Don't be that guy.

Last weekend, I went to the Gunks with Eric. I led my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, (and 5th? I lost track...) 5.8 trad leads, and I did them with style and grace. Well, style and a lot of grunting. Eric threw himself at a 5.10b siege-style until he beat it and made it cry. It was a fully stellar limit-pushing weekend.

This is not a story about our unmitigated mutual badassery.

This is a story about a lovely fellow we had the good fortune to meet and interact with repeatedly, and why you should never be that guy.

First Contact: I'm belaying Eric as he leads the second pitch of something in the vicinity of Arrow. This guy, we'll call him "Jerk Face", is belaying his second on a climb to our right. I have no way of knowing she was his girlfriend, but that's the vibe I got. It quickly became clear through overhearing their high-volume conversation that he knows everything about climbing, the Gunks, and life and his supremacy is not to be questioned. At one point he gave a speech about how wearing socks is what all real climbers do, and only total newbs wear climbing shoes without socks. Girlfriend was struggling following the pitch, clearly unnerved by some wet holds at the crux, and expressing her stress quite loudly. Rather than say reassuring and encouraging things to his climbing partner, Jerk Face decided that berating her was the way to go.

JF: Come on! What is your problem? This is easy!
GF: The holds are wet! I feel like I can't grip anything!
JF: They weren't wet when I climbed it. Clearly you're using the wrong holds. Use the dry ones.
GF: I can't find dry ones! I don't think I can do this, I don't remember how to do this part!
JF: Come ON!!!!!! Just CLIMB it already!

I could feel Girlfriend's stress increasing and felt so bad for her that eventually I yelled something encouraging at her. It probably didn't help.

So, we meet again:
Our plan was to climb a bunch of pitches right in the same area, and this lovely couple clearly had the same idea. We rapped down to the GT ledge, and clipped into the bolt anchors on Arrow. Jerk Face was also on the ledge, anchored about 5 feet to my left. Girlfriend was still on the ground below, thinking about putting her climbing shoes on.  Eric put me on belay and I prepared to lead the second pitch of Arrow. This would be only my third 5.8 lead, definitely a tough climb for me. Also, the first moves off the ledge are especially difficult, not to mention that the first moves off the belay are always a super special brand of stressful for me, whether I'm leading or belaying, for obvious reasons.

I'm ready to go and Jerk Face yells out "Hey, I don't mind if you throw your rope on my head or steal my climb, but if you blow the moves on this overhang I'm going to be pissed at you."

I stop, look over at him, genuinely baffled. He said this very pointedly, without any hint of levity in his tone. We didn't drop our rope on his head. We also didn't, as far as I'm concerned, steal his climb. If his second is still on the ground, they are most decidedly on the first pitch of the climb, and can't really monopolize any others. Still, if he truly thought he had dibs for some reason, he could have said so calmly and politely. We might even have let him have it. Instead he waited until I was on lead leaving the ledge to be all snarky and passive-aggressive.

I think I said something really eloquent like "....whahuh?"

He clarified: "If you fall off that overhang up there and land on my head, I'm going to be pissed off at you."
This caught me totally off guard. Not having actually done anything rude to him, I was really not expecting this kind of interaction from a random fellow climber. So rather than respond with some indignant sarcastic retort, I got all flustered: "I won't! I mean, I'm going to put in gear, of course! There's good gear up there, and even if I fell, I wouldn't land on anyone, and obviously I'm going to protect it well! I'm going to be careful!"

Jerk Face had no way of knowing this, but he couldn't have chosen a better comment to seriously rattle me. Eric knew this, and said some reassuring things which didn't help much. If this guy's intention was to get us to hurry up climbing this pitch so we wouldn't slow him down, he picked a fabulous strategy. My head was not in a good place anymore, and I struggled with the first move. It was a bit dynamic for me and I just needed to commit to it, but I just couldn't do it. I could feel Jerk Face and his mean vibes from 5 feet away.

He said "Have either of you even done this climb before?" Eric replied "Yes. We both have. Several times." in a very this-conversation-is-over sorta way. At some point another pair of climbers rapped down to the ledge and shared the anchor with us, and I think they stayed for a while just to try to counteract Jerk Face's negativity. I asked if I was in their way to continue their rappel, and they said "No, we just want to watch you get this move! You can do it!"

Eventually, Girlfriend joined Jerk Face on the ledge, and they wandered off to do some other climb. Almost as soon as he was out of sight, I relaxed and pulled the move off the ledge. Then I cruised the overhang, thank you very much! I felt pretty good about that, but still my mojo was all retardified, and I was at least as annoyed with myself for being so easily messed with as I was with Jerk Face for being such a jerk face.

Oh no, not you again:
After cruising through the rest of the pitch, I arrived at the crux of the climb: the last few delicate balance-y face moves protected by a bolt. As I pondered the sequence, I heard Jerk Face yelling at Girlfriend again to my left, as she climbed up to his anchor. I attempted the move but fell onto the bolt, and Jerk Face yelled over to me "I thought you said you climbed this before!" Realizing that any response would result in endless escalation, I completely ignored him.

Wait...seriously?? Dude, not cool!!:
Later, after finishing the climb and while belaying Eric, I overheard Jerk Face and Girlfriend again. This time, they were rappelling and Jerk Face had paused about 15 feet below the top-out to attempt to remove a fixed tri-cam that a friend of theirs had left behind earlier that day. His method of choice was to whale on it with a nut tool and a softball sized rock that he had brought down with him from the top of the cliff. Unless he had figured out some method of clipping the rock to himself that I couldn't see, this was a terrible idea. He finally decided that it was not coming out and told Girlfriend he was going to finish rappelling. Girlfriend asked him to clip the nut tool to the tricam so she could give it a try. He gave her a scathing glare and she quickly timidly added "If you can't get it out I'm sure I won't be able to! I just felt like trying.... nevermind."

Pay attention, here's the thick of the plot:
Jerk Face says "I'm going to leave this rock right here - haha, some newb is going to grab it and think it's a jug and pull it off! HA!'

...and then he continues on rappel. And leaves the rock there. On a classic, well-traveled climb where no "newb" or expert would reasonably expect to find a large loose rock on a small ledge. This wasn't just a careless and stupid action, he actually thought through the potential consequences - that some unsuspecting climber could encounter this rock and pull it off, endangering anyone below them, including their belayer and therefore themselves (not everyone is badass enough to catch lead falls with severe concussions!). He thought through the consequences, and did it anyway. And laughed about it.

I sincerely hope no one will be hurt by that rock. This guy cast an unpleasant funk over our entire afternoon. Still, we were able to head on over to Pink Laurel and have a great time on a stellar climb despite both of us getting our heads stuck in the chimney. That guy, however, had to continue being him. What a miserable existence.

Eric wondered why Girlfriend put up with such a world class d-bag. I speculated that for every total a-hole, there is a girl with low enough self-esteem to be willing to date him. So fellas, don't be that guy. More importantly, ladies, don't DATE that guy. Behavior like that should not be encouraged. You can do better. I promise. If you have a vagina and a pulse, you can do better. 

This has been a public service announcement. 

Massive injuries make the little things exciting again.

Look what I can do!!

 

I'm touching my toes, in case you were wondering what is exciting about this picture.

Even though I'm regaining some torso flexibility, when I need to pick something up off the floor, I still always squat full-on grand-plie style, just out of habit.

And when I need to put on or take off my socks, I stand upright and bring my foot up to hip level, flamingo-style.

I wonder if this will fade with time, or if it will forever seem normal. I can see ten years from now someone asking me why in the world I put my socks on like that, and explaining to them "Well this one time I went climbing with this guy out in Colorado...."

Happiest 15 minutes of my life.

Today my physical therapist said to me "This is the first time I've seen you smile in 6 months!"I told him he could've seen me smile anytime he wanted to, he just had to say the magic words:
"You can go climb now."

I was not expecting this today. Just a few weeks ago, I was barely getting through classes, not doing any PT, and still wearing my brace daily for large chunks of time. Starting school was just too much too fast and caused a huge setback in my rehab. Then pretty suddenly I finally felt almost normal. I felt like a horribly out-of-shape person who'd been sedentary for 4 months, but no longer felt like an invalid. I also was making it through entire days without the brace at all, about every other day. After a full week of that, my physical therapist agreed that it was time to start working. I was pretty psyched, despite the bittersweetness of spending a gorgeous October weekend in a smelly, windowless room surrounded by sweaty but apparently uninjured people. I know why I was in there, but I can't figure out why they were.

