Chickenminnie’s Weblog

It is week three of working from home during the Covid-19 crisis and like anyone with any smarts I am hunkered down at home with my little tabby cat as the world goes mad around me. The people who care mightily for the professionals on the front are staying in and giving them a chance to work their magic against a virulent enemy they cannot see and don’t understand a great deal about. I want to be part of the solution not part of the problem and do my best to offset the crowd that thinks this is some sort of joke; may karma and Darwin have the last word with them. The entire world does not shut down for a hoax, people.

It is of no use to speculate how many more weeks of isolation we will need to practice; schools are closed for at least three more weeks which means I will be confined to my pleasant but uncharacteristically quiet home office for at least that long. I am looped in with my colleagues via collaboration apps and email but there is nothing like the banter between members of a team who are responsible for a network with a lot of moving parts; we do the best we can and are understanding of the personal stresses this pandemic has brought upon everyone. To say that I am grateful to still have a job would be an understatement given the fact that few sectors have been spared job decimation, many of which will not come back.

My natural gravitation toward solitude has worked to my advantage and while I miss being able to go to the local watering hole and my weekly trivia nights, being home alone is not much of a hardship. I have a million things to do and boredom is not something I experience very much but there is a persistent and restless wish to be able to do something to help and it is enormously frustrating to realize that probably the best thing I can do is nothing. Fabric masks have suddenly become all the rage so I have been leveraging my fantastic sewing skills and fabric stash to make as many as I can for friends and family who want them; it has helped dispel some of the helplessness I feel. Obtaining elastic for ear loops has proven somewhat challenging and I am reminded of my mom’s stories from her childhood at the end of WWII; she and her sisters stood in line for all sorts of things, a concept I had difficulty wrapping my head around until recently.

Similar to my mom’s wartime experience, food planning and acquisition has become fraught with logistical management; going to a grocery store can be a dangerous vector for picking up the virus and post-shopping sanitation is a consuming task.  Because of this I try to plan for ten to fourteen days of meals which is made somewhat more interesting by being a vegetarian and the random availability of foodstuffs caused by the devastation to our supply chain. Gone are the days of opening the refrigerator and deciding what’s for dinner on the fly; every meal is calculated to make use of produce that needs to be used before it spoils and with an eye toward making the most of leftovers. Once again I count myself extremely fortunate to be living in an area with an abundance of grocery stores; my heart goes out to people who deal with food insecurity on a daily basis. This pandemic must be hell for them.

Actually, this pandemic is hell for a lot of people and while it has taken its toll on me emotionally and presented some challenges I still have a reasonably secure job that does not force me to interact with the public on a daily basis. I have health insurance and sick leave so if I become ill I am not going to lose my home or have to make a choice between going to work sick or getting well. I am not a child whose only decent meal comes from a school breakfast and lunch program or a parent who is confronted with homeschooling their kid without adequate broadband or hardware. And I am not quarantined with an abuser with no end in sight to the isolation.

I am one of the lucky ones. If this crisis has shown us anything as a country it is that the existing disparity between the haves and have-nots makes us look small, weak and very far down on the list of desirable places to live. Working in education for more years than I care to think about has given me a front row seat for this disgusting inequity and I hope this crisis creates a situation we can no longer look away from as a society. I plan to emerge from this pandemic smarter, stronger and more compassionate and I hope my country does too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6igQ-nacfU

Growing up on a farm in upstate New York I had a ring side seat for gun ownership and as a result am well versed in how to clean, load and use a gun safely.  An appropriately sized firearm was an essential tool in the farm life survival collection; there was no reverence or hero worship for the household gun, but rather a deep and abiding respect for its ability to end a life and the two household guns lived in the tack room with the ammunition in a location known only to my parents. On the farm it would be considered a cruelty to be unable to quickly and humanely end a severely injured or suffering animal’s life or to kill a rabid animal.  The incredible amount of irony in that combination of killing and compassion occupies a big part in the Venn diagram of gun ownership as it should.

