleness of physiotherapy.

Physio is one of those  allied health professions that ended up on the wrong side of medicare funding, along with dentistry, optometry, and psychology. Without private health insurance, you’re on your own.

Except that if you have had orthopaedic surgery you’re eligible for outpatient physio in the hospital. I’m waiting for a call back from them today with an appointment time, hopefully one this week.

In the meantime I’m homebrewing some basic movements to get a head start, mashing up learnings from YouTube et al, with confidence from my surgeon’s parting words that at this point there’s no bad way to move. 

Danny Gregory writes about the events that befall us, and the marks they leave:

Each of mine began as a kind of catastrophe — a crash, a fall, a diagnosis, a shock whenever I bit down hard. Each felt, in its moment, outsized and defining.

But time works a quiet magic: the pain retreats, the swelling fades, the drama becomes dinner party conversation.

Now they’re not catastrophes. They’re bookmarks. Chapter titles. Some I share easily — “this one’s from when I was in college” — others I keep for myself. They’re proof of what I’ve been through, not barriers to who I can be next.

I have a scar on my left index finger from where the saw slipped while Dad was showing me how to cut up the pieces of the barn board in the back yard, remnants left by the previous owner, who’d bought a barn at auction.

There are three tiny scars on my belly, marks that show where Dr. Fleming removed my gallbladder.

And now, here in the fracture clinic, I’ve just had the dressing removed on my radial head replacement surgery incision, and can see the mark I’ll carry forward from that, a four inch wound—well healed, it seems—around the circumference of my elbow.

Nine years ago I posted this review in Google Maps about Berlin’s Tegel Airport:

My favourite airport. Easy and quick to get to. Compact and decentralized inside. Just enough services to get you by. And no soul-destroying duty free alley to be forced through. All the pleasures of a well-worn pair of shoes. May BER stay closed forever.

Today Google emailed me that my review had been removed, I presume because Tegel closed 5 years ago.

 It will be missed. 

So there are some things that suck about breaking your elbow. Here are some things that help. 

• My friends Luisa and Pedro both pointed me toward using the speech-to-text features of my devices to ease the process of writing. Although this is something I’ve been doing all along, their nudges prompted me to look at Voice Control on my Mac (Settings > Accessibility > Voice Control), a feature that takes the regular dictation features built into the Mac and kicks them up a notch, allowing keyboard free editing. For example, in this sentence, I can say “capitalize Mac,” and it will do that. I’ve powered a bunch of writing tasks today much more easily since I learned about it.
• To aid putting pants on one-handed, stick one finger, from your good hand through the butto nhole and pull it over, around the button. It helps.
• To aid in squeezing toothpaste onto a toothbrush, stick the bottom of the toothbrush into the crook of the handle of a mug on the bathroom countertop to hold it in place.
• Did you know that you can request copies of your medical records from Health PEI? Here’s the online form. You’ll need a photo of your health card and photo ID. The orthopaedic surgeons notes from my first visit to the fracture clinic start out like this: “Peter presents to the clinic for evaluation of his right elbow. He is a 59-year-old, right-hand dominant gentleman who works as a printmaker. He is very healthy and active.”
• Friend of the blog David recommended no-tie shoelaces. Lisa is picking me up a pair in town today. Footwear independence!
• Our friends Valerie and Lars is invited us over to their pool yesterday. Although my bandaged arm can’t get wet, I was able to stand in the shallow end, up to my waist. Oh man, that was great.
• We figured out the turning on the air-conditioning before it gets hot is the way to go during a heat wave. Apparently air conditioners are great at maintaining temperature, not so good at forcibly lowering it when it’s already too hot.
• This $3 bamboo phone holder from IKEA has proved a very useful tool for one arm to use of my phone. Putting the phone in upside-down gives me enough resistance to plug in the Lightning cable on the bottom. Resting the phone in landscape, and putting the holder on the pillow that’s supporting my arm, lets me watch videos without having to hold the phone.
• Well-placed tea towels have proved very useful for keeping soup out of my lap, supporting my wrist, wrapping around an ice pack for cooling.
• Departure, a TV series starring Christopher Plummer that just showed up on Netflix, has proved a very helpful distraction when I need one.
• My workout coach sending me a care package filled with books and sweets and a card signed by everyone in the 5:00 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday crew.

Of course the greatest thing that doesn’t suck is the support of those that love me: I have no idea how I do all this without them. 

Lisa especially: she has been doing all the driving, all the cooking, all the clothes-folding, all the house-cleaning. Do you need two arms for it? She’s been doing it, on top of everything else that summer throws at us every day.

Rebecca Toh writes about the “vague, inchoate feeling” of who we are:

I can relate so much to this feeling that we are in the end who we are, that there seems to be a certain essence in us that we must allow to guide us through life. If we defy this compass, we can end up in places we don’t belong. But if we trust it, follow it, we might do something as grand as fulfilling our purpose.

Christie George in The Emergency was Curiosity, channelling Jenni Odell in How to Do Nothing:

As Jenny writes about retreat, “The desperate desire to leave (forever!) matures into a commitment to live in permanent refusal, where one already is, and to meet others in the common space of that refusal.” Our move to the woods is a retreat. As is my retreat from a more stable 9 to 5 job. As is this retreat into self-reflection…

I first learned about  George, and her book report about Odell’s book, when I saw her interviewed by Igor and Johannes on their Follow the Rabbit podcast. She is  broad-minded, lateral thinker, very much someone after my own heart.

I’ve been making my way through the book report over the last week, and, as Lisa can attest, it’s become a frequent topic of conversation in our household. You can buy a copy, digital or analog, in her online shop. 

Cate Hall writes about quitting:

When people think about quitting, it’s hard because they’re comparing the rich web of attachments they have now to some mostly blank slate, or, worse, the possibility of disaster. However, what’s more realistic to imagine, if you’re leaving something you’re no longer aligned with, is a future with more to love than you have now. Those things you will be attached to in the future are currently obscured by the impassable barrier of time, but they’re still out there.

I’ve always felt that I was born with this intuition: it’s what allowed me to drop out of university after a year, and, later, to leave well-paying, interesting project for the next thing.  

But the force has weakened me, and it’s something I realize I need to cultivate.

What’s missing in Hall’s essay is that it’s not enough to just break orbit from the mundane-but-survivable, because if that’s all you do, then there’s a danger of defining yourself as what you’re not doing, and getting stuck there just as much.

That, it turns out, I’m also very good at. 

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.