The interesting thing about strength training with weight machines is that you can quantify your capabilities. Being able to control and keep track of specifically which muscles are working and how much weight they are moving is exactly why my physical therapist wanted me in there, but it was a bit shocking. I honestly wasn't aware it was possible for a person to be as weak as I am right now. I also got weighed - I lost about 12 lbs. since the accident, and it's all muscle. I hope that number on the scale is only going to go up now, but it's disturbing - the last time I weighed this little, I wasn't yet this height.

I have exercises that I have to do every single day, no exceptions, no rest days. It only takes about an hour, but the first 3 days that was absolutely all I had in me for the day. I came home, showered, ate lunch, and wondered if 1pm was an unreasonable time to go to bed. My complete uselessness was not conducive to finishing my first real project of the semester, but when it came down to sacrificing PT for the day or any hope of getting my schoolwork done, I went to the gym. I decided to stick with school this semester and it set my rehab back about a month. This time I chose my body.

It paid off! Today my physical therapist looked at my PT log and poked at my back and watched me do some exercises and said "What about the climbing wall?"

Me: I didn't go!! I promise! You told me not to!
PT guy: I know. I think you should start.
Me: ....wait.....REALLY???

I didn't hear anything else he said for a few minutes because my brain was busy exploding with joy. He finally got my attention and said "LISTEN. You are weaker than you have EVER been before. Be CAREFUL. 15 minutes max. You might not be able to do even that much. No falling or jumping." Ideally, I would do 15 min. a day, every day, gradually increasing. But I still have to do all my mandatory gym exercises too, and the 30 min. drive to the wall isn't super practical for 7 days a week.

Leaving the PT office, since I was already near the climbing wall, I went straight there. I never imagined when I left my house this morning that I should bring my climbing shoes with me. I'm not sure I even know where my climbing shoes are, the last time I saw them I was in a different time zone.

Climbing again was surreal. I am much, much weaker than I was the first time I ever climbed, and yet I still have all the experience and knowledge so I am in some ways much better, and in other ways much worse, than the first time I got on a wall. My grip strength is happily not as hopeless as I expected, my balance is terrible and my flexibility is a joke. Did I mention I have only very recently been able to reach my own shoelaces? As I was stemming in a corner, resting, I began to cry. I don't think I ever understood crying for joy before, but the relief was just overwhelming. Luckily no one was there to see me. I'm still badass. Being deeply moved by 15 minutes on a fake wall doesn't change the fact that I've crack-climbed on a broken foot and hiked out with 5 crushed vertebrae, a broken rib, gushing head wound, and traumatic brain injury. Awww, yeah.

Speaking of 15 minutes, it was really hard to stop. Luckily I had groceries in my car and a strategically underfed parking meter to help tip the scales toward my responsible side.

Today is October 15th. 4 months to the day since the last time I climbed. Now if you care about me at all, you need to do two very important things. Come hang out with me at the wall and be a super encouraging belayer, and wish very hard that wintery-ness holds off a bit this year - long enough for me to get strong enough for just one late-season Gunks weekend.

List of Happy Things:

I can tie my own shoes.

I have gone several entire days without the back brace, though not consecutively.

I discovered that over the counter pain medication, if actually swallowed, really does take the edge off concussion headaches. Who knew?

I have a cider mill donut. Right now.

My physical therapist has "100% confidence" I will be able to ski this winter.

I came back in 4 weeks. We did not talk about the climbing gym.

"Something hit you in the head hard enough to crush 5 of your vertebrae. How are you surprised that your head was seriously hurt?" -my doctor

It's a valid point.
My last visit to the Dr. was at 9 weeks. I wrote a post about it with lots of pictures and optimism. I was pretty psyched to have some good news. Due to it's length and my shocking lack of attention span, considering the only things on my To Do list in mid-August were sleeping and eating at least once every 24 hours, I did not write about the whole second half of the visit where we talked about my head injury.

So when I got hurt, they told me at the ER that I had a concussion - I had to be observed carefully for 48 hours and they said I'd probably have a headache for a week or two. It was never mentioned again. At my 6 week check-up, I told the neurosurgeon that my headache had never gone away - it wasn't unbearable, but I was concerned it might be a bad sign. You know when you get clonked in the noggin, and the next day your head kinda hurts, enough to make you more or less constantly aware that you were recently clonked in the noggin? That's the kind of headache we're talking about. So the neurosurgeon guy shrugged it off and said "Sure, that's normal - pain 6 months later would be considered normal." I didn't know whether to be relieved that this pain was not an alarming symptom, or dismayed that I could expect it to continue well into the winter.

Back in Cortland 3 weeks later, my headaches had gotten worse - to the point where I just wanted to lay still and no longer cared about the boredom, and had to apply lots of ice packs just to be able to relax or think straight. By the way, a freshly iced eyeball is a weird thing. I woke up once from an inadvertent nap with ice packs still on my face, and instantly panicked that I had some sort of corneal frostbite.

My new Dr. said "hmmmm...." and seemed a bit concerned that my symptoms were worsening. He diagnosed me:

Dr.: "You have Post-Concussion Syndrome."
Me: "Interesting, what is that exactly?"
Dr.: "That's anytime someone has concussion symptoms more than 2 weeks after the injury."
Me: "Well what causes it?"
Dr.: "We don't know."
Me: "How long does it take to get better?"
Dr.: "Oh, anywhere from 2 weeks to never."
Me: "What other symptoms are there?"
Dr.: "They can include any or many or all or none of the symptoms on this 4 page list."

So as you can imagine, I was enormously relieved to know that my headaches were the direct result of a made-up syndrome with a terribly unimaginative name. It was a lot like when I first went to the hospital unable to breathe this summer, and was eventually sent home with an informative printout that said "You have Dyspnea!" For those of you not in the medical profession and who studied a foreign language that is still spoken, "dyspnea" is latin for "difficulty breathing". (apnea is lack of breathing - like sleep apnea)
Ok, people, that's not a diagnosis. You just repeated my symptoms back to me. I know I have difficulty breathing, that's why I came to the hospital. It's the equivalent of going to the hospital with severe abdominal pains and having them tell you "AHA!!! We figured it out! You have 'Stomachache'. That will be $5,000." The rest of the piece of paper went on to say, basically, "You should probably see a Dr. about this." I thought the hospital was where the doctors were, and so I went there. My mistake.

Back to the head injury. My Dr.expressed concern that I was going to be back at school and work in 2 weeks, and would be shifting dramatically from a life of leisure to a full academic schedule plus 25-hour work week. He said it was very important to do a little homework every day and not procrastinate and expect to do all my studying at once, because I would likely find myself unable to do it. Also, that I should expect my headaches to get worse, that studying would be more difficult than I remembered, and that I should contact my school's office for student disability services to let them know I might need accommodations.

Me: You mean like, a special chair to sit in? Cause of my back?
Dr.: Well yes, but also cognitive accommodations.
Me: .....you're talking about a learning disability??
Dr.: Yes. A temporary learning disability. But yes. You see, you have a brain injury.
Me: riiiight.....

The student disability services office, by the way, was extremely helpful. Their response to my long and detailed email, verbatim: "We don't deal with temporary disabilities in this office." If you were wondering, there is no such thing as a separate temporary disability services office at my school. I decided this was not a bureaucratic battle I wanted to fight, and let it go.

I had a hard time believing that my brain would behave any differently than it always has. Aside from the headaches, I had experienced no cognitive problems in the 9 weeks since my injury. I now realize that that's a bit like assuming your leg must be fine after an injury without actually trying to walk on it. It's not like netflix and scarf-knitting were really testing my mental limits.

Fast forward to my 13-week check-up. I had now been back in school for a few weeks, and by now I was supposed to be brace-free and contemplating the climbing gym. Instead, I was doing the absolute bare minimum to get through my days. I did no homework, just made it through class and went home. Most of my classes - some I had to skip. Luckily I have really understanding bosses who looked the other way as I put in about 6 hours a week at my 20 hour a week job. Other than that, I was back to sleeping about 14 hours a night. All of my signs of progress had begun to move backwards. My doctor recommended that I take the semester off and focus on rehab. I told him that unless someone was willing to marry me and put me on their health insurance, that was not an option. This resulted in a rather romantic proposal from Markette, but sadly it would take 6 months for us to prove domestic partnership, unlike marriage, which requires 15 minutes with a Justice of the Peace.