My grandfather was an avid sportsman who had a massive collection of custom and specialty guns for all manner of sporting much of which was to gather food and as kids we ate all sorts of fowl and game gathered by grandpa. Someone once asked him why he had no automatic or semi-automatic weapons and he quipped, “I want to hunt, not make hamburger”. He went on to explain that he felt that automatic and semi-automatic weapons belonged squarely in the wheelhouse of military and police personnel…the professionals. “They are ugly and designed to kill people, not dinner” said he. Perhaps the fact that he was a prominent area surgeon colored his opinion; I know that some of his younger colleagues who were MASH doctors returning from Korea influenced him a great deal after describing the carnage these weapons can cause. So no, I don’t think they should be available to average citizens because the use case is nothing other than nefarious.

In case you are wondering, I get the American gun culture thing but somewhere along the line it moved away from the pride of quiet responsibility for such a potentially fearsome thing to a grotesque (cult)ure of power acquisition, paranoia and personal insecurity.  Clearly  as a society we can no longer handle the parameters for gun ownership set forth by our forefathers and by responsible society.  As a country girl I had more than my share of boyfriends with gun racks in the back windows of their pickup trucks but even at seventeen I knew a guy with an AK47 was nothing short of creepy.

One month ago today I was sporting a giant band-aid, using a walker and navigating the labyrinth of pain medications I was given to get me through the post-surgical insanity of a total knee replacement.  Fast forward a month later and it’s a pretty stark contrast to accomplishing my first walking-intensive outing to a car show downtown with an accommodating friend on nothing but Tylenol and walking without a cane. Dealing with a busted elevator and doing a bunch of steps down into the arena ended up being no big deal and I was stunned by how good I felt. My life had been consumed by worries about how long I would have to walk to pretty much anywhere so having that consideration become a non-issue is life changing.

I’m returning to work half days next week to give me ice and elevation time and to keep up an aggressive physical therapy schedule. PT is tough and my therapist and I are both aware of the finite window of scar tissue vs flexibility so we are in the home stretch when it comes to how much I will get back. I’m pleased to report that I have nailed the straightening part of the program which assures that I will use the correct working parts of the implant and I won’t look dumb in tights. Now comes the flexion which will dictate how deep I can squat, whether or not I can do a Sukhasana in yoga or straddle my partner. I don’t get along well with limitations so while flexion involves pain and requires more repetition than extension because I’m working against swelling and quads that have pretty much lost their minds as a result of being cut into, I am picking away at it and torturing myself on days when I don’t have formal physical therapy.  A new gym I am using has six rowing machines, a couple leg press machines and TRX straps galore so I’ve been working on my own little rehab routine.

It’s hard to believe that a little over a month ago I was in absolute agony and waiting for this to be behind me and I am amazed that the stuff that’s left is entirely mental. There are no more drugs to keep track of and I don’t need to use anything to assist my walking so it’s all about working through the pain of getting my mobility to match the other leg and learning how to break down the old muscle memory that favored my painful knee and made me walk badly. Gait is everything now and requires tremendous concentration but it’s a worthy exercise and I’m grateful as hell for the chance to stride all over the place again. New knee, new me.

It has been an entire week since my knee replacement surgery and while many of the experiences and observations I had last time are the same there are quite a few differences. In spite of the fact that I had some serious reservations about opting to do the surgery as an out-patient I’m glad I did.

Same day service meant rethinking my choice of anaesthesia and instead of undergoing general anaesthesia I opted for a spinal instead. I was completely asleep during the cutting and drilling but waking up from a spinal was free of the usual nausea and debilitating loopiness that just seems to hang on for days. A friend who had a spinal for some arthroscopic surgery said it was like waking up from a nap, a claim I regarded suspiciously but she was absolutely correct. In Recovery, rather than waiting for me to hurl a nurse cheerfully gave me a cup of ice chips. Bliss!

The other item of great concern was managing the inevitable pain. Total knee replacements hurt. A lot. With the last knee I spent four days in the hospital having my pain managed for me; oxycontin, oxycodone and morphine were administered by nurses and unless I was feeling especially awful I didn’t have to pay much attention. In preparation for going home the excellent staff at OrthoNY prescribed Celebrex, Tramadol and oxycodone ahead of time so I had everything ready and no one had to make a frantic trip to the pharmacy.  I was given a very specific sheet on what to take when and the meds were treated a bit like a ladder with oxycodone being on the top. Celebrex was a given as it was used to control the swelling, followed by extra strength Tylenol and Tramadol; oxycodone was for any pain the lower rungs on the ladder didn’t take care of and after three days I was able to eliminate the top rung completely. I’m pretty sure I will never understand the recreational appeal of opiates.

