Pre-Crying

The Boy is going in for an MRI today to see if he tore his ACL. As you may know from my many blog posts, I tore my ACL in 2015 while I was skiing. I wouldn't wish a torn ACL on my worst enemy let alone on the Boy.

A torn ACL means he can't ski for a year. Last year, skiing was what kept him alive. It was the only thing that got him out of bed. It will take months to relearn to walk and run. He can't play soccer, either.

Last night I cried. I think it was pre-crying, crying before the bad news so when the bad news comes we've already processed it. I remember when the Boy was in 8th grade, he applied to Aviation High School. Admissions were by lottery, and there was a low acceptance rate. The night before the lottery, he cried for forty-five minutes. Jack and I couldn't figure out why he was crying at the time, and then when I saw he didn't get in, I understood.

Crying

I have been crying a lot this week and last.

Last Thursday, I got the hint that the Boy will likely stay in Montana for his senior year of high school. I cried for a few hours over this. It was a good hard, cathartic cry and I felt better afterwards.

Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from the Boy's school nurse that he might have torn his ACL and he needs an MRI. As readers of my blog may know, I tore my ACL at the end of 2015. 2016 was the year of surgery and recovery. The Boy is stronger, tougher and younger than I was in 2015, so his recovery will likely be faster. Still, this teeny-tiny ligament in the knee can surprisingly mess up someone's life for a year. Mobility is important. The Boy lives for skiing. His second sport is soccer. He had just joined the school's basketball team, too, which was awesome for someone who had rarely touched a basketball. This happens in a school of thirty-five kids when they need more players. All of these sports require an ACL.

How did he tear it? Attempting a 540 spin on what I am guessing was a janky homemade jump by the boys at his school on the snowy Montana campus.

I got the email around noon and I was able to hold it together for the rest of the day at work. After lunch, I was in an intense three hour team meeting in the afternoon where we hashed out details for a project plan. I had a few other tasks I needed to work on and then I fell apart crying.

The Boy is in another state under someone else's care with an injury that would deny him access to the sport he loves the most, a sport that under his own admission kept him alive last year. A sport that probably not so healthily gave his life meaning and gave him a sense of purpose and self-esteem.

That being said, I've watched the X Games and Olympic Freestyle skiing enough to remember the lists of broken bones and torn ligaments these skiers have had. Some have had multiple ACL tears. Could the Boy get a brace to make it through the season? I have a ski brace and it is awesome.

Still, I cried over his knee. Once I started crying, the tears kept coming. This morning I woke up a little blue, so I continued reading There the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen. Kya is a girl who raised herself in the marshes of North Carolina. She lived alone for almost all of her life.

I realized I am alone.

Jack and I had an argument last week. He was reading a book that I told him I was reading, Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. He read it and said he understood how I felt--that he took care of his co-workers more than he took care of the family. He told me a story of Marcia, a physician who never remembered to renew her medical license. He would send her texts and remind her to do this paperwork.

This is from a guy who couldn't remember to put gas in either of our cars. He could take care of Laura, Erica and Marcia, but not me and the kids. A guy who was ticked off, annoyed and resentful when I ask him for his work schedule and when I asked him not to train for another marathon so he could spend more time with me and the kids. I didn't even care about myself at that point: I just wanted him to be a father.

I lost my shit when he told me the story of Marcia. Then in our usual dysfunctional marriage standard, he got mad at me for being upset. I was mad because he kept going on about Marcia and never got to the point of how it related to me. He says he never got to that end of the story because I lost my shit in the middle.

A few months ago, I attended a wedding of an Indian colleague. The bride--also Indian--came up to me and showed me the henna on her hands.

"If the henna is bright, it means your husband will love you," she said. She looked down at her hands, kind of sad, and "but it is always bright."

In arranged marriages, brides hope their husbands will love them. In American marriages, love is a given: that is why you are getting married.

My anniversary was last Monday, and Jack and I have been married for a long time. Here I am now, realizing that he doesn't love me the way I want to be loved. There was love at the start, but it got lost along the way. Somewhere in his heart, I am sure Jack has fondness and affection for me, but it is so buried behind his job and work and taking care of other people I don't often enough see it demonstrated to me. He gives more attention to Laura, Erica and Marcia and everyone else than he does to me and the kids. When I asked for his time and attention, he'd get annoyed, like I was a bother, that I was interrupting him.

And so I cry.

I cry because it has taken me so long to figure this out, even though he has basically telling me this all along. I just never figured out how to listen.

#selfcare

I just got back from the gym where I met with a personal trainer. We focused on strength training and I felt sooo good. I got out my Mood Meter app on my phone for the first time in years and rated myself somewhere between happy and hopeful. Maybe strength building cures the blues and anxiety. Maybe I am carrying over the buzz from seeing "A Very Die Hard Christmas" last night with my friend Cara. Maybe it was the great phone call with the Boy today. I wouldn't say he was euphoric--that is not the goal. Instead, he was introspective and reflective. He was saying he has been bored lately. Instead of it being a complaint, it was more of an observation, like "That's interesting. Why is that and what am I going to do about it?"

When the Boy was in Wilderness Therapy, the staff at his program tried to get the parents to focus on self care. This was hard for me. I was used to taking care of other people and not so much myself. This self-abnegation came in different forms, from not spending much money on myself to putting my family's needs first. If there was a play for me to see or take care of the kids while Jack worked, then I would take care of the kids. Part of this is just being a parent. I remember when I knew I was ready to be a parent -- when I had more to give than I needed to take. Unfortunately, I interpreted that to mean give almost everything to others and save little for myself.

Yeah, I needed some balance.

I am trying to take advantage of my time as an early and unexpected empty-nester to focus on taking care of myself. I was talking to Cara about my year of physical therapy after I tore my ACL. At the end of 2015, I had just lost a brutal school board election and I had no job. My dad once told me one of the secrets to happiness is to have something to look forward to, whether a vacation or dinner with friends. After the election, I didn't have much to look forward to, not necessarily in a bad way. I was going to have to regroup and figure out a new plan. Then, I got hurt and couldn't walk properly for about seven months. I was never in pain, but physical therapy was uncomfortable. Why wasn't I completely depressed? How did I get out of bed in the morning? Theoretically, I should have been miserable, but I wasn't. Why?

Was it the daily exercise? Was it the delightful company of my physical therapist, Evan? Was it because I was almost writing every day? Was it because I was listening to music every day, reading lots of book? Watching cool stuff on Netflix?

Recently, I had a realization: maybe I wasn't depressed because that was the Year of Self Care. My goal, focus and purpose was clear: I had to heal and recover. I had no choice. Not walking was not an option.

It wasn't all rosy, but there were some upsides. I gained about twenty pounds, but I still was in decent shape. My left knee was injured but in the process of physical therapy, my tetchy right knee got better, too.

My family kicked in and helped around the house more. I wasn't the only one doing laundry, cooking or cleaning. For several months, I couldn't empty the dishwasher. Was I happy because I got out of housework? Or was in because they all had to chip in and take care of me for a change?

I am looking back at my ACL recovery year with the lens of self-care, and hoping to apply it to this year, too. The Boy is gone. He reminds us of the challenges of being in a therapeutic environment. Part of his being gone isn't just that he needs to be in a place to heal, but the rest of the family needs to heal, too. Mental illness is a family system issue, just like alcoholism or workaholism. Everyone plays a part in the dynamic, and we all need to adjust if we are going to get better.

London, Jack's Back and Keeping Up with the McGuire's

No, not "Jack is back." I mean the back that belongs to Jack. On our second day in London, Jack crashed on his mountain bike while riding with the Boy.

Text from the Boy: "He's all good. A bit stiff. He ate shit going on jump 11/13"

Which means he crashed on the 11th of the 13 jumps on the Gravy Train trail at Duthie. Oy. I can't load the picture of his scratched up and bloody back, which is probably for the best. You might not want to see it anyway.

I talked to Jack the night of the crash, and he seemed fine. He has been battered and bruised before.

The second night was concerning.

"I couldn't sleep flat on my back because I couldn't breathe because the pain was too bad, so I slept on the couch. I want to make sure I can breathe deeply so I don't get fluid in my lungs."

Okay. Did you break your ribs or something?

"No, I'm a doctor, even if my ribs were broken or bruised, nothing to do, blah blah blah," he said.

The third night was more concerning.

"I really shouldn't be driving," he said. I can't turn my back and it hurt when I turn my head." This was the week Jack and the Boy were going to do crazy outdoorsy kind of stuff.

The fourth night was totally sketchy.

"I took some of the Boy's old percocet from when he broke his collarbone so I could sleep," he said. "I had to stop taking ibuprofen because I was getting a rash. At least three times a year we get kids in the ICU whose skin sloughs off because of a reaction to ibuprofen." This is typical dinner conversation at the McGuire's, the rare but nasty side effects of over the counter meds.

"I called one of the pharmacists in the ICU to see what they would recommend."

