I Got My Hip Replaced

So that, as they say, happened. On Tuesday.

What I do now is I lie around a lot, and when that gets too tiring, I sleep. I'm also enjoying eating constantly and never really feeling full (apparently I'm eating for two), and repeatedly asking people I love to do the same menial tasks over and over ("Can I get the ice pack?" "Can you put this ice pack in the freezer and get the other ice pack?" "Can I have some water?" "Can you get up from being totally asleep next to me and go make me some breakfast and some coffee?" "Can I have the other ice pack again and can you put this one back in the freezer?").

I have the same supine PT exercises they gave me after the last surgery, but what is very, very different is how astonishingly little pain I am feeling. This is day four post-surgery, and I am taking Aleve. Only. No Vicodin, no Percoset, not even any Tramadol. And I am full weight-bearing, with one crutch. I can't quite explain how mind blowing this is to me, after my last experience, but I am enormously grateful, and let's be honest, also enormously lopsided in the one hip (and by the way - if you ever have a shit ton of time and want to read about the minutiae of a much more difficult, much more painful surgery that took a lot longer to recover from, read my heart-wrenching, fascinating blog about it, brilliantly entitled "Paper Or Dysplastic?").

Part of my PT is to also walk as much as I can handle, which is not yet much, but I'm hoping my energy will come back soon (it's not for a lack of eating, I can tell you that much). I think the hip might be eating my energy, as it is, for the third time now, swole up to twice the size of the other. I don't know how many times it can take this swoled business. Anyway, can you get me the ice pack (and a coffee)?

Best Laid Plans

When I embarked on this mid-life crisis madcap comedy movie return to school adventure last fall, I had a general idea that I would finish in five years. I had 11 pre-requisite classes to take before the three-year graduate degree, and it seemed… possible to do them in two years? Hard, but manageable, especially if I didn’t plan to have a life outside of community college, and didn’t mind being in summer school all the way through (the DPT includes summer school), and possibly a winter session or two.

And then, of course, life started happening, and more specifically, arthritic hip raised its ugly head (of the femur! Yuk yuk. Nerd joke). Hip replacement surgery was no longer a far-off possibility, but a right now necessity. Still, I persisted. I sat down with my pre-req list and worked out a whole strategy that would allow me to get everything done and enroll in the fall of 2013. Lest you think the schedule I created was a leisurely educational stroll, I present it to you in haiku form:

Summer session – hip replaced –

Labor Day? Who the

Fuck are you kidding?

(Maybe not the best haiku, and maybe doesn’t even convey the reality of what I was planning on doing to myself, so instead I present to you my leisurely educational stroll in calendar form:)

Summer 2012 – Human Biology / test into Pre-calculus

August 2012 – Hip replacement class*

Fall 2012 – Pre-calculus / Anatomy / take GRE

Winter 2012 – Statistics / apply to grad schools

Spring 2013 – Physics/ Physiology

Summer 2013 – Physics

Fall 2013 DPT begins

*not a class

Looking at this list gives me hives. Unnecessary Hives, which is also the name of my autobiography. Some time last week, between interviewing hip surgeons and studying for my organic chemistry exam, I realized that there was no actual reason why I HAD to finish in five. My stubborn attachment to the five-year plan was a) Not Very Yogic, though I feel like often lately I’m Not Very Yogic (and while we’re on the topic, that seems a more likely autobiography title) and b) a by-product of a trick I constantly play on myself to get things done, called “Tell Everybody You Are Doing Something And Then You Have To Do It.”

At my brother’s wedding in Palm Springs four years ago, when I was still living in New York but feeling more and more like I could leave, I went around the entire reception telling people that I was moving to LA (though apparently I did not tell my mom, who was surprised to learn it from a cousin later that night). The desire not to go back on my words propelled me more rapidly towards a destination I would have reached eventually – but as I left the reception, casually flinging the words “See you next year!” to the Angelinos present (my future friends!) my fate was writ in cement.

In the same way, starting this blog with the pronouncement that I would be in school for five years made it, in my mind, an unchangeable truth. In addition, and you can add this to the Not Very Yogic column: I am terrifically impatient when I want something. I had wrapped my head around five years’ worth of school: how old I would be when I got out (don’t ask), what year it would be, what great career shifts would finally come to fruition. An additional year seemed truly unbearable, and sacrificing my free time and sanity seemed the best solution. I know that sounds ridiculous, and yet it felt violently true.

But letting go of that self-induced stressor (because that’s all it was) and giving myself room to breathe (what a concept, Not Very Yogic lady) and actually enjoy my life for the next few years (again, who knew that was an option) has created space for all kinds of things I was going to give up in the name of my set in stone plans. Like travel! And writing more! And hanging out with other people! And cadaver dissection! (It’s a form of hanging out with other people.) And how about this concept: giving myself adequate time to recover from having a freaking hip replaced.

