We left Ohio Saturday to be back in Vermont Sunday
just in time for surgery on Monday. Remember winter before
last, nine months after I got two new knees, when I broke my
femur? The on-call surgeon that day put in some titanium
hardware. When it comes to hardware for people, titanium must
be all the rage because my knees are titanium too. Anyway, they
usually leave the hardware in, unless it's new knees (then I
think they always leave it in) or when the hardware pokes out of the
bone half an inch, like in my case.
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| hardware that was too big-in |
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| hardware that was too big-out |
During the broken femur four
week follow-up Vin and I pointed out that the titanium hardware
looked too big since the edges that look like castle turrets
were jutting out into my IT band. The doc said he doubted it
would bother me (easy for him to say) and then he moved out of
town to a hospital in New Hampshire. I remembered thinking, if
I can see that's it's too big, I'm surprised he can't, but what
did I know?
He told me it would take a year
to fully heal but said it looked good enough to ski and that's
what I really wanted to hear. When i skied it didn't hurt so I
didn't really worry about it. When I walked it hurt and I
limped but it hadn't been a year so I didn't worry about it then
either.
When a year went by and the limp
was getting worse instead of better I got worried that the sharp
little castle turrets would saw right through my IT band so I
went to my regular surgeon. He said that the little turrets
wouldn't cut through the IT band but he could see how the
titanium hardware jutting into my IT band and muscle would
bother me so we made appointment to take it (the hardware not the muscle) out.
I showed up to pre-op yesterday
like always and humored the surgical team by acting like I had
never been through the pre-op protocol. The nurse sat next to
me confirming the electronic records (they're always bragging
about their electronic records) which was a good thing because I
could tell her I didn't have a kiwi fruit allergy nor did I have
a hip replacement in December like the electronic records
stated.
Then they gave me the versed**
so that's all I remember.
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| Dogs wearing glasses...always
funny. |
Vin and I shot our second year
films at the end of the school year because we wanted some
greenery in the landscape figuring that way our films wouldn't
look apocalyptic like most student films.
We finished shooting on the
Tuesday, exactly a week before our second year review*, which
isn't much time to get footage converted, sound synced and a
rough-cut.
I did the numbers and realized that in order to
get a rough-cut edit of my film done by the review, I wouldn't
be able to sleep for the last three days.
So after
three days with no sleep (why am I doing this to myself?) I
delivered my film to the faculty. On the way home Vin and I
stopped at the food co-op since we didn't have time to buy any
food for three days which didn't really matter because we
didn't have time to eat either. We got some bulk pitted
organic kalamata olives in containers that always leak...a
lot. We were on our bikes. We know that putting leaking
olives in a backpack isn't a good idea so we just fasten the
leaky lid with rubber bands and Vince carries them while
riding with one hand. (he can do anything)
Funny story about the rubber
bands....The store puts their extra rubber bands around a cup with pens in it so if someone needs to hold down a leaky olive lid,
they're handy.
Here's how tired I was...I spent about five
minutes getting a rubber band off the cup with pens in it....five minutes
because I worked the rubber band off the top, over all the pens instead of
just slipping it off the bottom. Even funnier is that the
woman behind me saw how much trouble I was having getting the rubber band around the pens and helped
me by holding them.
*second year review....where the
student sits at the front of the room facing six faculty members
and the faculty members throw rocks at the student (why an I
doing this?).
**amnesia drug
Have fun....
