Miraculous things

i woke up at 645 this morning, my right arm lying peacefully next to me.

there are at least three miracles embedded in that sentence: first, no sling; second, no pain; and third, to wake up presumes that i slept -- which is the greatest miracle of all. nights over the last five weeks have been their own special hell. for the first couple nights, i slept in the spare room (if you could call it sleeping, those long hours of narcotic drift). on the third night, paranoid and borderline delusional with the combination of percocet, pain, and sleep deprivation, i came crying back into our bed. which was better, to the extent that it's a more comfortable mattress to lie on for hours at a time.

there is no way to sleep comfortably while you're wearing a sling, and you are required to wear it all night every night. next time you can't sleep, fold one arm across your midriff and imagine keeping it there for eight hours. the first thing you realize is that you can only lie in your back, although after a couple of weeks you figure out how to lie on your unoperated side, as long as you bolster the damaged arm. (the logistics of this are just as complicated as you might imagine.) as for sleeping on your tummy, or the other side, as for snuggling, or sex, or even reading comfortably in bed -- forget it, sister. even that 45° turn, from good side to back, is a major night endeavour.

i'm sure it doesn't help that i'm normally a good sleeper -- a great sleeper, in fact. it's a major blessing of this lifetime, worth the knock knees and the TMJ. i go to bed when i'm tired, i fall into a deep sleep within minutes, and i wake up wholly and completely seven or so hours later. i am that irritating person who says to the chronically insomniac, "have you tried chamomile tea?" they must feel about me the way i feel about people who suggest taking an aspirin for a five-star migraine. my standards for sleep are high, and i have come nowhere close to meeting them these last five weeks.

but enough about that: it doesn't bear reliving. i slept! without a sling! and woke up pain-free!! on this weekend of all weekends, the credulous days when people believe all manner of things -- that jesus is the son of god, that lamb's blood can protect you from the state's functionaries, that a four-day weekend is long enough to do all of the spring yard cleanup, that failing to land a SSHRC means something about you as an academic -- i am prepared to call this my own spring miracle, and i will add to the list of miraculous things pretty bras, pullover shirts, pulling up socks two-handed, a good haircut, retrieving my own glass of water and shaving my pits.

Slow days

it isn't all bad, of course. take yesterday morning: sun flooding the kitchen and mo gone to work, leaving me to my quinoa and david gray -- an actual CD played through speakers, not an earbud track: an unformed day brought to you by my new theme song, "life in slow-motion."

while I was watching, you did a slow dissolve...
life in slow motion, somehow it don't seem real

i do seem to be moving so slowly i might dissolve. it's hard to get used to. no one has ever accused me of being a dawdler. one of my graduate students refers to me as "a woman of instant execution." i am fatally attracted to a clean inbox; i honor fordist efficiency; and i always believe there is room to accomplish one more thing before the minute/hour/day/week is up. to take 15 minutes to unload the dishwasher, because every dish is a separate, left-handed trip, is deranging. the 90 minute shower is a new and alien experience. how it can take a person over 20 minutes to dress in the morning i can't fathom, but it does, every day.

for these reasons, i don't find my days long. even when I do nothing, they are full. but it's more than that. i am on good terms with solitude. watching sunshine move across hardwood floors, reading books, thinking, blogging, walking to the neighborhood flower shop -- all of these things make me deeply happy, particularly when they unfold at a junkie's easy pace, on a smooth percocet plane.

one of the unexpected pleasures of convalescing has been music. i walk a lot -- can't drive -- and when I do, i listen to a broad range of music. normally, my tunes are running-trail functional: the scissor sisters, lady gaga, new pornographers, and a Much Music dance album from the 90s keep me working out. when I walk, I listen to fanfarlo, vintage joni mitchell, the new gorillaz album, iTunes impulse buys like chile fuerza, new yorker darling esperanza spalding, eric clapton unplugged. stars, always. the shins, of montréal, conor oberst (all his projects), the mixed tape andrea made me with the BeeGees and fine young cannibals.

i see things when i walk, too.

i have seen odd little houses in my neighborhood:









and houses with cheerful trim:










and artworks' yellow and black display.












i have seen late afternoon sun turn industrial space soft and beautiful:

and i have seen the spring come in this year. it takes place so imperceptibly you can't believe anything is happening, yet winter has dissolved, and the world is different.