Probably not taking your kid's old meds, but whatever. Jack has a license to prescribe narcotics, and while I know I should dump old pain killers at the QFC drug return center,* part of me is afraid the massive earthquake will hit and someone I love will have a broken leg and we won't be able to find medical help but I will have a jar of pain meds from a surgery in my medicine cabinet. Better Jack taking one pill for legitimate pain management instead of our kids taking it for recreational use.

So now I am feeling bad for leaving Jack and the Boy home in Seattle while I am out and about with Claire-Adele eating in restaurants, seeing plays, visiting parks and museums in one of the coolest cities in the world, especially as Jack is seriously injured.

But then I don't feel too bad. Two and a half years ago, I tore my ACL trying to keep up with the kids and Jack. Now he is the one grounded for not keeping up with the Boy.

* PSA: You should get rid of old pain meds. http://www.takebackyourmeds.org I've done it before.

(Second) Worst. Ski. Day. Ever.

Some people say that any day on the slopes is a good day. Those people probably have never been taken down the hill on the sled by the ski patrol. My worst day skiing was the day I tore my ACL. My second worst day skiing ever was yesterday.

Saturday, I took the Boy and one of his friends to Snoqualmie. It was the first day Central was open. The boys had wanted to go to Alpental, but I wanted to stay on one of the smaller hills. I started my morning on the green run, Holiday, at Central while the boys went on the blues and blacks.  Holiday was one of the steeper green hills I’ve been on since I tore my ACL.

After about fifteen runs, I was bored. I watched several new skiers head over to the steeper terrain and thought I can do that. I've done it before. After lunch, I decided to go down Alpine. Alpine is a blue run that I have done dozens of times before I tore my ACL. I was feeling good on the greens. I figured I was mostly afraid and fear was holding me back. I did fine on the main runs at Crystal two weeks earlier.

I got on Central Express, the chairlift to the top of Alpine. The chairlift was a four-seater, and it flew up the mountain. The lift to the green hills are often fixed grip and they crawl and creep up the hills. I had forgotten how fast these new lifts are. As I was riding up, I thought about the Ski Patrol guy I met on the lift last week at West. He tore his ACL twenty years ago and was now going to skin up the mountain and ride through the back country. Cool, I thought. This guy is my inspiration.

Alpine has four main parts to the run: first, a downhill curve then a second steep part, then a third part which is not that steep and then the flat run-out at the bottom. The first part is a soft gentle curve. I manage this part just fine. It was a little bit harder than I remembered but nothing impossible. The cover on the mountain was thin, so they might not have groomed this run. There were more bumps and unevenness than I would have liked. I almost lost it once, but I recovered before I hit the ground.

The second part nearly killed me. I felt like I was going down to straight vertical drop. The snow was on groomed and it had small moguls in spots. I was terrified. How am I going to get to the bottom of this hill? I thought about taking off my skis and walking down the mountain. I nixed that idea because I'd have to get to the edge of the run and to get to the edge I have to ski there and I didn't want to do that.

Fear was kicking my ass.

Fear = 1

Lauren = 0

I was in the middle of the hill and stuck. I couldn't go back to the top and beg the lift ops guys to let me download. Instead, I turned my skis perpendicular to the fall line and marched down the hill sideways. I flattened out all of the bumps in my path, as if I were a one-woman grooming machine.

When I made it down the second part, I thought I was in luck. I didn't remember the third part being hard at all.

I was wrong.

Fear = 2

Lauren = 0

The snow cover at the edges of the run was thin. Instead of being wide open with flat parts, this was a narrow chute with bushes and ice puddles on the side. I sidestepped down this part, too. Last week, the Boy told me I should ski faster and harder, so when I crash my skis will come flying off and I won't tear my ACL. He thinks I tore my ACL because I was going to slow when I crashed two years ago. This is coming from a fourteen year old who thinks he is indestructible.

As I was slowly sidestepping down the mountain, I watched old pros fly by with grace and ease. I watched elementary school aged children turn and pass me. The only people going slower than me were a dad and his five year old daughter. As I watched people of all ages and abilities ski by, I thought of my physical therapist, Evan. I love Evan. He is a great guy and I would recommend him to anyone. But I never want to see him again. Ever. Falling is part of skiing, but I don't want a fall that will cause me to struggle walking for a year.

The fourth, flat part I managed okay. Because it was flat.

It took me almost an hour from when I left the lodge after lunch to when I skied past the lodge. I was ready to hang up my skis forever after my run on Alpine. Maybe life in the lodge isn't so bad, I thought. No, the other voice in my head fought back. Sitting the lodge sucks. You need to do another run. Go back to Holiday, even if it is dull. So I went to Holiday.

Why couldn't I do the Alpine run? Did I lose that much leg strength over two years since I tore my ACL? Even with all of my physical therapy? I couldn't believe that I had the weakest legs of anyone on the mountain. That couldn't be possible, or could it? Were my legs drained like a battery after my accident, and they have never fully recharged? Will they ever fully recharge?

In the end, the greens were too easy and the blues were too hard. Where was my "just right" run? After skiing greens all day, my thighs didn't burn at all. Usually, after a good day of skiing, my quads are on fire in a good way. If I don't need a salt bath or twenty-minutes in a hot tub after skiing, I really haven't skied. Likewise, I want sore muscles, not torn ligaments or broken bones.

I wish I could design my own ski runs. The Boy has a video game where he creates his own race tracks. My neighbor designs landscapes for gold courses. Unfortunately, ski runs are harder to modify and change, otherwise, I'd make a run that got a little bit harder every time I did it until I was as good as I once was.

Blackcomb

The Boy wanted to go skiing, so Jack decided to take him to Whistler this weekend. Claire-Adele and I decided we didn't want to be left behind, so we joined their boys' weekend. When Claire-Adele was ten, she and I went to London for a week. It was a beautiful mother-daughter trip, and I should have let Jack and the Boy have this to themselves. But I didn't. When Claire-Adele goes to college in a year and a half, Jack and the Boy will have three years for father-son bonding. I don't feel so bad now. Besides, they ski a lot together during the winter.

Friday night, we crossed the border into Canada at Lynden with four pairs of skis on the roof. I was going to give it a go. We had a long, slow drive from Seattle to Whistler, arriving at 10:30 or so. My kids were so cranky and fussy you would have thought they were toddlers. Or teenagers.

The Boy was awake at 7:00. He is on a club soccer team, and skiing is his second sport. This past year, he has skied thirty days and counting. One of Jack's friends said you need thirty days in a season to dramatically improve. To contrast, I've skied four days so far this season. I've asked the Boy if he wants to join a ski team, but he says no. He prefers free-skiing and jumping in the terrain parks instead of racing, although he is pretty fast. Think of a football running back or any soccer player versus a track star. Speed is a key element for running backs and soccer players, but they do more stuff. The Boy likes the stuff. He can be grumpy and sour in the damp and dreary Seattle winter, and then a day of skiing lifts his mood.

He heard Jack and I talking and popped into our bedroom with a giant smile on his face, apparently having forgotten the snottiness between him and his sister last night. The lifts didn't open until 10, so we had three hours to kill before we left. The Boy was happy to run into the Village to get breakfast with his dad. In a normal world, the Boy would be in bed on the weekend and wouldn't talk until fed. Now he was chipper.

After we ate breakfast and got to the gondola, I was walking around looking a little lost when one of the Whistler guides approached me.

"Which green runs are open?" I asked.

The woman was shy of seventy years old and probably been skiing for sixty-five of her years.

"There aren't any beginner runs open," she said. "It's just the top of Blackcomb. Are you a beginner?" she asked, looking alarmed. Later I thought I should have told her I was a re-beginner, someone used to be decent and then needed to start over. Only the diehards come out for spring skiing after Whistler  Mountain is closed for the season. When we have skied here before, we shave spent most of our time on Whistler, riding the Peak-to-Peak to check out a few runs on Blackcomb and to admire the epic view.

I told her I am recovering from an ACL surgery and I've skied a few times already, but I needed to warm up. She looked relieved and told me where to go.

"There is a steep section at the top of the Excelerator Express lift, and then you take the Jersey Cream Express to the Expressway, and Easy Out runs," she said. "You can take Catskinner Chair back up and warm up on those. After that, Seventh Heaven is supposed to be good today. Lots of easy and wide blue runs," she said.

"Thanks, I said. "I've skied Seventh Heaven before I tore my ACL," I said. I have. Those are great runs, probably my favorites. That was back when I could ski all day for three or four days. I am not waxing nostalgic about my youth when I could do anything. It isn't fair to compare my current state to when I was twenty-three. I could ski for days back when I was in my mid-forties instead of my late forties.

"Good luck!" she said. I would need it.

Here I wish I had a brain-to-blog app to track all my thoughts as I went down the runs. I'll try to re-create the highlights here.

When I got to the top of the Execelator Express lift, I had to take a steep little hill down to the Jersey Cream Express lift. The kind Whistler Ambassador warned me about this. Everyone getting off the gondola was heading down this run. The steepness alone wasn't the issue. In addition to being crowded, the snow was concrete. I couldn't stick my pole into the snow it was that hard. This is a hazard of spring skiing. The snow melts in the afternoon and can be wonderfully soft, but then overnight temps dip below freezing and the next morning you have concrete.