So instead my physical therapist told me I had to stop physical therapy. So I could quit school, and therefore my job, and be without health insurance and therefore unable to go to physical therapy, and also probably starve a little bit. OR, I could quit PT, keep powering through school stuff, have a huge rehab setback, and hopefully not fail all my classes making it all pointless anyway. It was not a fun choice, but ultimately an easy one because I like to eat.

A few interesting things happened in the next few weeks. I had my first Field Bio test of the year. I completely bombed it. This was the first time in my life that a teacher handed me a test and I stared at the page and literally NOTHING came out of my brain in response to it. I studied for it. I even started studying 4 days earlier than I usually would have, in an attempt to ammend my procrastinating ways. I just couldn't retrieve any of the information afterward. I chalked this up to my constant exhaustion and the fact that I haven't taken a science class since high school. Later that evening, I had a quiz in my other class. Eight of the questions were conceptual - "Explain how Romanticism influenced the views of American pioneers..." - they could be answered with story-like information. I had studied well and I breezed through all these questions, no problem. The other two questions were factual - "Name two European Romantics who..." - nothing. I stared at these questions blankly for the rest of the test time. I could remember stories about these people, but I absolutely could not think of any names. The stark contrast between the way my brain responded to these two types of information made me start to think something fishy might be going on.

The next incident was far more conclusive. I came home to an empty apartment after work and laid in the living room for hours eating and resting and reading. Later in the evening I walked down the hall and jumped a mile when I saw my roommate in her bedroom.

Me: "Wow, you scared me! I didn't know you were home, when did you get here?"
Roomy: "Uh, I came home about an hour ago."
Me: "How did I not see you?"
Roomy: "Um.....I came in, we had a conversation, I handed you your mail...."

Turns out my mail was on the table next to me, but I would have sworn she was not in the house. It's kinda hilarious, if you don't think too hard about what it means.

I think this was when I started to really understand that I had a really bad accident, and I was kinda seriously injured. I think it's probably a great defense mechanism that I grasped this very gradually, one new piece of information at a time. "6 weeks in a back brace" was hard enough to hear back in June. If they had told me then that my life would continue to be seriously impacted well into the next winter I'm not sure I would have handled it well. I knew it would take a long time to heal, I wasn't remotely prepared for how long. I figured I'd have to start at square one physically after my bones healed, now I'm looking forward to the far-off day when I'll be able to see square one from here. I knew I had a traumatic brain injury, but I somehow never imagined that it would affect my actual brain.

Yep, I'm the smartest.

I can't relate to Nelson Mandela.

One of the movies I watched earlier this summer was "Invictus", which is about how anyone can win the World Cup if Nelson Mandela wants them to hard enough. I enjoyed the fact that, even though it was based on real life, the super scary impossible team to beat was the one with all-black uniforms, just like in the Mighty Ducks or any other underdog-wins-it-all kid's sports movie.

 At least 50% of what I know about Nelson Mandela came directly from this movie. (social studies was never my strong suit). At one point, the football team takes a tour of the prison and the cell where Mandela spent about 30 years of his life. It's half the size of my bedroom and not lavishly furnished. A lot of the movie is about how some people expect him to be all pissed off and revenge-y now that he's in charge, but instead he's all like "No, everyone, the country is the most important and we need to be peaceful and get along, ok? Hey, wait, just watch this football match and get distracted and excited about that." Someone remarks that he spent 30 years in a box and came out ready to love the people who put him there.

This makes my brain explode.

At the time I was watching this, I had been in a back brace and pretty immobile for 2 or 3 weeks. Nobody put me there unless you count that jerk gravity. I would have throttled babies if it would get me out of it any sooner.

After telling this to my brother, who has a bigger soft spot for very young humans and animals than I ever will, he got a little upset and said "No, you wouldn't! Don't say that." I considered, and realized that if I think about it hard enough, babies are people too and I probably wouldn't hurt them. Puppies, though. I would absolutely throttle puppies if it would help. Not dogs, but only because most of them could probably take me in a fight. Baby bunnies? Definitely. With my bare hands. He wasn't really a lot less shocked about that, but I stand by it.

This is the cutest baby bunny I could find, because imagining me throttling him is still probably less offensive than me trying to draw stick-figure Nelson Mandela.

I declare that my life is more important than an animal's. In fact, my quality of life is more important than an animal's life. I imagine I would take some heat for that, if more than 4 people read this blog. Here's the thing though - with the exception of any super strict lifelong leather-avoiding animal-tested-product-eschewing vegans out there, you all have made the same choice. If you eat a turkey sandwich, you are declaring that the quality of your lunch is more important than an animal's life. So if it would magically heal my spine faster, I would absolutely end the lives of any number of small creatures. If there is a difference between this and eating the turkey sandwich, it's that at least I would be doing my own dirty work. Which probably makes it more, not less, moral. (and yes, my brother eats turkey and other meats).

So how Nelson Mandela managed to be chill about being forced to spend three decades in a box is beyond my comprehension. A lesser, slightly pettier man might inspire admiration, but Nelson laps himself and just inspires confusion and a suspicion that he might not actually be a real person.

I made onion pie!

My friend Markette is hosting an Iron Chef party tonight, the theme ingredient is onions. I have always considered onions to be more of a flavoring than a theme, so I pondered long and hard what kind of dish I could make. Then I pondered longer and harder whether I really wanted to attend a party where everything was made of onions, and where therefore there would almost certainly be no dessert. Or makeouts, come to think of it. And if there did happen to be dessert or makeouts, they certainly wouldn't be ones I'd be eager to partake in. I like most of my desserts and makeouts to be onion-free.

I decided to make some kind of onion tart, because I am pretty good at pie crust and therefore I'm halfway there without having to learn anything about onions. Also, I know it's a real thing because I entered "onion pie" into the food network search engine and like 17 onion tart recipes came up. Win! I'm pretty confident in the quality of my pie crust, and regarding the filling, I think anyone who doesn't like onions won't be at this party. Then while chatting with Markette I discovered that our entries will be judged on presentation as well as taste, and that there will be prizes.

I think the appearance of food should not be so gross that you are discouraged from tasting it, but beyond that, I've never put much thought into the presentation of my food. When I make pie, I usually put it in a pie pan and make a fluted crust, like this:

Some of the recipes I found featured a lazier approach, which involved just kinda folding the crust all over itself, tossing it on a cookie sheet (no pie pan necessary) and calling it "rustic". On reflection, I think any food that was most likely invented by people who were very near starvation and were absolutely out of all other edible possibilities - such as anything featuring as the main ingredient onions, potatoes, or grass - is most appropriately presented rustically. As a bonus, this presentation covers up more of the filling of the pie, so the starving people can imagine that maybe, just maybe there is something that once belonged to a mammal under the edges of the crust, and they are not about to dig into a pie full of a vegetable that contains zero vitamins and 12 calories.

Appropriate or not, I'm not sure the rustic tart look is going to win me any Iron Chef creative presentation awards. It might be overall a safer choice than onion gelato, which one of the real Iron Chefs would be bound to try - because they think they can shove anything through their super-fast nitrogen-fueled freezer machine and force it to be ice cream. Blech.

So here's what I came up with:

Which is the rustic look, except with an onion on top.
And some confetti, to class it up.
And a bow, because I still had more dough.


*I do not have a problem with and actually quite enjoy dishes of all kinds involving onions. And potatoes. I think grass smells nice and is pleasant to walk on barefoot, but I have never tried to bake it into a pie so I will reserve judgment. Also Markette is awesome and neither she nor her parties ever really need to be pondered.

Nothing better than a Dr. who GETS it.

I had every intention of writing my next post about something unrelated to my accident, resulting injuries, or medical treatment thereof. I was at first stumped by the fact that nothing else remotely interesting has happened to me since June 15th. Then I suddenly realized "Wait a minute!! I lived a lot of life before June 15th, and some of it was interesting!" So I thought about some fun stories from my pre-accident life that might be worth sharing, and even started writing about how I learned to drive stick. It's a delightful story, set in Sicily; but I haven't finished it yet and today for the first time in 9 weeks I have medical news I'm excited about, so I'm going to share that instead.