Feel better

when i was a little girl, i thought your feelings were located in your armpit. i remember overhearing someone say, in mock distress, "you're hurting my feelings!," and thinking ah, so that's what sensation there is called. feelings.

one of the most mystifying aspects of recovery has been the emotional valence of healing. some things make sense: frustration, fear, anxiety all fall within the predictable emotional range. more difficult to understand has been melancholy. i've felt melancholic a lot over the last week, and I have tried to figure out why: i know that I tend to turn fatigue into sadness, for instance, and it stands to reason that once the shoulder is feeling a little better i would have room to process all the subsidiary effects of the surgery: the trauma to the body, the dependence, the assault on my self-esteem, the self-brutalizing blame for getting myself into this position in the first place, and so on. you don't have to be deeply freudian to figure that's all got to come out sometime.

still, i do expect some connection between what happens in the moment and how i respond. so to feel sad today, after a good weekend, and on my way out of physio, which came after a spell in the hot pool and a ride on a stationary bike with a good book, was surprising. i mean, what i just described -- a little exercise, a good book, some flirtation, my time my own -- is pretty much the ideal life. i couldn't understand why i felt so blue, like everything was dissolving. i wondered if it was dismay over how quickly time is passing while i measure my day in shoulder flexion. i wondered if it was about missing the river valley, wanting to see how all my running trails smell in the spring. i wondered if it was about my job, if i was starting to fret about going back. i wondered if i was doing the right thing with my life, whether i am on the right path. or maybe it's the gray day, or something hormonal, or plain old garden-variety physical pain sublated into an emotional register. i thought about all of these things as i cried my way up the 105th st hill.

my acupuncturist took one look at my tongue and said, "gotcha." she could see weakness in the heart meridian. the heart is the emperor of the body in chinese medicine, and the emperor was not on his throne. as a result, all of the other portfolios were scrambling around, not knowing how to do their business -- like canada under mackenzie king, perhaps. surgery can mix up the meridians themselves: a coup de corps. my acupuncturist said that typically when this happens, people question everything: their jobs, their partners, where they live, how they act, what they want -- everything. you feel lackluster about your work, you wonder about your destiny. i'm not saying it's necessarily like this for you, she said (i continued to say nothing), but you don't have to worry. the cause for how you are feeling is not coming from outside, but from inside. what we need to do, she said, is call the emperor back to his throne.

i was in.

the points were completely different from anything we've done before. she needled heart one, heart three, and heart seven. heart seven, down by the wrist, connects the heart and the head. it allows you to know what you want, and to do it. heart three, inside of the upper arm, is the destiny point. she said, "pay attention to the images that you see while this needle is in." (i have more thinking to do about these images: the green, the water, the books.)

heart one, first point on the heart meridian, is like sticking a needle into the center of your heart, down through the myocardium to the endocardium, between the atria and ventricles, to wake it up. this point will recall the emperor and make you feel like yourself again -- which it did. within a half-hour the melancholy had receded and i was back to myself: curious, competent, outward-looking and vital.

the point is located in your armpit.

