I think that I gave physical therapy a bad rap in my last PT post. After I left PT today, I realized (or, maybe, it was pointed out to me by my physical therapist…) that I’m going to have good days and bad days in what inevitably will be a long recovery). Yes, these exercises kill my already annihilated muscles, but I can’t expect to be better in one week when it took a year and a half to get me this way. My last post just reflected my disappointment at the pain catching up with me after feeling so awesome at the start of physical therapy. Apparently, I was doing too much exercising once I got home. Go figure – me an excessive exerciser? Ha, I say! I’m just going to have to embrace my inner underachiever and not expect too much from myself too soon.
I am proud to say, however, that today was my hardest session of PT yet. They kicked up my routine to a level two by adding a truly wicked exercise. Of course, I’m sure the physical therapist just made that up to make me feel better about that exercise being so hard, but I’ll be damned if I don’t brag about it anyway. Level two, baby! I’ve also been doing weighted exercises for my legs and I might be moving up from ten pounds to twenty! Level two, baby! But just in case you’re worried that I might get carried away and try to pump it up to a level three tonight, let me assure you – I’m going to go lie down and watch a DVD. Gee, this underachieving feels an awful lot like my last year and a half…
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Most Delightful Turkish Delight
I like this photo best - that's why it's first.
Where does one find the most delightful Turkish Delight? Turkey, I suspect. Actually, I know. About two years ago, a woman in my dad's office went home to Turkey for a vacation and brought back some real Turkish Delight. The most delightful Turkish Delight that I have ever had. I bought the candy seen in these photos today - at Corrado's Family Market - and it's the best I've had since. I've only ever tried one other variety (excepting that first real stuff), but as that was a travesty of epic proportions, finding a comparable option is blog worthy (or maybe not?).
Isn't the suspense just killing you?
Not yet unveiled...
Almost.
I ate a piece. Sort of wish I had gotten the bigger box.
Blueberry Goat Cheese Bagel
Blueberry Goat Cheese Bagel
This is a recipe for Pam, because it involves goat cheese and Pam has loved (or, at least, liked, right?) goat cheese ever since she first tried it at my dad’s apartment. If you aren’t a fan of goat cheese or just don’t have any, you can use cream cheese instead. I promise that if you try this, you’ll feel like you’re eating something gourmet. A blueberry-covered goat cheese that I got from Costco inspired this recipe. It was delicious spread over a piece of multi-grain health bread. The following is even better.
Toast a blueberry bagel, spread on some warmed (or at room temperature) goat cheese, and top with fresh or frozen blueberries. When I've made this, I’ve only used frozen blueberries, so I warm them for twenty seconds in the microwave and then add my slice of goat cheese and put it in for another twenty seconds.
Happy Memorial Day!
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Physical Therapy
I’ve been meaning to post an update on my back for a while so here you go. Two weeks ago, I went into the city for my six-month appointment after my spinal fusion and the doctor said that everything has healed perfectly (hooray!). That means that my L4, L5 and S1 vertebrae – or the bottom three in the spine – have formed a solid and unbendable piece (which did not happen after my February 06 surgery, causing my screws to break). Being solid and unbendable also means unbreakable, at least in terms of physical therapy. So I started last week.
I had two appointments already. After my first appointment, I was amazed at how easy the exercises felt. My back didn’t hurt a bit – only my much-neglected (on doctor’s orders!) muscles burned. And it wasn’t a painful, mutinous burn, but a thankful and long awaited pain. On my second visit, I was even allowed to use a weight machine for the legs, which caused them to wobble as my thighs remembered that they weren’t really made entirely of Jell-O (yuck!). But I welcomed this feeling and even encouraged it again once I got home only to be surprised – my arms, my legs, my back suddenly weren’t grateful. They were angry!
My muscles that had be so patiently atrophying for a year and a half were angry like my back when I got home from the hospital after my first surgery. Before my spinal fusion, I expected to wake out of anesthesia in total and utter agony. I’d been told that I would feel like I’d been hit by a truck. In my first moments of consciousness, I braced myself against the pain. Only it didn’t come. I didn’t feel anything. Literally. I was totally numb from the chest down. I was also mentally numb and the morphine haze left me feeling like I was drifting somewhere above my body. Sure that the hit-by-a-truck pain would start any second, I hit the button that sent the numbing morphine through a tube going into my spine as often as I was allowed – every ten minutes.
As I got up the courage to wean myself off the epidural and transition to pills (induced by the constant painful vomiting caused by said morphine and the fact that I couldn’t go home with a needle in my spine), I expected to feel the residual effects of my truck accident, I mean back surgery, but I didn’t. I’m not saying that I didn’t feel pain, but it was manageable. I guess that’s why they call the doctor’s that figure out your perfect pill regimen pain management doctors. After I was discharged from the hospital – with a prescription for half a dosage of a mild narcotic in an attempt to stave off the nausea – and moving around more (you only do physical therapy twice a day if you’re lucky in the hospital) the pain started to show up.
