Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but mostly slings.

My visit yesterday to the doctor did nothing to cheer me up. I found out the up-until-now-unknown-fact that I have two screws in my shoulder bone to which “fishing line” is tied to keep my ligament attached to my rotator cuff. I am to start passive physical therapy (someone moves my arm for me) with a physical therapist as soon as I can get an appointment. In the meantime I have 3 more weeks left in the DonJoy UltraSling Shoulder Brace (oh boy, oh boy, the soft gray color harmonizes with so many outfits!), then 2 more weeks after that of self-directed physical therapy (moving my arm myself). This means we won’t be able to drive back to Santa Rosalia until July 2. I am having serious cat and beach withdrawal! This is certainly different than the two-days-in-the-sling-expectations with which I went into this surgery. As we were coming out of one of our favorite Denver restaurants yesterday, Osaka Sushi, a man coming in said, oh what kind of surgery did you have? the newscaster was wearing the same sling just last night! Boy, talk about popular surgeries! I must admit I personally know of four other people that could be candidates for just the same operation that I just had.


Esperando leaves on Tuesday and my mother and sister come to babysit me for the next week until he comes back for a bit. I must admit I feel a little helpless with the use of just one arm. Now I know how that poor one-armed man that murdered Dr. Richard Kimble's wife in The Fugitive, must have felt. And see, that was a medical conspiracy just like what’s happened to me. Getting a hold of the physical therapy people was the worst. Yesterday when we left the doctor’s office, the doctor gave me a prescription form with their phone number and the written instructions on how they are to torture me. It says “Evaluate & Treat”, if that is not a wide instruction for torture, then I don’t know what one is. When I called them, there was no answer. This place has four offices scattered around the Denver metro area, open M-F 7 am to 7 pm (ha ha, like not.). We decided to drop by the Stapleton office (the one circled on my form) which is just a 5 minute drive from our house. When we got to it at 3 pm, their office it was closed, lights out, with a sign posted on the door indicating to call their Thornton office to make an appointment. Jason answered and after several times being put on hold told me that he would call back regarding our insurance. After a couple of hours with no response I called again. Oh, so sorry he said, I went to the gym, but we don’t take your insurance. Flaaa-aky. What does the doc see in these guys, is he part owner like he is of the orthopedic center where I had my surgery? Over the course of the last two days I have finally gotten it sorted out and have an appointment for next Tuesday.

Which brings me to my last issue—the strange dreams that plague me every night. My Mother turned 101 this last May. No kidding-she really did. Well I dreamt last night that she was pregnant. I briefly wondered how someone of those advanced years could get pregnant, but chalked it up to medical science. Then I decided that giving birth at her advanced age would be a serious hazard to her health. Finally, I was really furious. It isn’t fair I said to Esperando in my dream, she will be gone and we will have this child to raise. How could she do this? Boy I don’t know where that one came from. This sling is altering my whole sleep pattern. I wonder if I will ever sleep like a normal person once I am through with this whole thing.

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog. . .”

Two years ago we had serious drainage problems with the northeast window wells of our Denver house’s basement. This time of year in Denver we can get torrential rains. As much as 2 inches can fall in an hour on an exceptional day. Well two years ago we had that kind of weather. I sent Esperando off to his job in the morning. It had been pouring for about 30 minutes when I decided to go to the unfinished basement in my innocence still attired in my nightgown to see if we were having any flooding down there. Lo and behold, the floor had about an inch of water on it in the northeast section and more was gushing in through the window well as the water was 4 inches higher than the window ledge. I immediately ran over to grab the shop vac and starting suctioning water off the floor, then I would drag the shop vac over to the northwest corner where there was a sump pump and empty the water into that hole, race back to the window and start vacuuming again. Did I mention that standing for 10 minutes vacuuming in the same spot is mesmerizing and surprisingly I wasn’t really quite awake even yet? Finally I realized there was aThing swimming in the 4 inches of water. I thought I was going crazy. I looked closer and the thing was like a fish, but it had very fancy gills on it that looked like leaves. I decided that it was some kind of salamander. After about 30 minutes of my suction-and-dump routine the vacuum seized up, it was working too hard and couldn’t keep up with the influx of water. I called Esperando at work and told him to come rescue the basement which he did. Then before we moved down to Mexico, Esperando dug up and redid the water drainage systems surrounding the house to make sure we would not have that kind of problem ever again.

It is worth mentioning that Esperando and I are actually among those strange kinds of people who like reptiles. That is why last year after heavy rains when I went down to check the window wells for flooding and found toads and salamanders instead basking on the damp gravel I didn’t scream but picked a toad up to take upstairs and show to Esperando. Pretty soon we were carrying out toad rescue operations. As many as 4 or 5 toads would be in each window well, with no way to ever climb out of their dungeon. Initially we thought as little tykes they might have fallen through the grating and were just eating whatever fell down there in the in the way of bugs and spiders. We eventually pulled 22 of them out. Now this third year we have decided that someone is laying eggs down there, because although there were fewer toads, they were still there.We leave the salamanders in the window wells, it is moist and they burrow into the soil, but the toads were seriously overcrowded and we think they are happier in the garden where there is more variety to eat.

Yesterday after our first really big rain I went down and found six Great Plains toads, about 1-1/2 to 2 inches long, four Tiger salamanders about 8 inches long and one very small Garter snake of about 10 inches long. We have never had a snake before. I was sure it would crawl into a crack and be very hard to catch, but Esperando with his boyhood training in snake hunting had him in a second, so he joined the toads in the release program. Later I regretted that we hadn’t kept the snake for a few days to admire him, he was so cute.

Recovery

I have been recovering from the surgery I had on Tuesday for bursitis. I had a bone spur removed from my left shoulder, which turned out to have worn a hole in my tendon so that that also had to be stitched up. This will keep my left arm in a sling for the next month not just the few days the doctor initially envisioned, not so great for typing blogs. No doubt this will also delay our return to Santa Rosalia while I get started on physical therapy. But even that can’t take place until I see the doctor next week. Today is a banner day however. I get take my bandages off, stop wearing my anti-embolism stockings, take a shower, wash my hair, and stop icing my shoulder constantly—in short become a semi-real human being again and not a smelly bed-ridden blob!

Esperando and Sweet Pickle have been my constant company through all of this. The Dog somehow is sensing it is not cool to be his normal boisterous self and jump on me. He has faithfully lain at my feet and worried when I have been in pain, coming close to press his nose against me in reassurance. How can dogs be such sensitive creatures? This is the same dog that can also stand on your feet like a Shetland pony and not notice when you scream in pain.

On our trip back up here Sweet Pickle was one happy dude. I don’t know if he knew we were on our way to Denver, but he did know that he was king of the mountain, no cats participating. Once we dropped over the mountains on I-70 and he could smell Denver in the air he started whining with excitement as he would greet an old friend.

After we got here he went to the groomers to become a new and cleaner dog, although he was not a cooperative dog. He simply hates baths, I am lucky to have a groomer who will put up with him. Unlike our yard of dirt in Santa Rosalia our Denver yard is filled with lawn. He no longer can wallow in the soil three times a day in a rife imitation of Pigpen, raising little clouds of dust every time someone pats him.

And then there was Dog Society to rejoin. All his neighbor dog buddies that he likes to play with, as well as a whole hillside of prairie dogs that he pretends to ignore when we go on walks. He used to be mildly interested in catching one, but now that he knows how hopeless it is, he ignores them while they whistle and call, rolling around doing the back stroke in the dirt of dog town not 5 feet from his face. Ah, what a noble dog.