How to know the body

i keep thinking about the photos my surgeon showed me. they were circular images printed eight-up on a glossy 8.5 x 11 page, two across and four down. showing me these pictures was his answer to my question "what exactly did you do to my shoulder?" i thought he wasn't paying attention to my query, but within a few seconds of shuffling he produced this sheet of photos, stapled to a series of other, narrative documents about the surgery. to him, these pictures were the answer.

the images would have been taken by an autoclavable arthroscopic camera inserted through a small hole in my shoulder at the beginning of the operation, when the team was deciding how to proceed. they have the beautiful precision of a high-resolution digital camera, if the slight blurriness of an extreme close-up. the bones were luminous and white (so, this arthroscopic camera must have a light source?) and there was, oddly, no blood -- in fact, no red at all. flesh, it seems, is putty colored. to me the most startling thing in these photos was amount of space in the shoulder: i had thought it must be densely packed, like an electrical socket with its confusing capped wires, but it appears instead to be hollow, like a mouth. the joint was photographed against a murky and distant-looking background of puce tissue.

the beauty of these photographs to me was almost entirely abstract, like a mona hatoum installation. i could not even begin to orient the images i was seeing with the body i inhabit. the surgeon pointed to one photo after the other and i pretended to understand, but i didn't -- at least, not in the way he did.

my experience of my shoulder has nothing to do with reason or causality. some days it feels good; other days it hurts a lot. some days i make great progress on my exercises; other days I can barely move. i cannot directly connect one day's activities to the next day's sensations. there is only an uncertain connection between painkillers and pain. while i can see a definite improvement over the last four weeks, it is virtually impossible to parse that improvement into shorter periods. healing is an uneven, illogical, and intuitive affair, and i often find myself yearning for the certainties of science.

the certainties of science, expressed with a certain geekiness and large, gentle hands are part of what i fall for in my physiotherapist. (i have written before about my crush on "oliver.") you could call it transference, this belief that if i endow him with preturnatural healing powers, and if i put myself under his spell -- the spell represented by physiotherapy's advanced knowledge of bodily kinetics, together with its mystical language ("med load," "tenodesis," "suture") -- i will be healed, wholly and completely. my role in this transferential relationship is to believe, to adore, and to adhere: to be the best patient possible.

(quick aside: this terminology, borrowed from psychotherapy, is imperfect. i don't recall ever feeling exactly this way about my parents, which is typically taken to be the ur relationship reenacted in psychotherapeutic situations. i have never heard anyone else talk about the relationship between physiotherapists and clients. nonetheless, transference remains the most compelling explanatory framework i have.)

on wednesday, it was hard to play my part. the shoulder hurt a lot. i lay on my narrow PT bed and tried to do my exercises, without much success. oliver stood at the head of my cubicle for a moment. "quiet today, huh?" he watched me struggle with the sixth repetition, and he probably saw me start to cry. then he did the most astonishing thing: he came and sat in the chair next to my bed. he described the surgery for me in the fullest terms i had heard yet. he told me how my body was healing. he said "you have every reason to be in pain."

in the days following our wednesday appointment, i became more and more amazed by his kindness and intuition. on friday i asked him how he came to respect the body so. i told him i understood the seduction of science, the lure of diagnostics, prognoses, crisp pictures, big words -- but that his treatment on wednesday suggested something different, a patience and a gentleness they don't teach in university. so how did he come to possess it?

he smiled and said, "through the science."

A formal feeling?

after a bad day, a sense of relief.

relief is undertheorized. it's good -- the pain has receded, you can think clearly again, moving is possible, life is possible -- but it's not simple. relief is not really the present; it's the fulcrum between a difficult past and a promising future. you could take the experience you've just had and use it to re-create yourself from the ground up. to feel relief is to bargain: i will drive more carefully, i won't drink red wine, i will stretch my muscles religiously. under the terms of relief, you could be anything. if everyday life rehearses st. augustine's plea 'lord, make me good, but not just yet,' relief puts us in the dizzying place where we are ready to be good, now: being better starts this instant, and lasts forever more.