I stood at the top of the lip and looked down. There was no way I could carve on this. I thought about downloading back down on the chairlift I just came up and then taking the gondola to the base. Jack paid for four lift tickets, but the exchange rate is 73 American cents for a Canadian dollar. In effect, my ski ticket is free and if we pretend we paid American dollars for Canadian lift tickets.

I decided to give it a shot. I watched other people ski to see if anyone found soft snow. I saw softer snow to the far right of the run. I moved to the left and skied across the width of the run so I wouldn't have to turn much.

A run that should have taken a minute took me ten. Then I wondered how I was going to get back down the mountain. What if there weren't any open green runs back to the gondola? What if they didn't download on the chairlifts?

I got to the top and skied down Easy One. This is a family, beginner area. It, too, was concrete. My kids had gone ahead and already did a run in the time to took me to get to the top of the lift. Jack texted them, and they met us mid-run, and then skied off.

The last time I was at Whistler, I thought the Easy One run was the easiest, most boring run in the world. I understood why people wanted to ski more challenging stuff. Now, my legs were tired by the end of the run. There was one part where Jack told me I had to get my momentum up to make it up a small hill. I managed to do that, and that was the fastest I skied all day. My right leg was more tired than my left which was wearing the brace. I wondered if I should get a brace for my right leg, too. While the steepness wasn't any worse than what I had been skiing earlier this winter at Snoqualmie, the difference was the length of the run. This run was ten times longer--maybe more--than Little Thunder. I was tired, both mentally and physically. I had to concentrate the entire time. There wasn't free space in my brain where I could relax and be in the zone. My brain didn't trust my body to take the runs without intervention.

I took a break for an hour at the Rendezvous Cafe while Jack and the kids skied some more. At lunch, the Boy was dejected when I asked how it was.

"The terrain park had two parts," he said. "One was too easy and the other one I would have killed myself." I had seen the jumps in terrain park on the Catskinner lift. I saw people getting air for several seconds while they did backflips. It looked cool, but it also looked deadly if you didn't know what you were doing. I am glad the Boy didn't try them. "If you make a mistake waterskiing, you splash," said the Boy. "If you crash on these jumps, you will crack."

After lunch, I decided to ski back down while Jack and the kids skied the glaciers at the top of the mountain. It had snowed about two inches while I was taking a break. When I got back out, the skiing was remarkably better.  I took the Easy Way Down, which is a road run which felt about three miles long. My Toyota RAV4 could have done this run, no problem. The challenge with this run was the narrowness and the tiny signs orange signs the size of my glove along the boundary that said

WARNING. Out of Bounds Area. Not Patrolled.

with a drop off on the left side of the run. (I don't know exactly how small the signs were--I didn't want to get that close to the edge to see.)

Great, I thought. If I fall off the edge here, no one will ever find me. There probably isn't even a cell signal out here. A bear would probably find my remains in the spring. This horrible inner-dialogue haunted me on the way down. Once I got out of the road run section and back into the regular part, the fog came in. It was more like a cloud where you can't see anything. Finally, I got to Solar Coaster, which was going up, and Wizard Express, which was going down. My plan was to take a green run back to the top of the gondola and ride back down, but I couldn't see the run that would take me there.

Fuck it, I thought. We are skiing again tomorrow. I'll download to the bottom and walk back to the car.

I took a picture at the bottom at the end of the day. I didn't want to press my luck by taking a picture at the top. There is a mountain in the background, but it is covered in fog. Trust me.

As I was walking back to the car, I crossed a footbridge over a creek. I stopped to look at the water that was melting off the mountain. A majority of the water in the creek had once been snow. This water had been on a transformative journey. It melted and was filtered and then picked up minerals as it ran through the rocks in the mountain.

I remember what my dad said a year and four months ago when I tore my ACL. "It's going to be all uphill from here, but when you get to the top, you'll be in really great shape."

Sixteen months ago, I couldn't walk, and now I am skiing again. Sixteen months ago, I was coming off the loss from the School Board election and was unemployed. Now I am in training for a new job that I'll start in August. As I stood at the bottom of the mountain looking at the creek, I thought about what my dad said and all of my uphill climbing last year.

I made it to the top of the hill. And I am in great shape.

Explosive & Ping

I had what I thought was going to be my last physical therapy appointment on Friday. Alas, it was not. I have one more. At least. As one of my roommates from college used to say, "Heavy sigh."

Part of me wants to be done and say my knee is good enough. I can walk, run and bike. I can ski and Zumba. Shouldn't that be good enough?

At the beginning of this process, my physical therapist and surgeon asked me what my goals were for recovery. I listed a bunch of stuff, like walk my dog, ski and play tennis. All of that was fine. I didn't realize it at the time because I couldn't foresee what my knee would be like a year later, but my real goal was to be able to move without restriction, that I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I wanted a normal knee.

I went into see Evan last Friday, and I complained. In fairness, he asked me how it is going. I take this to mean "tell me what isn't good" versus "tell me it is all good." I do tell him the good news. I told him that I had been skiing and I am taking Zumba classes, which are two significant milestones. I also told him my knee isn't as jumpy and responsive as I want it to be.

"I feel like I wouldn't be able to play tennis yet," I said. "I feel like my knee is strong, but it is sluggish. I am not sure I could chase the ball and move quickly enough."

"You need to work on explosiveness," he said. I never thought explosiveness was a tangible thing. When I hear explosiveness in the context of athletics, I think of an adjective sportscasters picked up in a thesaurus to describe basketball stars. "Explosiveness" makes it sound like I want to be a future receive for the Seahawks or play tennis against Serena Williams. Which is cool. "Explosive" is a real thing which means the opposite of sluggish. I want to be explosive. It means agile and sprightly and spry, so I can bounce and dance a jig when I want to.

In prior weeks, I was focusing on building up the final bits of strength so both legs would be equally strong. I finally passed all three strength tests (barely on the one-hop test).

"You are fine on your percentages comparing left to right, but you don't look good when you jump on the left leg," Evan said. To a person who hasn't been to physical therapy as long as I have been going to Evan, this might sound like a huge insult. It is not, especially since I knew how awful I looked jumping on my left leg compared to the right. I would stick the landing on my right leg, but would often double jump on the left leg. Not only do I have a hard time sticking the landing, but I also looked like a windmill flapping my arms to keep my balance when I landed. If my legs were gymnasts competing against each other, my right leg would get a gold medal and my left leg would be in fifth place, which is remarkable since there are only two athletes in this competition.

Evan gave me some new hopping exercises to work on to help me stick my landings. This is all good, but I wonder how much is too much. Do I really need these extra exercises, or is this unnecessary polish?

I really need these exercises. It isn't a matter of having the perfect knee, it is more about having my left leg feel equal to my right. I think back to what Evan told me a few appointments ago: when your body doesn't have symmetry, it pings your brain that something is wrong. When I flail when I land my left leg, my brain doesn't need to give me a gentle ping. It screams at me at those times. Most often, it is a quiet "ping" letting me know that I am not in balance.

I want to be in balance. I want the pinging to stop. That's not polish--that is feeling back to normal.

Zumba! & Front Row Divas

Two weeks ago, I went to my first Zumba class. My friend Jeanette teaches Zumba, so I asked her which class I should take. She recommended a class with Daren at Community Fitness on Roosevelt. She said he is upbeat yet his classes are relatively low impact, which is exactly what I wanted for my first class after recovering from my ACL tear and surgery last year.

Aerobic classes used to be my main form of exercise before I had kids. After Claire Adele was born, I took an aerobics class three times a week. Once the Boy was born, I had a hard time squeezing in classes so I would ride my bike instead. Once in a while, I'd take a ballet or tap class, but those only lasted for a few weeks.

Since I've torn my ACL, I've wanted to take an aerobics class. I was worried that I wouldn't be agile enough. A few months ago, Jason gave me some agility exercises, and I felt great. I was slow, the exercises loosened up my knee.

The challenge of an exercise class is that there are other people in it. With all of my cardio machine exercises, I could go at my own pace and stop when I wanted to. I could do that in a group class, but that is not the point of a group exercise class. The point of a group exercise class is peer pressure: everyone keeps going even though they are tired and sweaty. Everyone else is doing it! You can do it, too!

My knee was still kind of stiff and I didn't want to be the one person two steps behind for the whole class. Again, peer pressure. I didn't want to be the one person off from the rest of the group. The steps are relatively simple and repeated often. Most people should be able to keep up. If not, go back to the cardio room where you can watch television while you exercise!

But hey ho! I did it! I took Daren's class and it was great. (I took two classes a week apart just to make sure the first one wasn't a fluke.) Zumba is just like old-fashioned aerobics from the 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's, but they changed the music to Latin Dance, added a few hip and shoulder shakes, and gave it a new name.