The bandage covering my staples is the same Aquacel bandage I had last time, a high-tech affair that allows me to shower but there seems to be vastly less bruising this time around and remarkably less numbness. I’m hoping this will result in fewer “phantom pains” caused by reprogramming nerve endings which can be powerful enough to blast through any pain meds and awaken me from a deep sleep.

My health insurance coverage changed a couple years ago and did not include in-home physical therapy for the first two weeks so I used the little exercise sheet I was sent home with and an app for my phone called Orthophysical which actually has the ability to measure my extension and flexion. Eager to map the challenge, my torture started in earnest and by the time I went to outside physical therapy on day five my new PT Don pronounced that I was already half way there.

One thing the two surgeries have in common is the immediate relief from the horrendous, limiting knee pain I was experiencing. In both cases the very first time I stood on my new titanium parts I knew I had been given a wonderful new opportunity to use my body the way it was meant to be used making all the post-surgical pain worth it.

Color me grateful.

In a few days I will surrender myself to the competent hands of one of the best knee replacement doctors in the capital district in an effort to rid myself of the pain in my left knee which has been plaguing me for a couple years. In similar fashion to its sibling four years ago I am fresh out of that wonderful commodity known as cartilage on the left and have decided to get it taken care of; years and years as a farm kid jumping off countless pickup trucks, horses and hay wagons have taken their toll. Limping around Australia and missing out on some amazing hikes along with climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge made me realize it was a quality of life issue and I began to plan for the best time to be out of commission. Ideally the heavy garden work will be over next week and I have some time before I have to shovel snow so early October seemed to be my best bet or wait until spring which had zero appeal. Another winter of being unable to snowshoe because of knee pain? No thank you. I am sick to death of fretting about having to walk somewhere far, doing the lawn in stages and having my knee balk at my beloved spin class.

Much of the mental work of being a single girl who is undergoing fairly major surgery is similar to last time but this time I am undertaking a Total Knee Replacement as an out-patient. You read that correctly. In and out the same day, and while I am pleased to be a healthy enough candidate for such a thing I’m concerned about hitting the weeds when it comes to pain but they seem to have nailed all that and I am going to give it a try; the program has a very good success rate and it’s hard to argue against lessening your infection vector by staying out of the hospital. I’m in.

As was required last time I attended Joint Class and was once again given an excellent rundown of expectations and how to prepare for surgery along with a question and answer session. When the class was over I was walking back to the parking garage with a woman who looked to be my age; she was there with her husband and shared that she was having both hips done at once. When I registered my surprise she said, “Honey, I’m a waitress and only get two weeks of time off a year. I can’t afford to do one after the other”. That was a sobering comment and for the millionth time I am grateful for a job that gives generous amounts of sick time and allows us to accrue it and really drove home some of the things people in this country do in the name of healthcare. I am truly one of the lucky ones.

In 1977 my best high school friend Kenny Jay Crawford taught me how to drive a stick in his dad’s bullet proof farm truck which happened to be a ’59 Ford pickup and a total pain in the ass to drive. This was for the sole purpose of using me as a hay mule, but that was okay; even back then in rural America not many of my female friends could handle a manual transmission so it made me feel like a badass. To paraphrase from the Red Green Show, “If boys didn’t find me pretty they could sure find me handy”. My love affair with the clutch solidified in the 80’s when my now ex husband bought me a 1977 Camaro with a 350 and a Muncie lift reverse complete with competition clutch. And headers. I was officially the coolest mom in elementary school.

Every car I have owned since then must have a manual transmission and both my car and truck are five speeds. I like driving and I love being in control of and engaged with my vehicle; crappy road conditions are a million times better when you can dictate what your wheels are doing and insurance company statistics can already tell you that people who drive a stick are lower insurance risks out of the box likely because they are paying attention. My daughter is of the exact same mind and was recently frustrated by the new car choices for clutch lovers; the fact that it is getting harder and harder to find cars with a manual transmission option is both appalling and alarming.