but in addition to a sense of freedom, there is something else, something darker. relief is confusing, disorenting. i'm not surprised that people cry with relief; i'm one of them; i cry with relief. i weep because i can, because i am free enough from pain to focus on something other than the pain itself. i weep at how good it is to live without this pain, for now. pain is difficult; pain is unpleasant; pain is deranging and dismaying. it delimits your world. pain is infantilizing, offering the inchoate frustration of an infant, if also an infant's irresponsibility. pain is trying. and so to feel relief is to be through the trial, to have passed whatever kind of test the excruciation had in mind, to have made it to the next phase, but the complexity of relief has something to do with not knowing what that means, not knowing what the terms of the trial were, not knowing whether you "passed," and, if you did, what that means.

there is also, in relief, a sense of loss. i feel, "thank god that's over. i made it through." but i also feel, "something's missing, it's gone." think of the way you felt at the end of junior high, or when your child exits a difficult phase, or the moment you realize you are well and truly over someone. it's not that i want the pain back, not exactly, not even for the comforting way it grounds me in the moment. perhaps it's that every minor experience of relief puts us in touch with the ultimate sense of relief we know we're heading towards: freedom from these bodies, release from the tedium of human existence, the end of our own and others' suffering. in spite of the 'what's next' excitement, it's impossible to avoid suspecting that this, after all, was living, and there is no going back.

One month later

now that I finally have my dragon taking dictation properly, i can fill in some of the gaps from the last long month.

the day of the surgery we watched a lot of curling. although the operation was scheduled for 130, I had to get to the grey nuns hospital by 1030 so they could clip on a hospital bracelet, get me changed into a gown, and... well, i'm not really sure what the rest of the time was for. mo was with me, of course, and we sat in the preop room with about five other patients and their partners watching olympic curling. those of us heading into surgery shared dehydration headaches. time passed quite slowly in that room, although as I think back on it it doesn't quite seem like three hours of curling (I did learn a lot about the game, however).

in a way, the surgical experience starts when they call your name. you give up the bathrobe and your eyeglassses, you get into the gurney, and they wheel you to the ER on the lower level. as the elevator descended, i said to the porter, "wow, it's all very symbolic." but he didn't understand what i meant. in the waiting bay, the surgeon stopped by to see me. i told him i had changed my mind about the surgery, that i was too scared to go through with it, that the shoulder hasn't hurt that much lately, and that i'd trade a little pain later for a drink of water now. he put a hand on the bedrail and said, nicely, "right. we want to do this surgery for your 70s."

they did five or six things. first, they sent in an arthroscopic camera and took pictures of the shoulder joint. at my first follow-up appointment, i got to see these pictures, which were stirringly beautiful. i had no idea what I was looking at, exactly, but the luminous white of bone against the milky backdrop of tissue made me understand, immediately, why someone would want to be a surgeon. they trimmed the labrum. at the follow-up appointment, the surgeon pointed to the photo of a fringe made of flesh, then to the after, all clean lines and absences, and said, "see? all tidied up." as I had known they would, they repaired the supra spinatus, which is to say they reattached that torn tendon to its bone. (i always think of chicken.) in addition, they shaved the bones and cartilage in my shoulder; they drained the bursa; and they repaired, repositioned, and stapled down the biceps tendon. i've been led to understand that this is rather a lot of work.

my first sensation back on the ward was in my elbow. i thought, distinctly, i cannot keep my elbow bent like this for 6 to 12 weeks. the second sensation was heat in the shoulder -- the inflammation. mo was there, which was enormously calming, and my parents too. there was a lot of morphine. morphine feels good, but not at first. the best hit is intramuscular, and it burns for the full 90 or so seconds it takes to empty the syringe. i was awake for most of the night, or at least I remember seeing nearly every hour on the clock, though it was difficult to connect those hands on the wall to anything meaningful. it's a strange way to spend time. you're aware of every hour passing, yet the experience has absolutely no narrative form.

everybody tells you to stay ahead of the pain, and this is excellent advice. for the first two or three days at home, I was taking 12 to 14 Percocet a day: an amount that astonishes me now, but which felt barely sufficient at the time.