The women in the class seemed to welcome all types and abilities. There was a wide range of ages, from mid-thirties to a woman who had to be at least seventy. None of the women in the class were worried about my performance. They were either too tired and sweaty to notice, or they were too busy trying to keep up with steps. Or, if they were like me, they were having a Walter Mitty hour of pretending they were in a nightclub in a tropical city dancing the night away, not in the middle of soggy Seattle before lunch. How come we all showed up wearing exercise clothes and not slinky dresses and heels? Why teach the class at noon and not ten at night? Where was the bar? Shouldn't we be tossing back sangria and not Nuun water? Seriously, someone needs to rethink this. Regardless of my new ideas of how to exercise, I checked off another goal for my ACL recovery: dancing. Yay! It took longer than I would have liked, but I made it.

After the first class, Jeannette and I talked with a few other women after the first class and I heard a term I never heard before: front row divas. Those are the women who know all the moves, know how to dance, and show off by staying in the front row. How come I've never heard this term before when I've taken a million aerobics classes before? Front row divas can't be exclusive to Zumba, can they?

I didn't stand in the front row for the first or second classes. I stood in the second row. I had always thought the I liked to stay near the front so I could see the instructor better, right? There was no way I was going to stand in the back row. There was no point in that. Then it occurred to me: I had been a front row diva in my former lives, back at Lakeshore Athletic Club, at the YMCA in St. Louis. I wasn't intentionally a diva but I stood in the front so I wouldn't be distracted by people who were two steps behind, who couldn't keep up with the simple choreography. I wanted a clear shot of myself in the mirror so I could see if I was doing the steps right. Did that make me a diva? Yes, yes it did.

I am not a diva in other areas of my life, at least I don't think so. Yet, my dancing "divaness" prevented me from going to the class earlier, until I knew I had a 98% chance of keeping up. I needed to stand that in the middle of class, hold my own and not hold anyone back. Would it have been better if my ego didn't get in the way, if I didn't care if I was two steps behind or moved like Frankenstein? Probably. But then I wouldn't be a diva.

My Left Knee: Prologue

Hello readers: I am creating a book about recovering from my ACL injury. Here is the a draft of the prologue to the book. -- Lauren

* * * * * 

It is not like my heart was broken—literally or metaphorically—but still this was tough. It wasn’t a permanent injury, either: people heal from torn ACLs all of the time. I wasn’t examining my mortality like I would with a cancer diagnosis, but I was contemplating how my lack of mobility impacted my ability to function. I felt like I had to put my brain on hold for months while I took care of my body. It was a challenge.

My initial injury from a skiing accident was bad enough that I couldn’t walk for almost a month without crutches, a knee brace, or both. After the surgery to repair my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the short ligament that connects the kneecap to the thigh bone, I was back in the brace and on crutches for weeks. Even after I could technically “walk,” I wasn’t very good at it. My gait was off, I was incredibly slow, and I couldn’t walk very far without my leg revolting, begging me to slow down or stop. The trivia of my old life—making breakfast, walking down stairs, and bathing—suddenly became the main event. After my injury and during my recovery, I saw life through the eyes of a person with a disability. For months, my biggest worry was if I could cross the street before the traffic light changed. At times, it seemed like I would never get better, but I did.

This is a survival story of sorts. Unlike Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, I didn’t go to faraway lands for my uncomfortable journey. I mostly stayed on my couch icing and elevating my leg when I wasn’t at the gym. My enemy wasn’t an Orc, but my own body. Unlike Sir Ernest Shackleton combating the Antarctic Ocean, my hostile environment was my home. The twenty-three steps to my house were like icebergs crashing into my vessel, making it both dangerous and onerous for me to leave my house.

There are worse things that can happen to people other than not being able to move, and yet for me, there was something primally disturbing about it. In modern times, we have wheelchairs, ramps and the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). I don’t need to outrun a bear or lion or chase prey for dinner, but what if a fire broke out in my home or there was a mass shooting in a shopping mall: how would I escape? How could I dodge a car backing out in a parking lot if I couldn’t run? As long as I had limited mobility, I felt mildly unsafe, and that was not a comfortable feeling.

The month before my skiing crash, I ran for school board and lost after a year of campaigning. Every day during the campaign, my calendar was full. When I hurt my knee, I was in a post-election lull with very little to do. After I hurt my knee, I had even less to do, which I was surprised was possible. Countless people who struggle with the inability to move lead interesting and productive lives. I was not one of them. Two major unpleasant and unexpected side effects of my injury were isolation and boredom.

Before I had my skiing crash, I had imagined that life with an injury or major illness would be a time to slow down from day-to-day stress, ponder what is important in life, read great books, watch great movies, and find inner peace. If I couldn’t find inner peace, then it would be time to be pampered like a princess. When I was in elementary school, friends of mine were lucky enough to break bones, have their tonsils out or get the chicken pox. I had none of those experiences. Dee Dee had a party when she broke her arm. She sat on the couch wrapped in an afghan while we sat around her in a circle and gave her presents. When Lisa had her tonsils out, she got ice cream every meal and got to miss a week of school. While I knew it wasn’t all fun to be sick, there was certainly an upside.

I should have known better. As a parent, I know that when a child is ill, parents do everything possible to make their child comfortable and/or distracted. Instead of this being a time of ease and introspection, I was learning to walk, ride a bike, climb stairs, hop, jump, swim, and run. W. Timothy Gallwey writes in The Inner Game of Tennis about Self 1, the talking and thinking part of our minds, and Self 2, the muscle memory “doing” part of our minds. All of the actions and activities with my legs that used to be automatic now needed to be relearned. My Self 1 had to step in and guide the way because the muscles that Self 2 relied on stopped working.

Unlike the flu where you lie in bed until you feel better, I had to work to get better. My new job was to rehabilitate my knee with the help of the University of Washington’s Sports Medicine Clinic. Getting better involved twice a week physical therapy appointments plus an hour or more of exercises every day. Their goal was to return me to sport, in my case, skiing. My goal was to move without limitations. If I wanted to ski, I could ski. If I wanted to dance, I could dance. If I wanted to play tennis, hike, climb stairs or walk my dog, I could play tennis, hike, climb stairs and walk my dog. I didn’t think this was too much to ask. I was forty-six at the time—too young to permanently assign myself to be a spectator and not a participant.

You might be reading this book because you tore your ACL, or maybe your spouse or child did. Perhaps you are a physical therapist who wants to know more about your patients’ life outside of your office. My experience may be different than yours. I am a middle-aged woman with two teenage kids and aging parents. I am married to a doctor, but I am not a doctor, a nurse or anything related to medicine. You might be a young athlete or an old couch potato. You might be curious to read this book to compare your experience to mine. In some areas, I was better than average. In others, worse.

Please note that the research-based protocols and milestones may have changed since the time this was written. For example, a few years before my surgery, continuous motion machines were in vogue. Now they are not. Treatments evolve, and sometimes you will get caught in the middle of those changes. While I can’t imagine what your experience will be like, I can say ice became my new best friend during my recovery. I don’t think human anatomy will evolve that much in a few years such that ice won’t be an effective way to reduce swelling.

I have several friends who tore their ACLs before I did. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on with them before or after their surgeries, probably because they didn’t leave their homes for a few months. After I had torn my ACL, I asked them tons of questions about the recovery process. They all had massive amnesia.

“When did you get out of the brace?” I had asked Michelle before I had my surgery.

“I think it was around a month or so. Maybe six weeks. Maybe eight. I don’t remember,” she said. She didn’t understand this was the most urgent question I had.

“When were you able to walk again without crutches?” I’d ask Greta.

“Ahhh….” She couldn’t remember.

I wanted answers and information on what it was like and how they survived. They were not helpful.

My physical therapist, Evan, was also not forthcoming with information. He is a one-day-at-a-time guy, giving me information on a need-to-know basis, whereas I wanted to know everything I was going to go through in the next year right now.

This book started out as a blog where I would track the ups and downs of my recovery. I figured out that I, too, would have massive amnesia. Amnesia can be a good thing—it helps you to forget your misery so you can move on. I didn’t want to forget, so I wrote everything down. I wanted to look back and remember and say, “Look how far I’ve come!”

This book isn’t about how I found spiritual enlightenment through an injury. I was too focused on survival to achieve self-actualization. It is about how I embraced reading People magazine on the exercise bike at the gym and watching television during the day while doing leg lifts. My saving grace wasn’t an appreciation of how much my health and family meant to me. My salvation came from the endorphins I got from forty-five minutes of cardiovascular exercise every day.

As a lapsed Catholic, I welcomed the suffering. These were my forty days in the desert, minus the crucifixion at the end. Suffering gave me the motivation to do my exercises so I could escape the miserableness of limited mobility.

The ups and downs of healing were real, and a continuous part of the process. I remember years ago riding my bike on the Tour of the Mississippi River Valley, (a.k.a. The TOMRV). The ride from Davenport to Dubuque, Iowa and back had one stretch of fifteen miles of roller hills. I call them roller hills because riding them was like riding a roller coaster. I would pedal downhill as hard as I could in my highest gears, and the momentum and speed would lift me up over the next hill. This repeated itself again and again for miles. It was exhilarating. This reminded me of my recovery minus the speed, momentum, and exhilaration. As soon as I made it over one hurdle in my recovery, I would be so pleased with myself. Then I would meet the next hill and start a new climb. Before I went into surgery, my dad told me, “It is all uphill from here. But when you get to the top, you will be in really great shape.”

