Relative Something

Photo by Cynthia A. Hays

It is a new day and what a difference a day can make. I am more focused in the present, probably because the future is so difficult to determine right now. Presently, I am experiencing a bit less pain and a bit more functionality. Luckily, the dramatic pain I experienced in the early hours of Monday morning did not linger into the rest of the day yesterday. We drove home through intermittent rainfall and the usual holiday weekend traffic. There were headlights trailing us in a line all the way to the horizon. It wasn’t too bad, because, for the most part, the folks in front of us were moving along close to the posted speeds.

We arrived home to some changes around our house. Our daughter has yet to close on the house for which she made an offer to purchase. Since it is now the end of the month, she needs to move out of her previous location. Our home is the perfect interim spot for her. To those of you who have been following along for a couple of years, you may realize that this means… Kitty has returned to our home!

The more things change, the more they seem the same. When we settled in, upstairs for the night, Kitty didn’t hesitate to hop up on the bed and curl up at our feet, just as if she never left.

How can I see anything of my situation as worthy of complaint?

To get the gist of this post, it should be read in the voice of Eeyore. I have met with the greatest test to my mental health of late. Early this morning, 3:30 a.m. to be exact, I found myself awakened by the searing pain of having rolled in my sleep, suddenly causing my failing disc to render me breathless and barely able to move. Panting, I fumbled my way to the pain pills I have been prescribed. Then, as I lie awake in the darkest hour of the night, my mind pondered the gloomy situation that has befallen me.

Among the many thoughts that occurred to me, I considered giving up on my attempts to post something fresh every day here in Relative Something. I am not sure that I want to chronicle my sorrowful mental state in this place which I intended to be a reflection of healthy thinking. Currently my thoughts are laboring under multiple burdens.

Granted, both Cyndie and I are feeling particularly sad over having gone through the process of canceling our plane tickets to Portugal for this coming July. The prognosis for the length of convalescence of her knee injury is being measured in months, and many of them. She was given the option to avoid surgery if she is successfully able to avoid putting any weight whatsoever on that leg for most of the summer! That is a long time on crutches.That is a long time to be unable to do things for herself. I have no idea how I will pick up the slack.

There will be many solutions available to us, but right now, we are still in the declining mindset of suffering the onset of our challenges and the uncertainties of the impact on our responsibilities. I remain undecided as to whether I will have the energy and inspiration to maintain my regular efforts here. That energy may be required elsewhere for a while. At least I accomplished something for today. If I do so again tomorrow, it needs to be in a voice other than Eeyore’s.

Yes, it is work weekend at the lake. We arrived safely last night and awoke this morning to the woods out our window!

Trillium are in bloom across the forest floor, the overnight weather was wet, but we have cool sunshine appearing between passing clouds.

While it is the weekend of chores to open up all of the properties and ready the boats and variety of summer vacation devices, Cyndie and I are on restricted duty. Cyndie did make it down to the lodge for the community breakfast, but ended up being the butt of a few jokes about getting out of the work.

Cyndie’s expression speaks volumes here, don’t you think?

Yikes! This gettin’ old stuff is definitely not for sissies. For most of my 50+ years I have successfully avoided serious back pain. My time is finally up. With no obvious trigger incident or activity for reference, all I can come up with for a cause of my current discomfort is the march of time. My symptoms match directly with all the descriptions Cyndie and I have read for degenerative disc disease of the lumbar region.

Gosh, this has never happened to me before. It’s stuff like this that makes me miss being that little kid I’ve seen in pictures from the early 60s. This is the point where brave people soldier on and learn pain management techniques and reclaim their previous level of activity. I’m more inclined to drop into a wheel chair and have someone push me up to the jigsaw puzzle table in the sunny corner of a room.

I’m finally able to grasp some of the effects of the experience of chronic pain. It has me thinking about all those years of naiveté where I viewed the world from my limited perspective. It wasn’t an intentional arrogance. It was a view of the world from a sheltered vantage point. I have found a new respect for those who make their way in the world under the duress of the oppressive weight of perceived pain.

I really, really loath becoming one of the people who whine about their plight of advancing age. Sure, I’d love to richly celebrate my increasing maturity with grace and aplomb. I would consider accomplishing that if it weren’t for the swelling prostate, degrading vision, diminished hearing, increasing allergies, advancing asthma, and now degenerating discs. And what the heck is the deal with eye brows suddenly bursting forth with growth in random directions?

I’ve got friends that are a decade and more ahead of me down this fateful path who are brilliant examples for me that continued living does not require whining about it all the time. They are a great inspiration. I’ve met my first situation of back pain and I am reduced to a blithering complainer. I am not proud.