Yesterday marked 9 weeks from the day of my accident. My last check-up was at 6 weeks, right before I left Boulder. The PA (physician's assistant - didn't actually see the Dr. the last time) told me it would still be another 6 weeks before I could take off my brace or start PT, and another 6 weeks after that before I could start thinking about climbing, even in the gym. When I returned home, obviously I had to change doctors and I decided to go see a Sports Medicine specialist who I've seen before. Yes, sadly, this is not my first serious injury in the 12 months since I moved here. I decided to go this route instead of looking for another Neurosurgeon for two reasons. First, I figure now that my brain and actual spinal cord have been cleared, and my main concern is regaining function, that this was a better way to go. Second, I started to get the distinct impression from the neurosurgeon that my case bored him. I suppose it's understandable, he's used to dealing with patients who might be paralyzed, or might die, and only he can save them. That does sound a lot more exciting. I think he got tired of telling me I didn't need surgery.

So today I went to see my new spine doctor (formerly my foot doctor). He started by thanking me for bringing in 27 pages of notes and 5 CDs of Xrays and CT scans, and told me he would have to keep me waiting for a few minutes because he wanted to review it thoroughly and get all caught up. Gold star! Another thing I love about this guy is that he ends every conversation with "Do you have any other concerns today?" and if you do, after you talk about it, he asks again. He keeps asking, until you don't have anything else to say. This is especially great when you are there about your spine but you also hurt your head, and neck, and rib, and also have questions about lung clots and pain medications and insomnia and some other stuff. Also, everyone else in the office is equally awesome beyond description. I sorta want to drop out of grad school and get my medical transcriptionist degree or something from calling that 800 number just so I can go work there.

First on the agenda was another X-ray. Really, another set of 4 X-rays. If I ever get torso cancer of any sort, I think we'll be able to safely trace it back to this Summer of Radiation, and therefore to Eric falling on my head. I hope we're in the same old folks home so I can complain to him about it. The doctor said that my X-rays look good, that my fractures look "pretty stable", and spent a few minutes saying reassuring things like "You'll heal fine, you'll be able to do everything you could before, you won't have pain forever, and you don't need surgery to achieve any of this." Medical professionals have felt the need to "reassure" me with statements like this at every step along the way, which makes me begin to suspect that I've never been properly worried about all of these things.

He did an exam including asking me, sans brace, to try to touch my toes. This was such a foreign concept to me at this point that I actually had to stop and consider it. I didn't make it, but I got a closer view of my feet than I've had in months, which was pretty novel.

So here's all the good news:
I can start physical therapy!! Physical therapy is one of my favorite things in the world. It is probably my third favorite activity ever. I recognize that this ranking is evidence that I have experienced a sad number of functional injuries. I told the doctor that I was hoping he would say that, because I already made an appointment for Friday. He got a kick out of that.

Time to start weaning off the back brace! Weaning means that today I could take the brace off for one hour, and then I add an hour to that each day, as long as I'm doing ok with it and not hurting. That means that potentially, in 16 days, I could be done with this cursed thing forever! Although that "as long as you're not hurting" thing is tricky - I have always had trouble distinguishing levels of pain for my doctors and physical therapists. I can correctly identify "no pain" and "holycrapIcan'tthinkstraightandIjustvomited" pain, but there is a lot of gray area in between that I can usually only identify as somewhere in between. What is my pain, on a scale of 1-10? Um, somewhere between 2 and 9. That's all I got.

I have always thought that pain scale was pretty stupid, anyway. If 10 is supposed to represent "the worst pain you've ever felt", then what does 10 mean to someone who has never experienced anything worse than a skinned knee, vs. someone who's had, say, their eyes gouged out with red-hot pokers? My back pain, by the way, is currently somewhere between skinned knee and gouged eyes.

My doctor almost told me I could go to the climbing gym now. Almost. He asked how I would feel about that, and I said "GREAT!!!!", perhaps a tad too enthusiastically. He said "I meant, would you feel safe trying it out.... "

"...you'd have to be really careful, and pay really close attention to your pain...."

(warily eyeing the twitching hands and too-eager smile of an addict about to get a fix) 

 "....actually, nevermind. Forget I said that. Do physical therapy, come back in 4 weeks, we'll talk about the climbing gym then. If I set you loose in there now you'll hurt yourself."
Too true, doc. Too true.

I know he's right. I knew it when he said it, and I appreciate having a doctor who knows me and can help figure out what's best for me. But after my first one-hour session without my brace, I now fully realize that if I had stepped into the climbing gym today, I simply would have killed myself.

Physically, the brace doesn't really bother me that much. I don't love it, but I'm completely used to it. I look forward to being healed, and being out of the brace would mean a step toward that, but otherwise I don't particularly long to get out of it, specifically. So I was really caught off guard by my reaction to my hour of freedom.

I went fucking giddy.
There are no other words for it.

I felt I had to make the most of the hour. I couldn't be too active, the doctor said not to choose, say, my daily walk for the hour of no brace. What to do? I decided to bake muffins.

Nothing stopped me from baking muffins in a back brace. But somehow, this was crazy exciting.

I ran out onto my balcony, and stood there just feeling the breeze through my...torso. It was awesome. Just feeling my torso unencumbered was awesome. Look, I know, you're all thinking "sensory deprivation of the torso? psssshhhht. " I understand. I've apparently experienced it for 9 weeks, and I didn't know it existed either.

With ten minutes to go, I started to get stressed. I suddenly desperately wanted a hug. I haven't had a proper hug in over two months, and again while aware of this fact didn't think I was too bothered by it - but suddenly I felt like I had frittered away my precious hour of torso freedom and chastised myself for not planning ahead to have a hug-buddy available.
As my hour ended, I knew I should put my brace back on. Aside from the clock, my back hurt, and I knew there was a reason I was supposed to do this in baby steps. I had a brief mental struggle when I sorta considered running out to the car and driving away somewhere leaving the brace far behind... and then I sighed and put it back on.

My point is, if baking muffins and standing on my porch nearly tempted me over to the dark side, what would've happened at the climbing wall?

That's right. I would've climbed myself into giddy oblivion and died.

Old Lady Update

AKA how's my health?

I know that I haven't updated this in a while, or been responding to many emails. I had some new and scary health concerns which some of you heard just enough about to be really concerned when you didn't hear anything more, for weeks. I'm sorry about that, I didn't mean to worry anyone unnecessarily. I just kinda mentally switched strategies from reaching out, to shutting down. I started to just get through the days by thinking as little as possible, because there's not much for me to think about that isn't painful right now.

So here's the highlights of the last few weeks:

I woke up on Friday of 4th of July weekend and suddenly was having trouble breathing. I was able to fill my lungs completely without pain (no more than usual) or difficulty, but it just wasn't giving me enough air. I felt like I was sprinting all out when I was just standing in my kitchen. This probably would have been a good time to go to the hospital or call for help, but I was alone in the house and all I could think about was laying on the floor as still as possible so I could breathe. I could get enough air as long as I didn't move, or talk much. It was pretty scary because I realized that if it got any worse, I couldn't exactly lower my activity level any further. After laying still most of the day, my friend Coby called and asked how I was doing, so I filled her in on the breathing troubles. Coby is an RN (and soon to be a Nurse Practitioner) so when she said "uh, you should be in the hospital" I listened. Just walking from the car to the ER waiting room had me gasping for breath again, which was kinda good cause I tend to always assume I'm fine and that seeking medical attention is generally an overreaction (only when pertaining to me, of course), so it was like extra affirmation that the ER was the place for me. The ER doctors and nurses thought so too, and ran a bunch of tests for some life-threatening conditions. They all came back negative. This is good news in that all the obvious life-threatening things were ruled out, probably, but the downside is that they sent me home with a big shrug.

"Uh, we don't know why you can't breathe. If it gets better, yay! If it gets worse, then we'll have more clues! (House, anyone?) If it stays the same, uh, go see another doctor."