Just as my first surgery seemed easier then the horror that I imagined, my first physical therapy sessions seemed a piece of cake compared to the warnings I received from several people in which I would “really, really hurt”. And just as I didn’t feel the gravity of my surgery until my second week out, I didn’t feel the effect of my physical therapy until a few days later. But that pain lets me know that my exercises are doing something, and, after all, I expected it so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. I thought my muscles were eagerly waiting to be put back in form, but it turns out they got used to being lazy, couch potatoes and are going to put up a fight. They were shocked into compliance during those first couple of PT sessions but now they’ve got on their boxing gloves. Which is fine. They don’t realize it yet, but that’s exactly how I want them.
PS - I finished the Mists of Avalon a couple of weeks ago and have moved on to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (as recommended, again, by Pam). If you have an opinion on the next book that I should read, let me know. I'm thinking something by Philip Pullman. Maybe The Golden Compass, part one of the His Dark Materials series. Look out for posts on a recipe for Pam and pictures from my Bubble Tea adventure with Christina and two surprises!
I had two appointments already. After my first appointment, I was amazed at how easy the exercises felt. My back didn’t hurt a bit – only my much-neglected (on doctor’s orders!) muscles burned. And it wasn’t a painful, mutinous burn, but a thankful and long awaited pain. On my second visit, I was even allowed to use a weight machine for the legs, which caused them to wobble as my thighs remembered that they weren’t really made entirely of Jell-O (yuck!). But I welcomed this feeling and even encouraged it again once I got home only to be surprised – my arms, my legs, my back suddenly weren’t grateful. They were angry!
My muscles that had be so patiently atrophying for a year and a half were angry like my back when I got home from the hospital after my first surgery. Before my spinal fusion, I expected to wake out of anesthesia in total and utter agony. I’d been told that I would feel like I’d been hit by a truck. In my first moments of consciousness, I braced myself against the pain. Only it didn’t come. I didn’t feel anything. Literally. I was totally numb from the chest down. I was also mentally numb and the morphine haze left me feeling like I was drifting somewhere above my body. Sure that the hit-by-a-truck pain would start any second, I hit the button that sent the numbing morphine through a tube going into my spine as often as I was allowed – every ten minutes.
As I got up the courage to wean myself off the epidural and transition to pills (induced by the constant painful vomiting caused by said morphine and the fact that I couldn’t go home with a needle in my spine), I expected to feel the residual effects of my truck accident, I mean back surgery, but I didn’t. I’m not saying that I didn’t feel pain, but it was manageable. I guess that’s why they call the doctor’s that figure out your perfect pill regimen pain management doctors. After I was discharged from the hospital – with a prescription for half a dosage of a mild narcotic in an attempt to stave off the nausea – and moving around more (you only do physical therapy twice a day if you’re lucky in the hospital) the pain started to show up.
Just as my first surgery seemed easier then the horror that I imagined, my first physical therapy sessions seemed a piece of cake compared to the warnings I received from several people in which I would “really, really hurt”. And just as I didn’t feel the gravity of my surgery until my second week out, I didn’t feel the effect of my physical therapy until a few days later. But that pain lets me know that my exercises are doing something, and, after all, I expected it so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. I thought my muscles were eagerly waiting to be put back in form, but it turns out they got used to being lazy, couch potatoes and are going to put up a fight. They were shocked into compliance during those first couple of PT sessions but now they’ve got on their boxing gloves. Which is fine. They don’t realize it yet, but that’s exactly how I want them.
PS - I finished the Mists of Avalon a couple of weeks ago and have moved on to The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (as recommended, again, by Pam). If you have an opinion on the next book that I should read, let me know. I'm thinking something by Philip Pullman. Maybe The Golden Compass, part one of the His Dark Materials series. Look out for posts on a recipe for Pam and pictures from my Bubble Tea adventure with Christina and two surprises!
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Anniversaries
On the ninth of every month for five months, I have “celebrated” or at least marked the anniversary of my November 9th spinal fusion. Tomorrow is my six-month anniversary and the most significant so far. It was at my six-month appointment after my first spinal fusion that I found out that the surgery had failed and I would need a second operation. At my last appointment, three months ago, the doctor was optimistic about the success of my fusion and I have no reason to fear a third, but I can’t help being nervous. I know that when I’m lying on the metal X-ray table tomorrow, I will be suspicious of the friendly demeanor of the technician. I will not be able to stop myself thinking that she already knows whether something is wrong, whether my screws have broken again.