So there it is. I’m taking the slightly longer road not yet traveled. More importantly: I’m not freaking out about it. Maybe I’m a Little More Yogic than I thought.

Back To School

10 tips for my fellow back-to-schoolers:

1. School is, once again, a total madhouse the first two weeks.  Be prepared to park far away and walk, which is entirely preferable to slowly tailing someone to their car in the student lot like a predatory shark, only to find yourself battling for their space with a slick-haired dude in a muscle car blasting rap at 8am.

2. There is nothing within a 3 mile radius that you will want to eat. Bring your own snacks unless you can subsist on lattes and a yogurt parfait for 12 hours.

3. Teachers, even the good ones, are totally weird people. Aren't they? Your organic chemistry teacher has a strange accent (truly, impossible to place. North African? Sub-Himalayan?) and even stranger speech patterning ("The electron is not cerTAINly at any location, it is only proBABly there."). You are oddly grateful, as class is in the evening, and straining to understand him helps keep you awake. You can pretend for those three hours that you're going to school in India.

4. Psychology classes always, always feel like you are in fact a participant in a psych experiment without your prior consent or knowledge.

5. Generally, the large groups of male students that congregate over by the science buildings are less intimidating than those that congregate on the main part of campus. If you need somewhere to sit outside and eat your parfait, aim yourself in that direction.

6. Do not wait on that 1/2 mile long line to get into the bookstore. Come back in a few days when it's diminished. You don't need your books the first week anyway.

7. With that said: Highlighters. Pens. #2 Pencils. Erasers. Scantrons. Get them all. They will sell out.

8. "Mature" students: when you walk in on the first day of class, several students will assume you are the teacher until you sit down. I will also assume you are the teacher, even though it has happened to me mere moments before. It's an innocent mistake on all our parts.

9. It's a little overwhelming. Don't worry about that. You'll get back in the swing of things.

10. Snacks. I cannot stress this enough.

Down(ward Facing) Time

It's been several weeks since school ended, and I've been swimming in free time (but before you get jealous, this doesn't feel like swimming in the ocean; this feels like trying to swim in marshmallows). I kind of don't know what to do with myself, and it also begs the question, what the hell was I doing with myself before I went back to school?

A large part of me can't wait for school to start again (although I am still teaching, just not that much), while a second large part wishes I was better at enjoying marshmallows, and another, also quite large part feels like I proved whatever it was that I needed to prove by going back to school for a semester, like I was on a reality show about moms and kids and swapping, and now it's time to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The problem with that third large part is that I am nowhere near done. The other problem, having just registered for the spring, is that I can't realistically take more than 2 classes per semester while still having a job and trying not to go crazy. So, the five year plan may actually be six. Did I mention somewhere in there I have to fit in a hip replacement? Ha. Yes.

The good part: I've been fortunate enough to be observing a double amputee learning to walk with his prostheses the past few weeks, which is humbling, and fascinating, and emotional, and helps my brain to stop swimming in marshmallows and focus. It's as if the universe knew that I was feeling weary, and threw me a little view of my future to keep me on track. "You'll get to this place, working with clients like these," says the universe. "Slow down. Don't worry about how long the pre-recs are going to take. You'll get here."

Finals. Finally.

Semester has been rattling along at a nice clip, with a steady rhythm of tests every few weeks, and I've grown accustomed to my new, hermetically sealed/hermitic life. [As an aside, when I say hermitic, I am referring to my mostly shut-in status, not the spiced cookie of the same name that I did not know existed until I googled hermitic to check my spelling. The learning train stops for no one.]

However, the best.thing.ever is about to happen. Finals. A week from Tuesday and I am a free woman until February 2012, whereupon the wild rumpus starts anew.

However, part 2: as with all highly anticipated things, in lieu of my looming date with freedom, time has slowed to a crawl, and with it has gone all my motivation. I have become an apathetic, whiny (mostly in my own head, hopefully) college student who has exerted for 12 weeks and who frankly is more than a little out of steam. Hopefully there is some tiny reserve of steam left in me somewhere, though I've yet to locate it. I'm sure my driving need to get perfect scores will push me across the finish line in something like style, and I am extremely appreciative of September, October and November Sarah who worked really hard so that December Sarah can get a few things wrong and still get a good grade.

However, part 3: it appears that unless I give up teaching altogether (not happening), due to the hours-heavy nature of science classes, I may not be able to take more than 2 classes per semester, which puts me squarely in the crosshairs of summer school, and potentially in a land where the next five years will actually turn into 6. Although the difference isn't that great, the length of the sentence (and the length of that last sentence) starts to make my head spin.