So less than a week later I had a follow-up appt. with my neurosurgeon about my spine, so I figured if I was still having trouble breathing by then I could mention it to him. I mean, you have to learn all the regular dr. stuff before you move onto neurosurgery, right? I filled him in on the breathing troubles and the ER visit. First he chastised me for not walking more. I said "Well, I was just starting to, and then I couldn't breathe enough to stand up or carry on a conversation, so I figured hiking was out.". He told me that if it didn't improve I needed to find myself a primary care doctor. This is neurosurgeon for "Lady, I'm a neurosurgeon. I do brains and spines, because I am the best of all the surgeons. Don't waste my time with your so-called 'lungs'". Then he told me I might have a broken rib. This has nothing to do with the breathing, apparently. A lot of times when you crack a rib, or get a hairline fracture in any bone, it doesn't show up on the first X-ray, but they can see evidence of it on subsequent X-rays as the bone starts to heal. I was also having sharp pains off to the side in my back in addition to the spine, which I hadn't felt during my drugged-out phase but did clearly remember telling the EMTs about when the accident first happened. So now the Dr. is telling me I might have a broken rib, but he couldn't be sure without an MRI. I'm like "uh, would the treatment be any different from what I'm already doing?" He says "No, that's why I don't really care too much." I just find it kind of hilarious that I might have a broken rib, and it doesn't matter. At all. Basically, my body is so messed up already, what's one more broken bone? I hope someone out there is laughing with me on this one.

I asked the all-important question: "How much longer in the back brace?"
Dr.: (condescending stare) "Do you remember what I told you last time?"
Me: "Yes, you said three months, but I was hoping you changed your mind."
Dr.: "You can go climb today, you're a grown-up. If you want my opinion, you need to be in the brace three months or you're going to make your spine much worse. But hey, I'm just the neurosurgeon, you can do what you want."
Me: ".....Touche."

The following week was tough and scary, but having been assured that my breathing problem was (probably) not going to kill me, I forced myself to do painful deep-breathing exercises, go outside and walk every day, and started getting more strict with myself on eating and sleeping healthy amounts. By the end of the week I was completely off pain meds and walking about an hour a day. My breathing had improved enough that I was finally convinced that it was not going to kill me, though it was still not what it had been before that horrible morning. I even started to drive. It is extremely uncomfortable, tough to shift, and impossible to look over my left shoulder which is occasionally a problem in city traffic. Also I once forgot to put my seatbelt on for like ten minutes cause the back brace gives the illusion of being very strapped in. Still the increased freedom made it all worthwhile.

Physically things finally seemed to be leveling out. Mentally, I was absolutely bouncing off the walls of my metaphorical padded cell, and ready to jump at any chance to get out of the house. (By the way, I'm no longer taking movie suggestions. After 700+ hours of horizontal passive entertainment, there is literally no movie exciting enough to be even remotely appealing.) I saw that Neptune Mountaineering was hosting a slide show presentation of some Patagonian climbing adventures. This event was A. free, B. sedentary, C. climbing-related, and D. not in my living room. Win! I recruited Eric and suffered through an hour and a half of a folding chair to look at the pretty climbing pictures.

Stuff like this is kinda a mixed bag for me right now. On the one hand, I'm so jealous of people who can climb right now it actually causes me physical pain. On the inside. On the other hand, avoiding talking about climbing or hearing about friends' climbs or looking at pictures of climbing or whatever else just makes me feel more isolated and distant from the world I love. I know that friends sometimes avoid over-sharing about their latest climbing exploits, and I know that comes from a place of good intentions. They aren't entirely wrong - see above re: soul-eroding jealousy. The flip side is that it makes me feel a lot like a 5 year old, with adults spelling words around me to discuss things I shouldn't hear about. Like "dessert". Which incidentally, is the first word I ever learned how to spell. It's also a really good analogy - you don't want to talk about fabulously awesome things around people who can't have them.

I've also become somewhat irrationally angry at healthy people who choose to lead not-so-active lifestyles. I just want to yell at them:

 "Are you kidding me? Your body WORKS!! Do you know how amazing that is??
Could you go outside and play?
It'd be awesome if you could trade bodies with me, since all you want to do is sit around and watch  movies anyway. But since you can't, please go appreciate your functioning spine and all your functioning limbs before I kick you in the teeth.
Ok, I'm bluffing. But when I'm healed, I'm coming back to kick you in the teeth.
I'm going climbing, and running, and skiing, all in the same day, and THEN I'll come back here and kick you in the teeth."

Luckily, I don't know too many non-active people so I don't have to listen to this slightly insane internal diatribe too often.

Since getting landed on by a 200 lb. drunk guy last weekend, sharp pain has returned to my spine which I had been free of for almost 2 weeks. Driving and walking is uncomfortable enough to almost entirely discourage me from doing it, yet I refuse to take the vicodin again, because that would be like admitting I've gone backwards. I'm certain that at the very least, that incident caused a setback in my healing time, but thinking about that makes me intensely angry so I try to ignore it. I'm terrified that it actually caused more damage. As I understand it, either my spine is still in good alignment and all I can do is continue in my back brace, for however long. Or it's not, and I will need surgery to fix it, which would be painful and dangerous and drastically increase my healing time. Or it's not, and it's inoperable, which could mean lifelong problems. The only way to find out is with more X-rays, which I was unwilling to take another trip to the ER to get. I have a follow-up appt. with my neurosurgeon next Tuesday, and I did try to get it moved up to this week after the incident, but they were fully booked.

I admit I didn't try very hard. I think the prospect of dealing with this secondary injury or even admitting that it actually happened and could be an issue was just one thing too many, and I really shut down. I spent most of the week doing whatever required the least possible movement and thinking, and bursting into tears a lot. I get Climbing magazine in the mail, frustrated tears. I get a card in the mail, "aw that's so sweet" tears. I get care packages in the mail, bigger tears. I get medical bills saying "your insurance company isn't paying and we want 8 million dollars", fetal position. And tears. It's been a very emotional mail week. I think about climbing, I think about the pain, the fear that I won't get better, the fear that I'll lose my mind before I do. I think about the friends and family and people I love that I miss terribly, I think about my life and myself that I miss terribly. Tears, tears, tears. I hate driving, which I have always adored. I put off showering, walking, going to the store, because it all seems unreasonably hard. I collapse in pain in Target because I tried to carry a half gallon of juice to the counter.

I have to go get a giant shopping cart to put my sad little carton of juice in.

I feel like this represents my utter and complete failure at life.

Tears.

I am not usually much of a crier, but I have cried more this summer than probably the last ten years of my life combined. It's like the floodgates opened - I reached a critical threshold and some wire was tripped in my brain that says "Sobbing is an acceptable response to... everything." Ask me how I am, there is an 80% chance I won't be able to utter a 2-word response without my voice breaking. Don't take it personally. This is an awkward question to answer, by the way, because the ingrained socially acceptable response is "I'm fine, how are you?" I have always hated answering this question dishonestly though, and I assume if you ask, it's because you want to know. If you don't want to know, and you asked anyway, well then you're stuck listening to the answer. Still I like to keep it brief, and let people ask for ellaboration if they so choose, so I say something like "Terrible, how are you?" I find it is impossible to say this without sounding bitter. Don't let that discourage you from asking though, I always appreciate the thought.

It's been a rough week. Every week for the last 6 weeks has been rough, but this week I just completely emotionally retreated. I know there are people who get injured far worse than I have been, and in permanent ways, and they are gracious and strong and rise above it all and inspire those around them. I am fully aware that I am not one of those people, and I have always known that I wouldn't be. I realize that the way I have been dealing lately has been the emotional equivalent of curling into a ball and covering my ears and singing "LALALALAICAN'THEARYOU!!!!" I feel like a big failure at life. I am sorry to everyone whose emails and phone calls I kinda just stopped responding to - I always intended to get back to you later when I was feeling a little better - and it just hasn't happened yet. So under strong encouragement to write an update and let people know the latest, I wrote this post. Took about 5 days to write it in bits and pieces, I was getting easily overwhelmed and had to take lots of breaks. I'm glad I wrote it though, and I hope you are too. I'll try to do better.

By the way, sorry for another downer. Read about my adventure at the movies, that should be more entertaining!

Adventures in Leaving the House

My friend Coby has a special talent for internet research. Like you'll be talking to her on the phone and casually mention how you've been craving some obscure dish you used to eat when you lived in Sicily, and 2 minutes later she'll be like "oh by the way, there are 3 restaurants in a 20 mile radius of you that make that - one got poor reviews but another one delivers to your zip code! I just emailed you a coupon." So when I came up empty for ideas for things to do which are not physically demanding, she sent me a link to the Boulder events calendar. I realize that looking up a local events calendar is not that impressive, but that doesn't mean that Coby herself isn't impressive, and I wanted to give her a proper introduction.