I hope you find this book helpful on your path to recovery. Heal well!

It's a Miracle?

I talked to my dad this weekend and got an update on my mom. He decided not to tell me right away with the good news--he wanted to see if it stuck before he got his hopes up. My mother--who has Alzheimer's and has been chair bound and mute for the last nine months--is walking, talking and feeding herself.

It is kind of unbelievable. That is not to say that I don't believe it or think it isn't true. I believe she is walking, talking and feeding herself. I don't believe her Alzheimer's is receding, though. I think something else is going on.

Many months ago (I don't remember when), the staff at Danbury found my mother one morning in a different state.

"What has different about her?" my dad had asked Deena, the head nurse.

"She wasn't crabby and angry," she had said. "We thought something had happened to her." Even Alzheimer's patients don't have that dramatic of changes in behavior overnight.

My dad met my mom at the hospital. One possible explanation for this change was my mother could have had a stroke. The only way to tell was for certain would have been to give my mother an MRI.

"An MRI isn't worth the trouble," my husband said, echoing what my father had been told by the physicians at the hospital. "She couldn't sit still for that long, and they would have to anesthetize her. It wouldn't be worth the risk. Plus, the treatment wouldn't change."

One day a few weeks ago, a new hospice nurse came to see my mom. The new nurse gave my mother a spoon and a smaller bowl to see if she could feed herself. Much to everyone's surprise, she did. After months of being spoonfed, my mother used a spoon and fed herself.

A few days later, Laura, one of the regular nurses, tried to get my mother to walk. After months of being wheelchair bound, my mom is walking with assistance from a nurse. After my skiing accident, my quadriceps atrophied after not using them for two weeks. I feared my mother's leg muscles would be similar to mine after the accident--inert due to lack of use. Somehow, my mother's legs could handle walking. It sounds like they aren't that strong, but they are strong enough to stand and move with help.

I talked to my dad and Jack about my mother's miracle recovery. We suspect my mother had a small stroke or a TIA, and now she is bouncing back from that setback. When my grandfather had a stroke, he had speech and occupational therapy. My mother didn't have rehab for a variety of reasons. First, it was unlikely that she could have understood what was happening and could have participated. Second, they didn't know what happened, so they didn't know what to do to make her better. With her Alzheimer's, she couldn't articulate what was wrong in order to get the help she needed. Maybe she didn't want to eat for a few days because she didn't like the food. Maybe she had a stomachache, and couldn't say it. When she stopped eating, they decided to spoonfeed her. Unlike toddlers, once my mother was spoonfed, it became a one-way street. No one tried to get her to try to feed herself again. Most patients with Alzheimer's have a slow and gradual decline. Why would they assume that she would get better when that goes against the trend of the disease?

I find this fascinating, not just because my mother got better, but because the nature of assumptions. It wasn't until someone gave my mother a spoon again did they test if she could feed herself.

Underdoing It

Jack, the Boy and I went skiing Sunday with another family. The mom is recovering from an injury, as I am. Katrina and I spent all day on the green slopes where we learned to ski again while the boys went to the terrain park and practiced jumping. The husbands/dads skied black runs.

It was a good day. Katrina skis slower than me, if that is humanly possible. This was fine with me. I was glad not to be holding anyone back.

The best part of skiing again went unnoticed until Sunday: I was wearing ski boots, ski pants and a helmet in the lodge. In the handful of times I drove the Boy to ski, I sat in the lodge in my hiking boots and jeans, jealous of the other moms skiing. I don't think they noticed me, but I noticed them. How could I not notice the empty lodge in the morning filling at 11:30 with people coming in for an early lunch, staying packed until 1:30, and then having a slow flow of hot cocoa and coffee drinkers for the rest of the afternoon. 

I was happy to stay on the green runs Sunday mainly because my legs were tired from working out so much last week. I stretched myself on my weight lifting (150 pounds on the leg press) on Thursday, and paid for it on Friday and Saturday with sore and stiff legs. I am used to being flexible, and when I am stiff I feel out of place, not like myself. 

Now that I have started skiing, I am starting to take my workouts more seriously. I have a purpose, a reason to be in shape other than being in shape for its own sake. I feel like I need to workout, to lift weights, to do my home strengthening exercises regularly. Before, I had been doing my exercises, but I was underdoing it. I would stay in the safe zone, not pushing myself too hard fearing I'd get hurt or sore. Ironically, my extra workouts to get me into shape to ski have made me kind sore and weary, which makes me hesitant to ski. It keeps me conservative on the slopes, afraid to try anything too challenging, steep or bumpy. Even though I am skiing conservatively, I feel like I am on track to go on a ski vacation with the family in the future.

I've never been a slacker or an underachiever, or so I thought. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The workouts right after my surgery were hard and I needed to go slow. It was hard to judge when I was ready to start making things harder for myself, which is why I had a physical therapy team to push me along. I could have stopped going to physical therapy months ago, but I wanted to learn to run. I needed to push myself to do that. I wanted to become more agile, so they added agility exercises for me. I wanted to ski, so they tested my strength.

I had been underdoing my workouts for the past few months. Even though I was lifting weights and gaining strength, I wasn't lifting as much as I could. It took me skiing a few times to recognize that I could push myself harder than I had been. It wasn't that I was slacking as much as reaching a plateau. I needed a nudge, a push down the mountain, to get me to advance.

My New Trainer

My friend Carla read my blog about my needing a push to exercise. After she had read it, she sent me an email saying she would be my new trainer.

"I am your trainer asking if you did your exercises today," she asked.

"I did!" I replied. I had to after I wrote that blog post about it. Yesterday, I did my exercises while the Boy watched. He put down his phone to chat with me. I told him these were exercises to get me into shape for skiing, and he tried a few himself. Today, I ran and lifted weights, in case anyone was wondering.

I heard a story about who had a writing buddy who held her accountable for put words on paper. Every Friday, the first woman would send the second woman the updated chapters of her novel that she wrote that week. The second women always wrote back, "Good job! Keep up the good work!" The first completed a novel that was eventually published. It turns out the second woman skimmed the first woman's work, and thought she writing was weak, but she never said anything except "Good job! Keep up the good work!"

Now Carla is my workout accountability partner. Yay! Hopefully having someone to report to will keep me honest and inspired.

Last Physical Therapy Appointment (Or Not)

Yesterday, I went into what I thought would be my last physical therapy appointment for my knee with Evan. God forbid I have to go back into PT in the future for a bad back or shoulder, but if I need to go, I will go. I've seen first hand the miracles of physical therapy, and I am sold on its value to humankind.*

It has been a year since my surgery, and I've skied twice. Not once--twice. I had to prove it wasn't a fluke that I skied, and that I wasn't afraid so afraid that I would do it once and then say "I'm done." In fact, I am inspired to go to Whistler. They have the best green runs. The runs are long, and there are several runs off the same lift for variety.

I digress. When I walked into my appointment, I saw the same handful of receptionists I've seen almost every week--often twice a week--since January 2016. I told them "This is my last appointment!" They cheered and shared my joy at my completion. I was so confident it was going my last appointment, I almost pre-wrote this blog post.

When I saw Evan, I told him I've skied twice since I was last at physical therapy two weeks ago. He winced a little. "Skiing is the highest risk activity of tearing your ACL. You have a big lever on your foot that can twist your knee." I know.

He had me repeat the jumping tests to test my leg strength. I passed the triple jump and the triple cross jump. For both of those tests, my injured leg was 95% and 96% of my healthy leg. The goal to return to sports is 90%. My problem was with the single jump. There, I was only 77%. While my single jump was better than my previous test a few weeks earlier, it wasn't close to 90%.

At my last appointment, Evan commented that this was an unusual set of jumping results. Most people are closest on the single jump, and further on the triple jumps.

"This tells me your balance is good because triple jumps require balance. The lower percentage on the single jumps tells me you need more strength. I wouldn't let you play soccer yet. I might let you go back to practice at a low level, but you aren't game ready."

I don't play soccer, so cool, right? I changed the subject. "What do I need to do to maintain my leg, so I'll be ready to ski?" I asked.

"I've been giving you skiing maintenance exercises all along," he said, smiling. "That was the goal." This was good news. I wouldn't have to start anything new--I would just have to maintain.

"I would like to see your strength improve, though," Evan said. "You really need to work on that."

"Do I need another appointment, or am I done?" I asked. My tone and expression showed that I hoped I was done. I don't know why I so badly wanted to be done considering I don't mind it. I figured my goal was to ski, and I skied; therefore, I should be done.

