Leaving the Nest, Boredom and Torture

First, the good news: I am going out to lunch tomorrow. Yay! I am going to the Wellspring annual luncheon where one of my good friend's daughter has previously been honored as a young philanthropist. Last year during my campaign for School Board, I went to more than dozen of these charity events. (I just finished my taxes today and I counted up the deductions.) This is the first luncheon I am doing this year. I had booked this event several weeks before the surgery. I was hesitant, not knowing if I'd be up for it. Now, I am not even three weeks out of the surgery and I am going out of my mind in my little Seattle nest.* I am so grateful that I have something to do tomorrow, someplace to be.

I look at the blank pages of my calendar with dread. I fear the openness. Carl my carpenter and Evan my physical therapist both warned me of the post-surgery boredom. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the deja vu of the post-accident boredom that I experienced about three months prior. Evan, the sweet, naive, optimist,** tells me I should spend this time focusing on my wellness. Ack! Walking Green Lake with friends or going to a yoga or barre class would be great for my wellness. I'd rather be spending a sunny Wednesday afternoon skipping out and skiing at Snoqualmie. That would be awesome for my wellness. If the snow is good, skiing during the week is awesome. It is mostly a handful of middle aged women, there are no lift lines, and cougar bait mans the lifts.

Instead, I am reading voraciously, which I will write about in my next post. I am doing jigsaw puzzles galore. I am finishing quilting projects, which I will also write about. I filed my taxes today. I am watching Netflix. People bring me lunch and dinner, for which I am eternally grateful, but then they go about their normal lives, walking Green Lake, going to yoga and running errands in their free time. I am doing lots of physical therapy exercises and vexing on my knee: I am going to get it to maximum extension and flexion without massive amounts of pain? Evan made a joke about the PT being the center of my social life, but it is.

When I am not bored, I am getting bent and pushed and pulled. Yesterday for the first time, I swore during my session. I didn't drop any f-bombs; nevertheless, I felt like I violated this Sanctuary for Healing and Torture. Last week, I was starting to think of Evan as my nemesis. I initially liked him because he caused me the least amount of discomfort of anyone on my PT team by a wide margin. That margin has now closed and he has taken a sizable lead. Argh.

The other day I was at home doing my leg lifts and I said to Jack, "Evan will be mad at me if I don't come in with my leg at 110 degrees of flexion."

"He won't be mad," Jack said. "He gets to go home at the end of the day and you will still have an unbent leg." True, I thought. Yesterday when I was at PT, Evan said the goal is to get my leg to 120 degrees of flexion by four weeks after surgery. All legs need to bend that much in order to be functional as 120 degrees is the minimum amount of flexion required to climb and descend stairs. (The stuff I learn...) Evan told to me to keep working on bending my leg or else he would really have to work it again next time I saw him. "You don't like it and I don't like it either." Interesting. I almost wanted to say if you don't like making people suffer, perhaps you should find a new line of work. But I didn't. I think he likes the intellectual aspect of studying muscles and ligaments, and he seems to like exercise and sports. He might not have the same level of sangfroid as some of the other folks there. Not that an empathic physical therapist is a bad thing...

I know I am suppose to hate my PT, but Evan is a sweet guy, too sweet to be anyone's nemesis. He tells me stories of how he used to hit on women in bars with orthopedic problems when he started his PT program. I laughed when he told this story, which distracted me from my agony for about ten seconds. "Why not hit on orthopedically healthy women?" I asked.

"Because I couldn't impress them with my limited knowledge," he said. I imagined his lines:

"Nice limp!"
"That is a beautiful scar."
"That's a great leg brace. You wear it well. Where did you get it?"

I am not sure what kind of bar would have such a collection of injured women. I recall from my days of bar hopping not seeing very many injured people out and about at one a.m. tossing back gin and tonics. Jack asked if Evan's fiance was 63 years old with a double knee replacement. I'll have to ask.

Today, I am looking forward to going back to physical therapy on Friday, not because it is the center of my social life or because I enjoy my swollen knee feeling like a balloon that is about to burst. I am looking forward to it because I want to get better. I want to meet the goals of getting my leg to extend and bend. I want to be able to unlock my brace and sleep without it. I want to get out of the nest.

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* I am calling my house the nest or aerie. Our house is above the street and our first floor is elevated. We have trees off of our front porch. I feel like I am in a bird's nest or an eagle's aerie. With the 23 steps, I am loathe to leave the nest unless it is necessary.

** I think Evan was trained to tell patients to focus on their wellness. One of my friend's had previously trained to be a physical therapist and then bailed because the results were painfully slow. There must be some psychology taught to PT students to help them relate to the boredom suffered by their patients.