Two things immediately caught my eye among the daily salsa dances and free outdoor concerts - well ok, three, but I think there may be an age limit on this one. One is the Boulder Brew Bus: "For the ultimate beer experience, you'll board Banjo Billy's private, funky bus..."
Wow.
They had me at banjo. No, wait, they had me at beer. They almost lost me again at $30, but hey, desperate times.

The other is Boulder Outdoor Cinema. Watching a movie in a lawn chair? I've been training for that all summer! It would be just like how I've spent the last 768 hours of my life, except outdoors, surrounded by lots of other people in lawn chairs. It's like taking a lame, depressing activity and turning it into a fun socially acceptable community event. I'm in! Unfortunately, this didn't seem that exciting to any of the other 5 people I know in this city. Honestly, I can completely understand that. Still, watching a movie alone outside with strangers seemed slightly more appealing than watching a movie alone in my living room, so I put on my Little Engine face, packed a PB&J, and dragged my lawn chair to the car.

Getting from the parking lot with the cars to the parking lot with the movie, finding a spot off to the side with a clear view, and setting up the lawn chair was strenuous. Between the chair, water bottle, dinner, and book I was probably exceeding my cargo capacity. But I got all set up, sank into my trusty lawn chair, and felt the familiar relaxing 45 degree angle. Ahhhhh. The breeze was blowing, the trees were shading, the mountains were looking all majestic in the background. They had live music, snacks, and hula hoops. Kids were running around barefoot, people were eating, drinking, playing cards, laughing. It was downright pastoral. 

Then a guy shows up with several large bags and politely asks if he can "set up shop" in the empty 4'x5' space directly in front of me. I was surprised to be asked, but told him to feel free. Lounging on his queen sized air mattress, he definitely wasn't going to block my view, and I was inwardly pleased to see that I was not the only lame...er... confident, independent person going to the movie alone.
Then his date showed up. High heels, fancy dress, nervous giggle - she was trying a bit too hard for the occasion, I'm thinking first date, or at least early date. Then the guy produces some food from his many bags: fresh-baked bread, brie, two plastic wine glasses, and 3 different varieties of fruit juice so he could be sure he had one she liked. Definitely a first date. He then proceeds to pull more food from the bag, until he has a 5-course meal arrayed on the airbed which could have fed a family of 12. I know you'll think that's hyperbole, but it's not - and if I exaggerated even the slightest from the truth, you would just think I was being ridiculous and it would lose its impact.

Now, I don't begrudge people having a first date, even a wildly over-the-top first date. I happen to think going all out on occasions like dates, Halloween, 4th of July, and birthdays is both appropriate and fabulous. It's just that usually, when two people are doing their awkward "I want to touch you but I don't want to look like I want to touch you so I'm going to sit in a way that makes me 'accidentally' touch you and then see if anyone pulls away" dance as they try to figure out how to sit/lay in an appropriate yet not uptight manner on a squishy airbed, I don't have to witness it from 3" away. Add to this scene my extremely limited ability to turn my head in other directions, and it was awkward to say the least. I should add that they were both polite and friendly, and in addition to asking permission to sit in front of me the guy offered to share their all-you-can-eat picnic with me. I politely declined. 7 times. And proceeded to eat my PB&J before I was exactly hungry just to lay to rest their fears that I might be secretly starving.

I have to admit they at least provided me with entertainment before the entertainment. The band was good, the weather was pleasant, and I tried very hard to zen myself into enjoying how pretty the mountains looked without being bitter that I wasn't currently hanging from the side of one of them. As the sun went down and the previews began to roll, a very large, very inebriated man stumbled up behind me, then stumbled onto me, then sorta rolled/stumbled off of me again and stumbled off into the bushes, mumbling in a slurry sort of way. I was laying in my lawn chair, which supports you if you lay on it, but if you are to push on the back of the chair in the opposite direction, it offers no resistance. This is the direction in which 200 lbs. of drunk guy fell onto me, then pushed off of me to try to stand up again. As everyone knows, being drunk makes you not only less coordinated but also much heavier. This forced my head forward and bent my torso in exactly the way I am really not supposed to, and I felt sharp pain in my back worse than any since - well, since the last time a guy fell on my head.

At this point in the story, you may be wondering "Who on earth pre-games The Princess Bride?" The movie hadn't even started yet and this guy seemed about 10 drinks farther in than is really warranted for 8pm at a family event. My dad, at this point in the story, was wondering "Did you get his insurance information?" I reminded him of the drunkenness. He said "Being drunk doesn't absolve you of your legal responsibilities." I tried to explain that while that may be true, there was probably very little a 120 lb. girl in a back brace and a lot of pain could do to enforce the legal responsibilities of a 200 lb. guy who would be hiccupping bubbles if he were a cartoon. Also, that it would probably be wisest to cut my losses and end the interaction between us as quickly as possible. All I was thinking, at this point in the story, was "Ow."

I figured watching a movie in a lawn chair would be pretty safe. It's not like I went out clubbing, I mean who expects someone to land on their head at a kid's movie? What are the chances? My theory is that my spine is cursed. Eric, ever optimistic, reasons that after all this my bad luck must have run out by now, and therefore I can probably do whatever I want from now on. I like his style. 

If you're wondering about Banjo Billy and his funky brew bus, I wasn't able to interest anyone else in joining me and decided that while I couldn't have foreseen being injured by a drunken lout at an outdoor kid's movie, I would probably just be asking for trouble climbing onto a beer-tasting tour bus unaccompanied. Maybe next year.

I need help.

I have been encouraged by many friends, and sternly instructed by those who know me best, to ask for help when I need it. It is very difficult for me to admit to myself that I need help in the first place, and even more difficult to admit it to others. Accepting offers of help still causes me some discomfort but openly asking for help, especially when it is truly needed and not just something that might be nice, is close to impossible for me.

The truth is, I am in the most difficult situation I have ever been in. During my entire life, I have never needed support and help more than I do right now. This injury is the worst I have ever had, in terms of incapacitation - though thankfully the prognosis is good, and the incapacitation will ultimately be temporary. This situation would be difficult and painful for anyone, but those who know me will understand that my weaknesses being what they are, I am perhaps more vulnerable to this hardship than some.

I am not patient. I live in the moment, my world is what it is now. Knowing what tomorrow or next year will be has very little resonance for me. I bitterly resent anything that undermines my self-sufficience. Incapacitation is a personal nightmare. I once had a cast on my left wrist which immobilized my thumb completely, and 10 days later tried to tear it off in the single time I have ever experienced what can only be described as a fit of rage. I have great difficulty, as I mentioned, asking for help.

I know some people would be thrilled, minus the pain and back brace, to spend a summer free of obligations reclining and watching tv. I have always been utterly baffled by these people. I am not an "indoor" girl. I dislike days which pass without some type of strenuous activity, and when 3 or more of those days stack up in a row, I start to have trouble sleeping and my mood is seriously affected.

I am a climber. I have obligations to school and to my job, to my family and friends. I need to sleep and to eat. When I'm not doing those things, I am climbing. When weather and health allows, I climb. This is something you either understand or not, so I won't elaborate further. Being unable to climb for 3 months, or 6 months, is a serious emotional hardship for me. This goes far beyond that, to being unable to shower without assistance, to drive, to reach anything below my waist or above my head, to look over my shoulder, to sit up, to sleep through the night, to pick up a gallon of milk.

I'm not making (or asking for) value judgments on any of this. I'm not saying that any of these things are good or bad, unique or common, things to be proud of or ashamed of. I know that there are many, many people in situations far worse or far better than mine and I'm not making comparisons. These are just traits I bring to the table and the situation that I am in, and I'm just laying it out there. Read about it or don't, care or not, it's perfectly alright.

If you're still reading, here's some things that I need and that maybe you can help with, if you would like to help. I apologize for the long melodramatic introduction, I suppose that venting is one of the things I needed.

1. Above all, company. Distraction. Conversation. If you are in Boulder, think of me when you are doing something fun (that I'd be capable of doing - if you're not sure, never hurts to ask). When you go to the grocery store. Watch a movie. Make dinner. Short walks around the neighborhood with some good conversation are wonderful. Driving me somewhere else to walk is great too. This is very uncomfortable to ask because it feels like I am inviting myself places, especially when I may not be the most exciting company I have ever been - but the point is, always assume I'm not busy and would love even short visits or mundane errands.