And yet... I have a friend, Daphne, who stopped physical therapy after a few months after she tore her ACL. She could walk, so she thought she was fine. She went cross country skiing a few weeks ago, and her injured leg pooped out and gave up. It was a cautionary tale for me. Not having a fully functional leg scares the crap out of me. After I started running, I started using physical therapy more as training to get me in shape for skiing, dancing, yoga, running and whatnot. The Sports Medicine clinic's goal is to return people to sports, not just walk without a limp.

"It is your choice," Evan said. "If you think you can build up the strength on your own, you are done. If you need the pressure of not disappointing me, then you probably need another appointment."

Dang. After a year of working with me, Evan knows me too well. He knows I need the push, the check-in, the reporting back to authority. While I waffled, he gave me a new printout of my exercises.

I am not a person who is naturally or intrinsically motivated to be physically fit. I don't dislike exercise, but I was never a person to stand in front of a mirror and admire my tight buns and buff legs, or likewise to dismay at my flabby arms. I don't think I'd be comfortable if I were so overweight it impacted my ability to participate in activities of daily living, but I am not uncomfortable settling into my middle-aged spread. I'd rather read a book or work on a project than exercise. I'd rather eat good food than being hungry all of the time. Would I be happier if I were in better shape? Possibly, but I am not going to sacrifice chocolate for it or spend all of my free time at the gym. I am happy living inside my head.

Which is all why I need a second physical therapy appointment. I wouldn't do it on my own. Now, I do barely enough. I can make it to the YMCA to run, bike and use the elliptical several times a week, but doing my home exercises every other day becomes once a week if that.

So I have another appointment in a month. In the meantime, I will have to adjust to keeping up with these exercises, doing it on my own without a weekly or every other week check-in, where I am the only person who knows if I am doing my exercises or not.

When I was a kid, I took ballet classes. I loved the flow that would come after a long workout. I loved moving my body to the music. I remember one dance class when I was about ten years old, where I asked myself if I could dance forever, make it my job. Did I want to pursue being a professional dancer? It was as if the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter was placed on my head. Instead of asking which house I wanted to be in, it asked did I love dance enough to do it more than anything else?

The answer was no. Even though I loved it, I wondered how I could live an intellectual life and be a dancer. I couldn't imagine my life without going to college, without having a strong life of the mind. Even though now I daydream about being a professional dancer, I don't think I would have traded away my college degree for going to ballet school.

This question I asked myself when I was ten years old is relevant to me now. I know myself well enough that I'd rather sit down and pound out a blog post before I would choose to exercise. That when I am hungry, I'd rather eat than workout beforehand. Yet, I know keeping my knee in shape is a priority. Not being able to move would also be untenable. Given the choice of exercising when my knee is "good enough" and reading a book, I'd probably pick the book nine times out of ten.

So I am going back to physical therapy in a month. I know I need to do it, but I know myself that I need someone to hold me accountable for myself until I can develop the habit to do it myself.

* I can't say mankind. I am feeling down on the patriarchy lately.

Skiing!!! Part 3

I celebrated the one year anniversary of my knee surgery by skiing yesterday.

Meh.

I am now at the point where I have returned to being a mediocre beginner. In fairness, I am better than a beginner, but I feel like one as I am barely getting off the green runs.

Yesterday, we drove to Snoqualmie. Overnight, it snowed six inches, and it was still snowing when we drove to the mountain. The Washington Department of Transportation issued a "chains required except on all-wheel drive" announcement for traveling over the pass. Traffic was slow and treacherous. Claire Adele had just gotten back from an out of town trip, and she skipped skiing to sleep in. I feared we were going to die in a collision and Claire Adele would be an orphan. I thought about texting my friend Carla with Claire Adele's contact information in case we were killed. We survived, but I was rattled when we arrived.

I started on Little Thunder. The six to eight inches of new snow had not been groomed. Instead of corduroy, this run was reasonably packed down powder. The other runs were chopped up powder. I remember my surgeon telling me to do cruisers, whatever is easiest for me. I had Jack telling me these conditions were fine, and I've skied in worse conditions. "It is better than skiing on ice," he said. True, but this was hard. I vacillated between thinking "I am perfectly capable of doing this" and "I shouldn't be doing this." It sucked.

When I got in my quagmire, I thought about how much weight I lifted on the leg press (140 pounds on top of my own weight) at the YMCA Friday. "My legs are strong" became my new mantra as I went down the mountain.

I was feeling good, and Jack suggested we try a blue run. I was feeling confident on Little Thunder and thought why not. On Pacific Crest, I slogged through the moguls that came from the ungroomed powder. "Avoid bumps," I heard my surgeon say. It wasn't like I was seeking out the moguls--they were just there. I was fine, but it took a ton of concentration.

After lunch, I did a few runs on Little Thunder. The snow was perfect, but it was getting boring. I wanted to try something harder, so we went to a different green run. Jack and I crossed half of the mountain through ungroomed powder. I can imagine the unpleasant expression on Evan's face if he were to see me plowing through the field in snow over my boots.

We made it to the other green run. The snow was choppy, and there were more advanced beginners here. I was at the top of the run when a twelve-year-old boy barreling straight down the hill in a wide parallel stance clipped the back of my skis, and I fell. Thankfully, it was not a grand crash--just a little tip over after losing my balance. While I was extremely grateful I wasn't injured, I couldn't figure out how to stand back up while wearing the brace. Jack was already at the bottom of the hill, otherwise, I wold have asked for a hand up. I took my skis off, and in the powder, I couldn't get them back on. Finally, I asked two adults to help me. After ten minutes, I made it to the bottom. I was a little rattled, but I was okay.

The hard part now is pacing myself. Normally, I don't mind challenging myself. I had to challenge myself with physical therapy. Now, I am supposed to take it easy. How easy is too easy versus easy enough?

Skiing!!! Part II

This isn't a joke like my blog post from in December when I said I went skiing when I really didn't. This time it is real, as noted by the picture of my snow covered skis. As my kids might say, this time, the shit is real.

I have a friend who says when we are stuck in middle age, we need to think about doing things that make us proud of ourselves. In some ways, it makes obvious sense: don't do things you will be ashamed of. In other ways, it seems like an odd thing to think about middle age. Do we really need to worry about self-esteem? Isn't self-esteem for kids? As I got off the ski lift yesterday for the first time in more than a year, I found a new mantra: I am proud of myself.

It was President's Day. I didn't want to ski Sunday because I feared there might be regularly scheduled lessons and I didn't want to share the bunny hill with 150 kids learning to ski or snowboard for the first time. No thanks. Monday was quiet. While I was getting my brace on, Jack bought me a lift ticket. I told him to get me a beginner ticket--only good for green runs--, but he got me a full lift ticket which was about $20 more expensive. He was more optimistic than I was. I felt like a nervous bride with a supportive father: I knew I could back out at any time. Even though I had my skis, my brace and everything else, I could still bail if I felt like it.

I thought I'd start slow on the Magic Carpet. When I saw the long line, I almost skipped it and went straight to the chairlift. Jack said, "You had better try this first."

I had never been on a Magic Carpet before. When I learned to ski back in 7th grade, we side-stepped up the hill to start. After that, we would take tow ropes up the beginner hill. The guy at the top of the Magic Carpet looked at me funny. I was the only person on the Magic Carpet not wearing rental skis who wasn't accompanying a small child. 

The Magic Carpet isn't that easy. It is easier than a tow rope, which is harder than a chairlift. Tow ropes require timing, balance and the ability to keep your skis in the tracks. If you can make it up a hill on a tow rope, you probably are coordinated enough to make it down. The Magic Carpet requires balance. On a chairlift, you at least get to sit. 

When I got to the top of the Magic Carpet, I was worried I'd have to dodge fallen snowboarders or obstinate preschoolers who were tired, hungry, and cold, or lost from their group. I turned left to avoid a dozen seated beginning snowboarders sitting on the right side of the carpet. I took off my goggles and wiped off the condensation three times before making the thirty-yard trek to the bottom. My pizza wedge was awesome. I completely avoided facing my body down the fall line, only pointing myself in the direction I was heading. 

"You've done Dave Murray Downhill!" Jack cheered me on, reminding me of the long, black run I've done at Whistler. "Ready for Little Thunder?" Nope. One more time on the Magic Carpet. As I was going downhill, I wondered if there was a way I could practice skiing without actually skiing. Does such a thing exist?

As Jack and I were waiting in line, we saw a little girl with a snowboard crying, "Daddy, no no! Don't make me go!" She pleading, not whining. I guessed that dad was a big snowboarder, and wanted his daughter to learn so they could spend every weekend on the slopes.

"That's the way to instill a lifelong love of the sport," Jack said sarcastically. Jack knows better than to drag an unwilling kid up a mountain.

"That kid needs some hot chocolate," I said. 

I got on the ski lift just fine. Even more remarkable was when I got off of it. My muscle memory which failed me terribly on the Magic Carpet fabulous when I got off the lift. I was careful, but my skis led me to the right place, and I was able to turn and go exactly where I wanted to go. I was able to dodge a fallen snowboarder and a few very slow skiers who didn't clear the offload area fast enough. I was surprised that auto-pilot kicked in so easily. It was as if my subconscious told my conscious to shut up and let it handle getting off the lift. Later Jack told me he was worried that I might freak out at the top of the chair lift, not get off, and ride back down. He wanted me to try to Magic Carpet first to get my ski legs back.

