The saga of my knee continues. I think I told you that the last time I went to PT, the therapist confirmed that the orthotics (prescribed by the 1st PT who was a maternity leave fill-in) didn’t seem to be helping, and I should send them back to get adjusted, and stop wearing them until they were fixed. She also sent in a referral to sports med for me, because it still hurts and it’s been a long time, and they have more tools than she does. The PT appointment was like Dec. 20th, so after the cookie party but before Christmas, so she said I could see how I was doing for a few weeks and then make an appointment after the holidays if thought I needed it. I thought I did, so I went in last Wednesday. And of course – different doctor, different diagnosis, which is how it’s been since August. Well, to be fair both PT’s had the same diagnosis – tendon injury – but different treatments; the 1st PT prescribed the orthotics, gave me a brace, and exercises, the 2nd PT questioned the orthotics and gave me different exercises.
The sports med doc sent me downstairs to get x-rays, which was kind of awful. None of the PT’s needed to touch my bare leg but the doctor wanted to see, so since I was wearing leggings under a short dress/tunic-y thing, they gave me some shorts to wear under my dress. That meant I went down to x-ray bare-legged in my socks, and had to sit there with my white hairy legs hanging out, and x-ray was way backed up so it was like 20 minutes – and it was too cold and the music was terrible. The Doors, Alice Cooper. I mean I kinda respect Alice Cooper now, he’s clean & sober and still puts on his mascara and goes out to play and he’s in his 70s. But the song was Under My Wheels – not one I ever liked.
And when we get the x-rays back, goddamn it’s now a different diagnosis – an insufficiency fracture, where the bone is collapsing a bit, a kind of stress fracture, and I guess a pretty common cause of knee pain in old people. See overleaf for kinda what my knee x-ray looked like – mine had a little less, even, shadowy area on the knob of the bone that fits into the knee joint. And this doc wanted me to get an MRI to confirm, and I’m going for that very expensive procedure this coming Wednesday. Seems like this kind of fracture is not too awful – the stuff I’ve been reading says slow recovery, non-weight-bearing, stay off it, and then start doing exercises to strengthen. And I also read something where it sounded like they can maybe inject stuff into the joint to help it plump up again.
So I haven’t been walking much since the diagnosis. He did think about putting me on crutches right away but agreed if I didn’t walk for exercise, I could live my life. And he said I could continue to do my stretching exercises if they felt good, but I decided I’m on strike. Since the MRI is so soon, I’m just going to not do the exercises, and wait and see what treatment they tell me to do next.
After all that, Thursday and Friday were work from home days, although Thursday I went to campus to sort books. I took the bus, to stay off my knee. Friday I just plain old didn’t even leave the house. When the orientation for the new online students was in person, we’d have everyone gather in our big classroom that looks out over the lake, and stand in a big circle and hold onto a red string. Then they answered 3 reflective questions, and stuffed their answers into an envelope, and then we’d mail them their piece of the red string and their answers after they completed their first semester – in January. Since the orientation has been online we do it virtually – I ask them to imagine they are are holding onto the red string – I have a slide. The 3 questions exercise is in an online course. And I still make the cards and send them off with their piece of the string, with a printout of their answers, and a card. Anyways, got that done Friday.
After the doctoring and the work week it was kind of a regular weekend. We went to the indoor farmers market and the pick up farmers market by car, then brought everything home and Mark went out for a walk. Since I couldn’t do that I went and bought the groceries we couldn’t get at the markets like bananas and milk and out of season fruit for Mark to put in his yogurt. I went to the cake supply place and got some meringue powder to replace the 5 years out of date jar of it in my baking cabinet. I have a plan for it; tell you about it later. I made some sourdough and some pumpkin muffins – I tried to turn the icing from the twisty cimmy buns into cream cheese filling but it was a little too runny and sort of baked into the muffins instead of staying as a recognizable dollop. The muffins taste nicely cream-cheesy, it just doesn’t show up so much. And I made peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses on top.
A lot of my cooking adventures Saturday afternoon were so there’d be fresh bread and sandwich stuff for Mark to eat Saturday night when Susan and I went to the Joey’s Song benefit. Something like 60+ musicians, gathered due in large part to Butch Vig’s involvement. And Jay Moran and Freedy Johnston, and Mike Gomoll, Joey’s dad. The last time I went to one of the shows it was at the Barrymore. This time it was at the Sylvee. We’d had our tickets since last year – it got postponed due to Covid.
This years lineup was pretty impressive, lots of 90’s grunge; they got Tanya Donnelly from Belly and Dave Pirner from Soul Asylum – Dave’s got pride of place in the pic. The best part was when they finally got the Know It All Boyfriends out – they opened with Velvet Underground’s We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together, and Doug sang, just like Spooner, well sorta like Spooner – they opened with it many times. I think I heard Spooner do We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together before I ever heard the Velvet Underground do it. Then they played September Gurls; Cruel to be Kind; Barbara H. (Chris Collingwood from Fountains of Wayne was there, but I think everyone missed Adam); Golden Earring, Twilight Zone (I thought it was gonna be Radar Love); and then Hold on just a little bit tighter (Tighter, Tighter) that Jay Moran introduced as the song that Tommy James let get away. He sang it with Kay Hanley from Letters to Cleo. Butch left and members of the Nielsen Trust – Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick’s sons – came out, and one of them is a drummer – and they started doing Son of Preacher Man. We left. Probably KIAB came back and did another cover that’s one of my favorite tunes, but we were ready to leave. Oh, and at one point with Butch they did Cracker’s Low. That was fun – Dave Pirner and Kay Hanley both sang on that one.
Sunday I went over to Al & Emma’s for two reasons – get a little Jasper time, and Emma’s got her bike in a stand, so I wanted to give stationary bike a try because the doc said I could do that. I took them the smaller sourdough and some of the cookies. I thought they’d be good nursing snacks for Emma, because they have peanut butter in them so even though it’s a cookie you can pretend it’s a little healthy. She amped it up saying they looks like boobs – they really do. And I got to see the live demo of how much Jasper likes Harry Belafonte.
After I got back, I finally got my New Year’s cards addressed and mailed them off Monday morning. So I guess the new year has really begun; holidays over.
PS, Thursday – definitely over. I tossed the wreath into the trash bin this morning, right before the truck came down the street. I had taken it off the front door last Friday – 12th night – and stuck it in the garage, because I always think I will dismantle the wreath and separate it into brush – the pine parts; and trash – the wires and bow; instead of filling up the landfill with a whole wreath. But, this year I recalled past years where I started taking the wreath apart and never got it down to a pile of brush separated from its wires, because there were so many twists and tapes and yadda yadda. So into the trash. It was so dried out it wasn’t even making the garage smell piney. Maybe next year I can find a more environmentally friendly wreath.