The thing about suddenly prodigious eye brows… at least they’re not painful.

We often wonder about various parts of our bodies, for many different reasons. “My stomach hurts… what did I just eat?”  How often have you ever contemplated your tibial plateau? Maybe, if you’ve suffered a bit of particularly bad luck.

A side note: Whenever Cyndie returns from a visit to the stables, I ask if she conversed with the horses. On a recent occasion, she reported that one of the horses told her that his left front foot hurt. His trainer said she had just checked his hoof and it looked fine. When the vet visited a few days later, they discovered the horse had laminitis!

Initially, Cyndie told me she “bumped” her knee. I could tell by the extreme swelling that it was not simply the result of what I know of as a ‘bump’. As more detail emerged, I learned that she was walking a horse back to the stable after having ridden it, and the horse suddenly reacted to a couple of stallions in the vicinity. This forced Cyndie in a direction which caused her to strike the base of her knee into the dressage tack trunk.

This occurred late in the day on Monday, and no one else was around at the time. She still had to remove the saddle from the horse and get him put away. Then she decided to drive her manual transmission Mustang the 20-some miles home. I expect she was able to do it because of a mighty dose of adrenalin. I asked her if she told the horse she hurt her knee. Cyndie described that when she reacted to her injury and doubled over in pain, he put his head by her knee and stood still beside her while she composed herself. She said he was Mr. Mega-Gentleman while she struggled to get the saddle off and things put away. I think he knew she was hurting.

Yesterday morning, Cyndie visited the orthopedic center where she had knee surgery last November. At that time, they had discovered arthritis symptoms, and now surmised a possibility that the bump had exacerbated that condition. The doctor aspirated the knee. If the fluid was clear of blood, they could give her a cortisone shot and see if that soothed her problem. The syringe filled with a deep maroon-red color. Marrow colored.

They sent her for an MRI. That revealed a fracture of the tibial plateau. Her knee must be immobilized. She cannot put any weight on it and will be on crutches for we don’t know how long. She is scheduled for an appointment with a surgeon on Friday to find out if it will need to be pinned (screwed). That will be the determining factor in the prognosis for recovery time to normal function.

Cyndie remains ever hopeful and blessedly optimistic. I’m going to need to work on achieving that mental state.

I really should count my blessings. Especially after Sunday’s storm that destroyed so many mature trees and tore rooftops off of homes in Minneapolis. My problems are petty in comparison. However, they are not insignificant. I am suffering frustration over the fact that our insurance company will not recognize the winter ice issues with our gutters and the crunched air conditioner as one incident, so our deductible expense will apply to each. The cost of each repair is pretty close to the deductible amount, so we are forced to pay for everything. It’s like not having insurance at all. Bah humbug.

I may be mentally trying to escape my issues here by traveling to Portugal in my dreams. Yesterday morning I was having one of those classic types of dreams where I found myself suddenly in Portugal but I didn’t have any memory of how I got there. I also realized I hadn’t packed a bag so all I had with me was what I was wearing at the time. What a shock that was.

Actually, it’s a good thing we are not there right now, because I seem to have done something that has upset my back muscles and Cyndie just injured her knee again. We’re a mess. I think we need to do a little research on the art of growing old gracefully.

It brought back memories of almost 25 years ago when we had just moved into our home. It rained as hard yesterday as I remembered from the storm they called the Hundred-Year storm. We were again getting rivers of runoff appearing around the house. At least this time, it didn’t last for hours on end. Yesterday it stopped after about 20 minutes. Then it started again. That cycle repeated a few times. Each time I began to wonder if we were headed for hours of this. During one of the pauses between downpours, we heard the warning sirens wailing. Radar indicated the brunt of the danger was to the north of us at that point.

When we saw on the television broadcasts the level of damage that the storm caused, we grew concerned about our daughter who would be driving home from the lake place in Hayward, Wisconsin. Luckily, we reached her by phone before they had departed. She ended up staying up there for most of the day to wait for the worst weather to pass.

We were happy to learn that when she finally arrived home to her place in Minneapolis, everything was safe and sound. We are fine at our place. The gutters we have added and the landscaping we have done proved successful at keeping the basement dry.

The only problem I am facing is the length of the grass in the yard. It needed a trim about two days ago now, and after the last two days of rain, it has only gotten worse. It’s too bad I’m working such long days away from home lately. I’m pretty sure the project of mowing the lawn will be twice as much work as usual and I don’t think there is enough light in the day to get it all done!