At the top of Little Thunder, I cleared the condensation from my goggles three times, stalling. Once I started down the hill, I started to cry. Why was I up here? What was the point? What was I trying to prove? Did I really need to do this, even though I had been going to physical therapy for a year for this moment? It was too late to change my mind. I already at the altar and had said "I do" to the mountain. I was committed to getting down not via Ski Patrol on a sled. As I went down, I started my mantra for the day "I am proud of myself." I smiled, and I really was proud of myself.

The first turn was torture. I would have to bear most of my weight on one leg. My mind regressed to when I was a 7th grader at Perry Middle School on the Wednesday night ski bus to Snow Trails, and we learned to turn by lifting one leg off the ground. My brain wasn't so sure my body could handle it, but my legs were fine even with the not insignificant additional weight of the ski boots and skis.

I made a few turns, and relaxed. I looked crappy compared to old form when I could fly down the runs off the 7th Heaven Express, but I shouldn't compare my current self to my old one, for better or worse. My old self a year ago was getting ready for surgery. My old self last spring couldn't ride a bike on the road. My old self last fall couldn't run.

I made it down. And I wanted to do it again. After the fourth time, I remembered to face down the fall line. I practiced planting my poles to turn, even though the terrain wasn't steep enough to warrant that much effort. It snowed a few inches while we there, so the snow on the slope was perfectly soft and fresh. The icy patches that were there in the morning were gone before lunch.

Jack took this picture of me at the bottom--and very flat part--of the run.

By the end of the day, I was having fun. I remembered why I liked to ski and was grateful for all of the work I did for the past year to bring me back. Jack wanted me to try a blue run, but I wasn't mentally ready. I remembered my orthopedic surgeon telling me to stick to the cruisers, whatever a cruiser means to me. No moguls, no ungroomed runs. Even though I was wearing my brace, I didn't want to tempt the ACL protection gods. 

There is some bittersweetness in my return to the mountain. In the past two seasons, my kids have gotten significantly better than me. The Boy loves his terrain "steep and deep." When the powder is packed down, he is in the terrain park, practicing jumping, 360 turns and skiing backward. Claire Adele loves Alpental, a place for advanced skiers. Jack has learned how to ski there, too. While I was re-learning to walk, they were on the double blacks. I will probably never ski the same runs with them again except when they are humoring mom. 

I went back to my mantra. "I am proud of myself." Someday, I can be the grandma who takes the little ones on the Magic Carpet, hangs with them on the green runs, and buys them hot chocolate when they get too cold, while their parents shred the gnar on the double blacks.

Ski Brace

Thursday afternoon, I got a ski brace. You'd think this would have made my blog nano-seconds after I got it, with me typing on my phone in the Sports Medicine parking garage. I would post a picture of me wearing the brace, but my leg looks like an ice cream cone with a scoop of cottage cheese on top.

"Most legs have soft tissue at the top," said Brian, the brace guy, as I complained about my flabby upper thigh.

Yes, the brace was--and is--awesome. When I put it on, I felt like the bionic woman. I was a little worried I wouldn't like it because it is a brace and I wore a brace for many weeks after I initially tore my ACL and weeks after my surgery. That brace was a big clunky monster. This one is light and sleek and designed for sports.

"People complain all of the time that the post-surgical brace slides down their leg too much," said Brian. "Those braces are designed to keep your leg immobilized. This brace is designed to help you move."

I walked around with the brace in the office. For the first time in more than a year, my left did not feel inferior to my right. It was amazing. I had a friend who tore her ACL around the same time I did. She said she went cross country skiing and went downhill.

"My leg started to give out," she said. "It just gave up."

I told that story to Brian, the brace guy. "The brace will give you stability, and stability will give you strength."

That makes sense.

"The brace is really kind of a placebo," he continued. "It isn't going to make you stronger, but it will make you feel more secure."

Brain's comments made me think about what Evan said the last time I saw him. The body and the brain love symmetry. When the brain doesn't sense symmetry, it gives the body a "ping" saying something isn't right. When I wear the brace, my brain doesn't give me the "ping," the alert that says "Danger! Avoid using this leg!" This brace brings me a sense of symmetry. Even if it isn't 100% real, it is close enough, and it should work.

Before I hit the slopes, I am supposed to wear the brace walking around to break it in. I wore it out of the office Thursday and wore it Saturday and today. It does take a while to get it on and perfectly adjusted. Unlike my surgical brace, this one needs all new adjustments each time I put it on. It takes practice to get it on correctly each time.

While I was thrilled when I first wore the brace, I am growing nervous about skiing. It is one thing to wear the brace while walking the dog, it will be another to wear it while I am getting on and off the chair lift. I am considering just riding the magic carpet the first time I go out, maybe not even making it to the chair lift.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

Symmetry and a Brace

I met with my orthopedic surgeon yesterday morning, followed by physical therapy. I sat on the exam table, and he picked up his my foot and shook it about.

"That is a strong leg," he told the medical student while nodding at me. "It seems stable. How do you feel?"

"I feel stronger than I did before the accident," I said. This is probably the strongest my leg has been since before I had the Boy.

"I think you can ski at the end of this season," he said. I didn't even ask. He volunteered it. "Stick to the cruisers and the groomers. No moguls, no black diamonds. Easy stuff."

"What about a brace?" I asked.

"It wouldn't make you bulletproof, but it will help with stability," he said. "Stick to easy runs where you have little chance of falling."

"Should I take a lesson before I go back out?"

He looked at me funny. "How good of a skier were you before?" he asked as if I were a total hack. I paused, and he replied, "I don't think you need a lesson." I thinking a lesson would be like a different version of the physical therapy I've been to in the past year. I'll wait and see.

After my appointment, I went to see Evan for physical therapy. I told him I am feeling fine, but I can still "feel my knee," whatever that means.

"Your brain expects symmetry," Evan said. "When something is off, it sends a message, and your brain starts paying attention. Changes in symmetry alert your brain to possible injury or illness. You will probably keep feeling this until your leg gets all of its strength back."

That explains a lot. It also means I have more work to do. I need to keep lifting weights, stretching, running, and doing the elliptical.

One of the tests for me to ski is to do a jumping test and see if my left leg is close to as strong as my right leg. At home, I put tape on the floor after each jump so I can ballpark if I am close or not. Monday, I jumped further with my left than my right. It was a miracle. I was hoping I would do as well in physical therapy where it counts. Jumping in my kitchen is like saying I can run a four-minute mile while on the jogging path, and then actually doing it in front of real judges with stopwatches and an accurately measured mile. One is not real, and one is. Practice is necessary, but performance counts.

I went to lift weights while he calculated my percentages. "You are at 92% for the triple jump and 88% for the side jumps." This was very good news. It means I am within range of skiing again.

After Evan, I met with the brace guy to get measured for a skiing brace. I am freaking out as I write this. I was measured for a skiing brace.

"What if I gain or lose weight?" I asked. "Will it still fit?"

"There is a two-inch margin so you will be fine," he said. "If you build more muscle, the brace will fit better." I am assuming he meant that the brace squishes and slides against pudginess.

"When will it be ready?" I asked. I was stalling, thinking maybe I could wait a week or a month or year or two to think about if I really wanted to ski again.

"Two weeks," he said. "Come in after your next physical therapy appointment, and you can try on the brace, and we can make all of the adjustments."

Wow. As the Boy would say, the shit is getting real. Do I really want to ski again? To get back on the horse that bucked me off, kicked me to the ground and tore my ACL? Am I crazy? I can hear my dad tease me when I was a kid and had to make a decision: "Do you really really really really really want to do this?" It is one thing to think about skiing in the distant future, and another thing to think about skiing in five weeks.

I told the Boy during dinner that I can ski this season, and he gave me a high five. Later that night, he asked me again if I was really going to try to ski in March. The Boy has a teenage memory, which means he is highly annoyed if he is told anything twice.

"Really?" he said. "You'll be skiing this year?" double-checking to make sure he heard right and wasn't hallucinating.

"It depends on the snow, but I am going to try," I said. Am I going on auto-pilot, skiing just because it is a goal, something to mark off the list in my recovery so I can say that I am done, healed, finished? Do I need an ending, closure, and is getting back on the mountain it? What about cross-country skiing or snow-shoeing? Those are snow sports that could substitute for skiing like whitefish and red dye stands in from crab sometimes. I didn't ask those questions when Don measured my thigh.

This is getting real.

Yoga

This Thursday, I went back to yoga for the first time since I tore my ACL more than a year ago. My friend, Karb, teaches yoga in her home. I was signed up for her class last winter but had to cancel after my skiing accident.

This was the hardest yoga class I have ever been to. I had always thought I had been flexible, but I never realized how much that was true until I became inflexible. I could have gone back to yoga earlier, that wasn’t the reason I stalled in going back. Instead, I was too busy working on my cardio and strength that I didn’t have time for yoga and still ride the exercise bike forty-five minutes a day.