2. If you are not in Boulder, and have always wanted an excuse to visit, you've got one! More realistically, any communication is good. Emails, real mail, phone calls, text messages, facebook notes, it's all good. Sometimes I am in too much pain or too tired or too drugged to answer the phone, or write back right away. I promise you I will still enjoy the voicemail. Every little bit helps, and reminds me that I am not as alone as I feel and lots of people care.

3. Driving. I am on less painkillers with each passing day, and I am hopeful that I will be able to drive soon. It is still too difficult to turn my head and look around for me to be comfortable behind the wheel. I depend on others to get me to the grocery store, pharmacy, and Drs. appointments. I wouldn't say no to trips to other places too.

4. Patience and understanding. I know that I am not my usual cheerful, optimistic, joyful self. I know that about 80% of my end of conversations usually turns into venting, and about 5% uncomfortable tears. I am excruciatingly aware of this and feel really, really bad about it. If it bothers you, avoid talking to me. I don't blame you at all. If it doesn't bother you, reassure me of this. Be patient, trust that I will be myself again someday soon. Maybe reassure me that I will be myself again someday soon.

5. Entertainment! Movie suggestions (I have netflix). TV show suggestions. Addictive online game suggestions. Brilliant creative ideas you have for things you can do in a lawn chair. Ideas for projects. If you are more of an indoor person, what do you do with your time? I'm seriously intensely curious.

6. Encouragement. The thing that I fear most right now is losing myself, who I'm really very fond of, in a rising tide of bitterness and frustration. Tell me that it will be ok, that I'm still an awesome person even in a lawn chair, that I am strong enough to get through this with my personality intact. I consider myself to be a strong person, but this is hitting me in all my weakest parts while depriving me of many of my usual coping mechanisms. This should go without saying, but if you believe that I "had this coming" or "brought it on myself" or would be stupid to ever climb again, then we should probably not talk for 3-6 months because I'm simply not in a position to stand up to that kind of thing right now.


It is probably strange to write so openly about my weaknesses and needs and then post it willingly on the internet. I have always been very open, at least with my friends, and trust that most will be understanding and supportive. Oddly, it's easier to do it this way than to call anyone individually and say flat out "I need your help today." So really, it's pretty much a cop-out. I'm ok with that. Baby steps. 

How crushed is my spine?

One of the benefits of this site is that I can write down the accident story once, and any interested friends can read it without me having to retell it countless times, while anyone who is not interested can skip it. This way everyone has been able to get caught up and can skip straight to the moral support, which is great. One friend pointed out that the accident story is lacking in a few major details, such as the outcome of my injuries and prognosis. So I will attempt to answer some frequently asked questions, such as "How crushed is your spine, anyway?"

I ended the accident narrative with being bundled into the ambulance, because the day got a lot less exciting from there. There were some interesting moments, like being given a tetanus shot while being asked to pee in a bedpan for the very first time. This was not, in my opinion, a good time for multi-tasking. Also, a public service announcement to doctors everywhere: surprises do not always make everything better. Surprise Party = Good, Surprise Suturing = Bad. You should always notify people when you are about to sew their faces, especially if they are supposed to be immobilized and flinching could be dangerous. There was also a brand-new, state-of-the-art X-ray machine about which the X-ray techs expressed, in hushed tones, fears that it had gained sentience. 

Overall though, the experience mostly consisted of a montage of ceiling tiles and being "log-rolled" into and out of various diagnostic machines while progressively losing almost all of my apparel. I will say that every single one of the dozen or more hospital employees I dealt with was at least kind and competent, and most were extremely considerate and nice. I even admire their apparent commitment to a game called "see who can come up with the least plausible explanation for stealing an item of clothing from a patient."

Here's a break-down of the results of my ER visit:

The doctor came out and gave me the news, but the delivery was all wrong. He told me I crushed 5 of my vertebrae, and acted like it was good news, then paused expectantly for... my sigh of relief? Leap for joy? I gave him neither.

Me: "wow, that sounds like a lot"
Dr.: "Only 5!"
Me: "How many vertebrae do I have?"
Dr.: "12 thoracic"
Me: "5 out of 12....still seems like a lot. What do you mean by crushed? Like am I shorter now?" (joking)
Dr.: "That's a good question. Yes you are!" (not joking) "1-2mm. shorter per vertebrae. You'll probably never notice."

I turned to Eric and informed him that for the rest of my life, whenever I can't reach a hold, he's getting blamed. (not joking)

Dr.: "You just have to wear a back brace for a few weeks!"
Me: sigh of relief, big smile. "That's not so bad. Like 2? 3?"
Dr.: "Haha, no 6! 6 weeks!"

This guy was way too cheerful. I realize that this probably stems from the fact that when a patient comes in with a probable back or neck injury, they start thinking about things like paralysis, and nerve damage, and dangerous surgery or lengthy hospital stays. None of that had ever entered my mind. I woke up that morning completely healthy, fully expecting to return to bed that night in the same condition. I was hoping for and fully expecting "The X-rays were normal, you're fine, go home." So 6 weeks in a back brace, which was exactly the amount of time remaining in my summer of climbing in Boulder, was terrible news.

I was fitted for a back brace, appropriated an ice pack, and Eric and I left the hospital about 12 hours after starting our unfortunate climb. We stopped on the way home to fill my prescription at Walgreen's, and while waiting discovered lawn chairs on sale for $25. These are the old-school kind of lawn chair, where it lays out flat like a cot about 6 inches off the ground and then the back and foot part can be adjusted to various intensities of reclining. After a brief reflection on the seating options at my house - which include straight-backed kitchen chairs, the world's most uncomfortable futon, and the floor - I bought one. Now all those references to spending my life in a lawn chair are starting to make sense, right? Foreshadowing! Anyway, it may have been the best $25 I have ever spent, but I am eagerly awaiting the day I will have a back brace and lawn chair bonfire.

5 days later, I returned to the ER to have my stitches removed. This service was performed by, I'm going to say, an orderly? He was wearing coveralls, stationed at the intake desk, and did not inspire any sort of medical confidence. Still, I trusted that suture removal has to be pretty simple, and also, I was mildly drugged so I didn't care too much. The first three were removed uneventfully. The fourth caused some problems, required several attempts, and brought on an excited whoop and sigh of relief from the suture removal apprentice when he managed it. I said, "All done?" His face took on a look of concern as he said "No, one more - this one's going to be tricky!" They teach that exact phrase in Bedside Manner 101. He then stood up and began to pace back and forth a bit, as though psyching himself up for the ordeal to come. The one stitch remaining was the one in my eyelid. Despite the percocet, I managed to dredge up some concern and suggested "Uh... if you want to get someone else, I can wait..." But this guy was no quitter. He went after that last stitch with everything he had. Breathing hard, forehead sweating, hands shaking - I do appreciate that he went the extra mile to add some excitement to an otherwise boring medical chore. The stitch came out though, and I still had all my eyelids. As I rode home, I pondered baking him a "Congrats on your First Medical Procedure!!" cake. I felt sorta honored.

A few days later, I went to the neurosurgeon's office for my follow-up appointment. I have been told by ERs that my wrist was fine when it turned out to be broken, that feeling would return when the swelling went down when in fact there was serious nerve damage, and that my foot was broken when in fact there was way crazier ligament tearing. (separate occasions) So I spent a week believing nothing about my diagnosis and went into this visit fearing the worst, yet still hoping, (though at this point I knew it wasn't possible) that I was not broken and could return to climbing soon.

He showed me my X-rays and CT scans and confirmed that 5 vertebrae were damaged, but he said it's really only 3, the other two are pretty much ok. This doesn't seem enormously helpful, since I am under the impression that bones heal concurrently, not consecutively. He also laughed when I asked him about being shorter, and said that is ridiculous, vertebrae being crushed 1-2 mm. doesn't translate, in my case at least, to actual loss of height. This confirms my suspicions of ER information and I am sad to lose this excuse in future climbing endeavors. He told me that my vertebrae are crushed on one side, so like they're tilting forward-ish, and that they are intact and if they heal the way they are now, I should be fine. Also, the side that is damaged is not the side where the spinal cord goes, so there was never any danger of scary nerve damage or paralysis. Basically, the worst case scenario is that I don't heal well, and require surgery. Not a road I want to go down, but still not the end of the world. Or, that I have lifelong pain. He believes the possibility of either is extremely small, especially if I "follow the rules". Here's the unfortunate part. The rules are, I'm in the back brace for - not 6 weeks - but 3 months.
....
Yep, twice as long. The reason is, if you break your arm, it will take about 6 weeks to heal, give or take. That's because your arm is in a super effective cast which keeps it really immobile. The back brace is less than perfect, and can't keep your spine totally immobile, so they leave you in it for 3 months. Followed by 3 additional months of "taking it easy". Apparently, the things you can do while taking it easy include walking. And hiking. Gently.