I try not to focus on the screws and instead on the positive, on the complete unlikelihood that my fusion could fail again. But I can’t stop myself from dreaming - from waking up in the middle of the night thinking that I’m back in my hospital bed or in my surgeon’s office receiving bad news. I don’t blame myself for having dreams or being anxious about my second six-month appointment (when there should have been only a first). I just wish that I could feel something in my body telling me that this time is different - maybe a lesser degree of pain or exhaustion than I felt after my first six months. At this point, I’m operating on a combination of faith, positive thinking (with the exception of this blog post, of course), and percentages. As in, there’s less than a two percent chance that my surgery could fail this time. Unfortunately, I’m one hundred percent sure that I’m dreading my doctor’s appointment.
Up there with anxiety and dread, is a sense that I have no control over my future. I was never someone that needed to feel in control of my destiny. I’ve always had tons of ideas about what I could do with my life, plenty of plans, but usually found that any target I had paled in comparison to reality. For example, during my sophomore year in college I spent months planning a summer trip to California to be an actress. I even tried an extreme diet – my very own combination of Atkins and Suzanne Summers – to get ready for all the bikinis I’d be asked to wear in suntan lotion commercials. Instead of going to Hollywood, I went on two amazing volunteer trips, one of which put me on a roof in West Virginia, partially in charge of the high school students tasked with replacing said roof. I mourned my summer plans for about a minute, feeling that the surprise trip to the edge of a Mountain in McDowell County was better than anything I had envisioned.
I always felt that relinquishing control over my plans worked in my favor, until six months after my first spinal fusion. I started looking into MFA programs for Poetry and found out, instead, that I’d be having another surgery. Suddenly I felt that a little more control over my ‘destiny’ wouldn’t be a bad thing. Who was I kidding? I was all about control. My first surgery was on my terms, after I’d gotten through college and could take the necessary time off for recovery. The second surgery was totally out of my control, unless, of course, I wouldn’t mind being a cripple. So even as I was looking for job possibilities on the internet this morning in hopes that my six-month appointment will lead to physical therapy and increased mobility, I do so only because I have to plan. I have to do something to mark these six-months, to acknowledge that they occurred and are significant. So I look for jobs, write this blog, and say a prayer that my second six-month appointment will be cause for celebration. And that the next surprise that life gives me will have nothing to do with a hospital bed.
I try not to focus on the screws and instead on the positive, on the complete unlikelihood that my fusion could fail again. But I can’t stop myself from dreaming - from waking up in the middle of the night thinking that I’m back in my hospital bed or in my surgeon’s office receiving bad news. I don’t blame myself for having dreams or being anxious about my second six-month appointment (when there should have been only a first). I just wish that I could feel something in my body telling me that this time is different - maybe a lesser degree of pain or exhaustion than I felt after my first six months. At this point, I’m operating on a combination of faith, positive thinking (with the exception of this blog post, of course), and percentages. As in, there’s less than a two percent chance that my surgery could fail this time. Unfortunately, I’m one hundred percent sure that I’m dreading my doctor’s appointment.
Up there with anxiety and dread, is a sense that I have no control over my future. I was never someone that needed to feel in control of my destiny. I’ve always had tons of ideas about what I could do with my life, plenty of plans, but usually found that any target I had paled in comparison to reality. For example, during my sophomore year in college I spent months planning a summer trip to California to be an actress. I even tried an extreme diet – my very own combination of Atkins and Suzanne Summers – to get ready for all the bikinis I’d be asked to wear in suntan lotion commercials. Instead of going to Hollywood, I went on two amazing volunteer trips, one of which put me on a roof in West Virginia, partially in charge of the high school students tasked with replacing said roof. I mourned my summer plans for about a minute, feeling that the surprise trip to the edge of a Mountain in McDowell County was better than anything I had envisioned.
I always felt that relinquishing control over my plans worked in my favor, until six months after my first spinal fusion. I started looking into MFA programs for Poetry and found out, instead, that I’d be having another surgery. Suddenly I felt that a little more control over my ‘destiny’ wouldn’t be a bad thing. Who was I kidding? I was all about control. My first surgery was on my terms, after I’d gotten through college and could take the necessary time off for recovery. The second surgery was totally out of my control, unless, of course, I wouldn’t mind being a cripple. So even as I was looking for job possibilities on the internet this morning in hopes that my six-month appointment will lead to physical therapy and increased mobility, I do so only because I have to plan. I have to do something to mark these six-months, to acknowledge that they occurred and are significant. So I look for jobs, write this blog, and say a prayer that my second six-month appointment will be cause for celebration. And that the next surprise that life gives me will have nothing to do with a hospital bed.
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