Before when I did yoga, I never felt much strain on my muscles except during the endurance poses. I could hold the plank pose for fifteen seconds without my body talking back. After a minute or two, my arms, back, and belly would ask when they could stop. Other than that, I was fine. Now, child’s pose takes work, and that is an easy, relaxing, chill position you are supposed to take when you are tired from holding Downward Dog. The easiest pose is Corpse pose, where you pretend you are dead.

It wasn’t just my injured leg that was a problem, it was the rest of me. My left leg was stronger than it was before. I could hold a one-legged standing pose for longer than I could before I tore my ACL. What surprised me was my arms got tired in Downward Dog. This was unusual. 

I realized I had become lopsided since my injury, and not only between the right side of my body and the left, but between my legs and everything else: my back, arms, and core. Now is the time to regain balance between the rest of my body and my legs.

It is interesting to look back on an injury and see repercussions that we didn't know were there. I suppose that is true for other parts of life, not just the physical part. I became more introverted, sitting at home reading books and quilting instead of socializing. I exercised alone, not going to yoga classes or walking Green Lake with a friend. As I've been healing, my social life and my inner life have been rebalancing, too. After the injury, I pulled into my head and had to learn to come back out.

Scene of the Accident

I took the Boy and one of his friends skiing today at Silver Fir, the place where I tore my ACL a little more than a year ago. I could have hooked the Boy up with a different friend whose dad was driving up, but the Boy had made plans with this other friend to ski today. These two boys talked amongst themselves and decided they could sucker one of out of four of their parents to drive them to the mountain. Since the friend’s parents are out of town and Jack was working, I drew the short straw and got to drive. (I didn't know I was the only one drawing a straw.) I could be sitting at home, drinking tea while working on a jigsaw puzzle or finishing a quilt.

Not that I mind sitting in the ski lodge. Skiing is a better use of the Boy’s time and a small investment in his mental health. Otherwise, he’d park his butt on the couch and surf the internet for hours. Skiing is nature and exercise therapy, plus social hour. It gives the teenage boy brain all sort of controlled experiences—the need for speed, taking risks, trying new and dangerous things, plus part of being part of a group of like-minded boys.

The last time I was at Silver Fir, I was dragged down the hill in a sled, unable to stand without my leg buckling. I am sitting in the lodge, looking at the lift line. I see the bench where I tried to stand after the Ski Patrol brought me to the bottom. The bottom of the hill looks steeper than I remember. I had thought the bottom of the Silver Fir run was practically flat. Now it looks too steep.

When we first arrived at the Silver Fir parking lot, I was excited, as excited as I might have been if I were skiing myself. I am glad I wasn’t tempted to bring my own skis today, but being here inspires me to try on my boots when I get home and practice walking around in the heavy footwear.

I am inspired to continue my physical therapy and work on my strength. In some ways, my legs feel stronger now than they have in the past ten years, perhaps since I’ve had kids. I might have had some residual strength in my thighs after Claire Adele was born. Before I had kids, Jack and I would bicycle as a hobby, taking long-distance rides. Two years ago, we brought our bikes to Victoria, British Columbia, and rode from the town up the Galloping Goose Trail to Sook. My legs were in decent shape after that weekend.

Most importantly, this trip to Silver Fir inspires me to try on my ski pants, the scariest part of starting ski season: will they fit, or will I need to go up a size?

I was talking to the boy and his friend that I might be psychologically if not physically ready to ski in the next month. “I won’t do Silver Fir as my first run,” I said. “I’ll probably want to start at Holiday or at West. Maybe I’ll even start on the magic carpet before I ride a lift.” The subtext of this conversation was when I start again, I will not be on the most challenging parts of the mountain. He should be glad I am driving him up now, and gracious when I start skiing again.

“Of course,” said the Boy. He seemed to understand.

The bench by the ski rack was where they brought the sled when I came down the mountain.

Parents' Voices v. Kids' Voices

I am taking a novel writing class at the Hugo House taught by Sonora Jha. She has an older son, and she says his comments haunt her now instead of her parents' words. As my kids would say, #relatable. When I was younger, I would hang on the words of my mom. Now, I hang on to the words of my daughter. When my mother would harangue me, I would often bite my tongue and not respond to her. Instead, I would go off and complain to my father, friends, and brother about how I was wronged.

Last week, Claire-Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures. As much I as I enjoyed taking the time to see the movie with her, there were times that I was annoyed at her rudeness towards me. We were running a little bit late as I was talking to my father right before we left. There was a power outage, and Claire-Adele ran to Starbucks to get lunch, only to find their power was out, too, and were not serving food.

We got to the theater after that drama, and I am jogging up the steps, a major accomplishment for me considering that last year at the same time I was learning to walk without a brace or crutch. Jogging and going upstairs were out of the question, let alone trying them together.

"You are the most embarrassing person in the world!" Claire-Adele scolded me as I moved quickly up the stairs. She didn't consider yelling at me in the middle of a crowded movie theater embarrassing, but whatever. I am sure she didn't want to be seen with me at all, but none of her friends wanted to see this movie.

After we had found our seats, Claire-Adele wanted some popcorn because she missed lunch.

"Can you get it for me? I want to see the previews," she said. After being told I was the most embarrassing person in the world two minutes earlier, I told her to get her own popcorn. I gave her money, but I had no desire to stand in line and miss the previews for someone who had been rude to me.

This Christmas, she told the family that she had no plans of coming back to visit after she graduates from college during the holidays. Of course, she wants to be invited on vacations, but God forbid she has to spend a holiday with us.

If another friend talked to me like this, I'd probably drop them--unfriend them on Facebook, block their phone number, etc. Instead, she is my daughter. I don't have the luxury of writing her off. This weekend, I went to visit my dad and my mom in Ohio. I got home around 11:00 p.m. last night, and the kids were in bed. This morning, Claire Adele was sniffling, and I asked how she was doing.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she yelled. "Why do you think there is something wrong with me?"

Good morning to you, too, I should have said. Later, I went to wake up the Boy. As I passed her room, she asked me for the fabric scissors.

"Why do you need them?" I asked.

"To cut my head off," she said as she rolled her eyes. "I need them to cut fabric. Can you get them for me?" She had blue fleece spread out over her floor. She is part of a group that is making blankets for homeless men and women.

"I need to get your brother up, and then I can get them," I replied.

When I went to get the Boy, he was excited to see me. "How was your trip?" he asked. I told him, and we talked about how his friend got his remote control airplane out of a tree. This was big news, as the plane had been stuck forty feet up in a Port Orford cedar since the end of winter break.

"Are you going to get me the scissors?" Claire-Adele barked. "I need the scissors."

"Shut up," I said frustrated with this person who has said nothing nice to me in weeks. "I am talking to your brother." I was so tired of the world revolving around her. "You are interrupting my conversation. Just wait."

"You know," she said. "You say I am rude to you but spoiler alert -- you are ruder to me."

I could let those words haunt me, like the words of my mother stuck with me as a kid. Instead, I look at the millions of micro-aggressions and insults she has hurled at me for the past few years. I know I am the grown-up here and she is the kid. I should be the example of the right way to behave.

Yet, it is so hurtful to be constantly told how wrong and awful and embarrassing I am, and I need to respond. How is it that I am rude when I call my daughter on her rudeness to me? Why? I wish I had Michelle Obama's grace of "When they go low, we go high." This is different. I am living with this lowness, and it is in my face when I wake up, when she comes home from school and before she goes to bed. She directs her sass at not just me, but to her brother as well. I shouldn't defend him because that makes him look defenseless. She has no awareness of the link between yelling at her brother and then his yelling back at her.

"Dad didn't yell at us all weekend," she said after I told her to shut-up. Argh. Jack was probably in "Distracted Parent Mode" all weekend, squeezing in work, looking at his phone, and generally ignoring the kids. He probably didn't notice them enough to yell at them.

"Where is my water bottle? I've been looking for it for two days!" Claire Adele continued to rant.

"I put it in the drawer with the other water bottles. It was in the dishwasher. You should yell at your dad about that. I wasn't home this weekend," I said. She glared at me and stomped away.

Claire Adele will be leaving for college in a year and a half. I've talked to other parents about life as an empty nester. I've always imagined it being so hard and lonely. I always wondered how moms coped with the person they raised for eighteen years leaves to go off on their own. Why aren't all of these women crying and crying? Why aren't there support groups for moms when their kids go to college and leave home? When Claire-Adele was six, I talked to one mom who had what I thought was a nice and lovely daughter say she was sad for about a day when her daughter left for school, and then she was fine. I tried to push out of my mind how I'd feel when Claire Adele leaves the house, my firstborn, my baby. I couldn't imagine.

Now I get it. Claire Adele needs to leave me as much as I need her to leave. We need a separation, time apart. Hopefully, someday, we can be friendly to each other. She might need to push me away to make her own departure easier for all of us. She is succeeding, I have to say. She is succeeding.