Pade, pade, as my teacher Manorama would say. One step at a time. If only I could get time to speed up for the next week and then slow to molasses for winter break.

In Which I Am A Little, And Then A Lot, Bothered By Your Posture

This bothers me, a little:

But I get it. I took this picture at an area coffee shop that I frequent during my lunch break from classes - and I do mean frequent, because they now know me by name. That's a little scary.

My point is, the 'stand on one leg and stick out the other one with both legs turned out' look that's so popular for line-waiting, as demonstrated so beautifully for us by these three anonymous models (although the dude in the middle I know as 'the other guy they know by name in this area coffee shop') is not an isolated incident. Next time you're standing in line at the store, or your own area coffee shop, after you finish reading about this year's sexiest person, check out the way you're standing. Odds are it will look something like the above.

We've become somehow allergic to a) standing on both legs evenly and b) pointing said legs straight forward. We think we look like robots when we do that. No really, we do. People tell me that when I make them do it. But I do it myself, on purpose, all the time, because it helps with my scoliosis/crazy hip, and it's cleared a lot of one sided lower back pain. You know what I hear, constantly? (I'll give you a clue - it's not "Are you a robot?")

I hear: "Your posture is amazing!" "Are you a dancer?" "I've been admiring the way you walk for the past hour!" (That last one was a little creepy, but still a compliment). I can talk about it until I'm blue in the face (and if you've ever taken class with me, odds are I've mentioned it at least once that you can remember) but until you start doing it, you won't believe me that it can make such a big difference in your mood, your 'tude, and your dude (I needed a third thing. If you are a dude or know a dude, either way it will make a difference).

This bothers me, a lot:

This is from the latest Urban Outfitters catalog. I'm not sure how well you can see what is going on for this poor deformed lady, but she's basically making a huge kyphotic (backwards) C curve with her spine, while throwing her shoulders anteriorly (forward), jamming her pelvis anteriorly (forward), and borderline overextending her neck (backward). Apparently, if you close your eyes and do that, the bubbles come.

Monkey see, monkey do - I'm no longer in the demographic that UO is aiming for (and yet they haven't dumped me from their mailing list, which I sort of appreciate in a "what are those crazy kids up to these days?" way), but it makes me so very, very annoyed to see this, because back in MY day, when I WAS being aggressively marketed to, at least the women got to stand like this:

I mean, bananas outfit notwithstanding, and setting aside whatever you may know or think about this particular person, this is the stance of a strong woman inhabiting her body. [Side note: she also gets to have muscles.]

This is not supposed to be a post about the vagaries of modeling, although I could so very easily go there - but that's another story.

This is me, pleading with you to stand up straight, and point both feet forward, and stand on both of them. That's it. It's really, really simple, and I would bet you money that it will make your lower back happier. Plus, you'll get compliments. Oh, one last thing: you have to do it for the rest of your life. But honestly, it's not as hard as having to go to rehab for your screwed up L4/L5 or knee issues. I promise.

The Proof Is In The Reading

The biggest difference, work-wise, between the arty classes I used to take in college and the all-science, all-the-time roller coaster I ride lately is the method of testing. Back then, I would sit in lectures and take long, rambling notes, debate topics in long, rambling arguments, write papers in long, rambling run-on sentences, without ever having to answer a single yes-or-no question.

Not so for science classes. I have at least one, if not more, quiz or test or exam every other week. It's kind of like having someone's thumb permanently pressed into the side of my head, reminding me not to relax too much because I need to memorize some terms, or answer sample questions, or write out balanced equations.

I've discovered, however, that proofreading is not only a useful tool for writing, but invaluable for these kinds of tests. My science class test-taking method is to answer all the questions with at least something first, and then to pause, breathe, and read through all of them again. Every single time, I find I've marked 'A' when I meant to mark 'D,' or left out an important detail in a description that would have cost me a few points or more.

Your body does the same thing. Did you know that? During DNA replication, the enzymes doing the replicating make an error roughly one in every ten thousand nucleotides (like DNA building blocks). So your body has repair enzymes that pause, breathe, and read through all of the replicated nucleotides again, catching and fixing so many mistakes that the error rate drops to one in a billion. Not bad.

There are always students that jump up 20 minutes after the test has started, hand in their paper, and walk out. I wonder if they are so brilliant they've made no errors, or if they're not following the example set by their DNA. I feel urged on by their departure to also make a quick exit (jeez, I really can't quit this need to come in top of EVERYTHING, even leaving the room) but I force myself to stay longer and make corrections.

It's not as dramatic. Proofreading isn't sexy. No-one makes a dramatic statement and then pauses to proofread it before storming out and slamming the door.

But if it's good enough for my DNA, it's good enough for me.