Equally appalling was the experience I had today after waiting an hour and a half to get an inspection on my truck at the local Valvoline shop; the young lady who was the inspection tech was unable to drive a stick and therefore could not complete the inspection. I had never heard of such a thing!  She assured me that the NYS Department of Motor Vehicles had disallowed her from completing inspections on vehicles with manual transmissions because she had been unable to complete that part of the test. My first response was, “Girlfriend, get behind the wheel because you are about to get a lesson”, but of course she was on the clock and could not do it. To her credit she quickly called a couple other of their local shops to find one with an open bay; I was able to get my inspection done at a shop about four miles away by a cheerful young man who was apologetic about the inconvenience. But it blew my mind that someone in the business could not drive a stick.

I guess the meme I have seen on the internet about a stick shift being the ultimate anti-theft device is laughably true.

Vegetarian.

I first heard that term when my grandmother had to throw a dinner party for some Indian doctors my grandfather was entertaining and talked about the challenge of being suddenly confronted with having to come up with a vegetarian menu when her husband was a devoted hunter and carnivore. In similar fashion I was a girl who grew up on a farm that raised and butchered most of its own meat, so vegetarianism was a completely foreign idea to me. There were people who didn’t eat meat? Really? The only thing stranger to me was those poor souls who did not eat pork; the thought of not eating bacon was just unimaginable. What religious dictum could possibly be against that salty, smoky goodness?

Vegetarians continued to be a weird, far away sub-culture relegated to hippies and certain religious groups until I was in my late forties and started really paying attention to what I was putting in my mouth. A nutrition class in college, the Food Network bringing mindful eating to the forefront and my own daughter who is an adventurous and healthy cook all inspired me to clean up my nutritional act. But it wasn’t until I dated a vegetarian who worked out and played rugby that I realized my vague discomfort with eating animals could coexist with an active lifestyle and I did not really need to consume meat. It was also around that time I realized a vegan colleague was a yoga instructor and a runner, and I realized that if her relatively extreme dietary habits sustained her exercise routine then I should be able to do it as well; one thing I wasn’t interested in was being constantly hungry especially on spin days when I’m already more ravenous hungrier than usual.

I decided to try being a vegetarian three days a week; it seemed doable enough and as I adopted the trappings of a vegetarian lifestyle I was surprised by how many people have been doing it for years completely unbeknownst to me. It has been fun to query them about their favorite things to eat, how they deal with fast food restaurants and generally coping with being a vegetarian in a world of carnivores. Three days a week morphed into four days a week  then five as I experimented with tofu and bean burgers and the loss of bacon in my life. Websites like Food 52 and Thug Kitchen became culinary romps which opened my eyes to how fantastic plant based eating can be and my fear of being constantly hungry proved completely unfounded. One day I looked at my shopping cart and had an epiphany; I had not purchased meat in two whole months! Somewhere along the way my body quietly decided it wasn’t interested in being a carnivore any more and it manifested itself in my shopping habits. I realized that it was probably time to come out as a vegetarian.

The rest of the world was sometimes surprisingly obstructionist about my newfound interest in not eating meat and since I come from a large “foodie” family who happens to enjoy hunting for their own food in similar fashion to my grandfather I was worried they would think I needed intervention; you can’t get much more carnivorous than someone who does that sort of thing. I chose last Christmas to inform my family of my vegetarian status and softened the blow by bringing an amazing roasted vegetable lasagna to the holiday dinner which was a hit. They were skeptical and I weathered the inevitable “does that mean you don’t eat chicken” question, but once I assured everyone that I didn’t care what they ate it was business as usual. The family has been far more tolerant than the random friend or co-worker who gets defensive about my meatless lifestyle and tries to shame me about it which has happened a couple of times.  You can’t argue with the numbers, though. My doctor who at first asked me if I had lost a bet when I told him I was a vegetarian called me after my routine yearly blood work astonished by how great my counts had become; apparently a 35 point reduction in my LDL was a very big deal.

It has been just about a year since my shopping cart revelation and I am finally hitting my stride with this dietary choice; the eating part has come fairly naturally and with the exception of the occasional longing for bacon I don’t find myself missing animal products in the least. My cooking repertoire has expanded to include some amazing vegetarian dishes, many of which can be done reasonably quickly. Strangely the most difficult part has been breaking the news to people and it took several months before I could make the announcement without using the same hushed tones one would use for admitting a felony conviction or voting for Donald Trump. At some point I realized I was in it for the long haul and began to own the lifestyle, and while it wasn’t a primary motivator it really does feel good not to be contributing to the suffering of the animals we share the planet with. Winner, winner, vegetarian dinner.