 At this point, I stopped worrying about my spine and started worrying about my sanity. My next follow-up is for 2 weeks later, when they will take more X-rays and see how I'm healing. I've been drinking extreme amounts of milk and eating lots of ice cream sundaes, and instructing my body very sternly to focus all it's energy on putting calcium directly into my spine. It's not like it's got anything else to do these days. Who knows, maybe the Dr. will look at the X-rays and be like "You must have magically super-fast healing bones! Or else you've been drinking extreme amounts of milk and ordering your body to heal with your incredible willpower and super loyal internal organs and parts! Or else I was wrong in the first place and you were never broken! Either way, go outside and play right now, young lady!"

In the meantime, I continue to wage war against my current life situation in defense of my emotional and mental health.

Vicodin VS. Percocet

For the first 6 days post-accident, I managed my pain with a prescription for percocet. (I finally looked up the spelling - before posting this but after creating my scientific graph). Taken every 6 hours, percocet eliminates pain by eliminating all higher brain functions. 

As you can see from this graph, the percoceted brain spends very little time in the pain-crazy region on the bottom. Unfortunately, it speeds through the green lucid region quite quickly, spending no more than 20 minutes here on it's way up or down. These 20 minutes are important to perform necessary bodily functions like eating and peeing, leaving little time to apply rational thought to other pursuits. The brain spends the majority of it's time in the upper drug-crazy portion of the graph, reaching it's peak just short of actual coma. During this time the brain's main goals are to stare at pretty colors and drool as much as possible. Friends and family should be cautioned that during these times, the brain is capable of gross motor functions such as picking up the phone, but should not be expected to remember any ensuing conversation, nor held responsible for its content.

Having tired of the unpleasant sensation of drowning in my own brain, I decided on the 7th day not to take any medication. This worked out great for the first few hours, as I was able to operate the microwave to make my own breakfast, read my book, and respond intelligently to some emails. Unfortunately, it only took about 2 hours to get equally tired of being in severe pain. I lost all will to move from my trusty 45 degree angle lawn chair, and along with the broken vertebrae rediscovered my throbbing concussion which I'd falsely believed I'd recovered from. Just being in constant pain is exhausting, and I soon found myself semi-comatose for a very different reason, although I still maintain both reasons are equally unpleasant.

I finally swallowed a percocet and went to bed early. The next morning, I again avoided taking any medication because I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon as a follow-up to my ER visit, and I wanted to be lucid when making medical decisions. Aside from all the "how crushed is your spine" conversation, the nurse reported that I had a fever and heartrate far higher than it should have been for my state of complete inactivity. The doctor explained that, contrary to my belief, pain is not just an unpleasant symptom but is actually very hard on your body. Being in constant extreme pain is actually very physically stressful, in addition to being pretty emotionally stressful. In other words, stop trying to "man up", the pain medication is your friend. In other words, "NO Emily. BAD Emily. Take your pills!"

I explained that the percocet was having an unpleasant lobotomizing side effect, and that I flat out refused to ever take it again, regardless of sound medical advice. So he wrote me a prescription for vicodin, which he described as "just like percocet, but less intense, which is why most people prefer percocet". Those people must like their brains less than I do. Or maybe, it doesn't hit them as hard, and I just have a wimpy brain, easily smacked down into submission by big scary opiates.

Either way, I promised to give the vicodin a try. As you can see from the graph, vicodin has a similar brain effect curve, except that this curve is red and also lower on the graph. The vicodined brain spends more time in the pain-crazy portion of the graph than the percoceted brain, but it does bring these times up into the bearable zone. In addition, the brain spends less time in the drug-crazy zone and at a far less intense level, peaking at a mild buzz during which memory remains intact and stairs are generally climbable. Most importantly, the brain spends significantly more time in the green lucid region of the graph, and arrives at it gently rather than crashing through at high speed. Disorientation is minimized and the brain can enjoy activities such as cooking, talking, and watching non-shameful movies and tv shows.

Conclusion: Vicodin is way awesomer than Percocet.
Brought to you by: Science!!

I like to stare at cake.

When I had an accident last week and it first became clear that my intended summer of climbing super awesome rocks in ways that made me super strong and awesome had suddenly and unpleasantly morphed into a summer of laying on a lawn chair in terrible pain, friends told me encouraging things like listing all the "fun" and "awesome" things I could do in a lawn chair.

Learn to play guitar! Improve my Italian! Get a head start on data analysis for my thesis! Knit a sweater! (err... maybe start with a scarf) Read all the books I've always wanted to read! Write emails to all my friends!

Unfortunately, the terrible pain portion of the equation was solved by the ER doctors with a prescription for percaset. (how do you SPELL that word?) This is how percocet works:

Hour 1: Pain gradually begins to ease....ahhhhhh.
Hour 2: "1-2 drinks phase" I become outgoing and super chatty. Everything is funny.
Hour 3: "3-5 drinks phase" I become dizzy and disoriented and should not be allowed near stairs by myself.
Hour 4: "6 or more drinks phase" My eyes unfocus, arms go limp, and I begin to drool.
Hour 6: "morning after phase" I gradually regain some semblance of lucidity, which lasts for roughly 20 minutes before the pain returns and I am useless for a different reason. Now it's time for the next dose!

It should be clear that under these conditions I will not be learning any fun new lawn chair skills anytime soon. Nowhere in that schedule is there time for so much as a sequence of rational thoughts. That 20 minutes of lucidity is wisely used for important things like peeing and eating.

I was particularly disturbed to discover that even movies were out of the question. Eric came over to make me an awesome dinner, which involved several different things from different food groups and was way nicer than even the dinners I usually made for myself pre-accident. Post-accident, the closest I came to a balanced meal by myself was when I found an unopened Snickers bar in my backpack. We then sat down to watch a movie, which seemed like an activity that should be within my power.

We watched "Batman Begins". I couldn't follow it. People, I have SEEN this movie before! I love Batman! Plus, you would think that you wouldn't really need to follow the plot and could enjoy it on a simpler "action movie" level. But these are some of the thoughts that went through my head:

"Who is that guy?"
"Wait, are they in a different country now?"
"Why are they being so MEAN to each other????"
"Did that guy change his clothes or is this a different guy? Change his clothes, and his face?"
....
"Why am I in this house, do I even LIVE here?"
"...oh hey, there's ERIC! I know Eric! Haha, I must be in the right house. I know that guy."
"Oh hey, there's a movie!"
...
"Who IS that guy?"

The next day, I tried watching some episodes of the Office. This is my standard go-to 20 minute entertainment. I love this show, have seen every episode at least twice, and it is brief and uncomplicated. Nope, couldn't handle it.

Then while searching the offerings of Netflix Watch Instantly I stumbled onto "Cake Boss". I loved it. Watched like 12 episodes in a row in a pleasant stupor. I'm not proud of this. It is a reality show about a bakery, and they make crazy cakes. Like, people will be like "I want a to-scale model of the statue of liberty, made out of cake! Except PURPLE!" and then they make it. Out of cake! Or, people will be like "I want a penis cake for my bachelorette party!" and the baker's mom is like "NO PENISES! We are a nice moral bakery!" and so the baker is like "No worries, I will make a SECRET penis cake!" and hijinx ensue. Or someone drops a cake on the floor, and everybody is sad.

I think the appeal was in the pretty colors, yummy-looking cakes, and complete lack of plot. I lay there in a drug-induced semi-coma and thought "those colors are nice, and that cake looks yummy" without any unreasonable demands made of my cerebral cortex to keep track of what had happened 10 seconds prior in order to enjoy the current 10 seconds to the fullest. I feel like I finally understand the mental level required to truly enjoy reality shows. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, it's knowledge that will always slightly disturb me to have so maybe we are even.

My description of my mental capabilities may cause you to be suspicious of my authorship of this blog. (or not, I don't know, it's not like a great blog. But I do think I am putting all the words in some sort of order, so that's good) This is because I am on new and better medicine now and also why I am writing about things from 10 days ago. But even now, with my brain more or less under control, I think I shall always have a nostalgic soft spot for Cake Boss.