when you dream about having time away from work, there is a lot of it: days stretch out voluptuously. in fact, i find the days quite short. partly this is because everyday life takes so much time. getting dressed takes the better part of 40 minutes; getting undressed and into bed a good half-hour; and then i have physio exercises that take about 25 minutes per set, and I do three sets a day. add in a walk, an iPhone game or two, and there's your day. i like being alone.

i have good days and bad days. on good days i feel jubilant, excited, triumphant: i am getting the better of this injury. on bad days i feel completely dismayed, convinced that it will never heal. the lesson is that i have good days and i have bad days, and i'm sure there's a wealth of wisdom in that.

there is a lot of frustration. simple things -- like pulling up yoga pants, or putting on a headset, or fixing a bowl of soup -- take astonishing amounts of time, and call on a patience that does not come naturally to me. bathing is extremely awkward and extremely painful. particularly before i got my stitches out, it felt almost impossible. i had to sit in 2 inches of water, and i washed my hair by bending over my knees. i cannot wash my left shoulder very well, i cannot dry my back, and things like hair product and eyeliner are out of the question. if -- heaven forfend -- something like this should happen to you, and you are my friend, here's what I will do for you: i will give you one hour a week in which you can ask me to do anything. i will clean your shower. i will drive you to the river valley and wait for you to walk. i will run errands. i will chop onions so that you can make soup. i will cull your e-mail if that's what you would like.

there is a lot of pain. before the operation we asked how the pain of shoulder surgery might compare to the pain of knee surgery. the guy we were talking to, the hospital's physiotherapist, fumbled for a few seconds and then gave up. "there is no comparison," he said. "it's super painful." i find the pain fatiguing, particularly at the end of the day, and four weeks later it is still hard to sleep.

there is a lot of abjection. i was not prepared for how abject this experience would be. for one thing, it is very dirty. i am clumsy with my left hand, and so routinely spill food -- on me, on the counter, on the floor -- none of which are easy to clean. for another thing, it is hard to feel pretty when you rotate two pairs of yoga pants and can't pluck your eyebrows. the emotional abjection is of course the most difficult. last saturday I had a work party. my responsibility was to bring a course of Spanish cheese; everything else was done by others. buying the cheese was the subject of a specific excursion on friday; indeed, it was last friday's organizing principle, since I can only really do one thing per day. saturday morning I pulled together a serving tray, serving utensils, and laboriously printed little cards to identify the cheeses. (they looked like they were written by a four-year-old.) i planned my shower with enough time for a rest afterwards. mo did the laundry, but together we worked out how to organize the loads so that my best yoga pants would be clean for the event. the party was lovely, but it involved a lot of standing and honestly it was hard to talk to people i work with when i'm not in fact working with them. after one hour I thought I might faint. when i realized i had forgotten the damn cheese, i just lost it: burst into tears and fled out the back door, humiliated.

naturally, i feel guilty. it's a difficult time at the university, with budget woes and layoffs in the offing. i am acutely aware that the work i am not doing is being picked up by others, who are already busy. at the same time, the university is full of workaholics, and the place is redolent with stories about Prof. X., who took no more than a week off, and Prof. Y., who was back at work the day after his operation. i am not immune to the sense of obligation these stories entail, even though my best self scorns them.

whatever difficulties i may have, being insufficiently loved is not among them. friends have been wonderful: solicitous, generous, thoughtful, and attentive. i marvel at my great good fortune.

now my computer battery is running low, and it's time for a nap. believe it or not, composing this post has taken the best part of the day.

Heart healing

at first i didn't think i would like her at all. i like my clinics clinical. so when she said, "it's just you and me for now, so i thought we'd keep it casual, you know?," i almost fled. but as mo has pointed out to me, i am always better when i get acupuncture regularly, and so i stapled my butt to the chair and filled out all the forms.

it turns out, she's the most intuitive healer i've ever met. she listened to my pulse with her eyes closed for a long long time and then she said to me: "the reason you find it hard to make decisions isn't because you can't make a plan or execute it. that's the reason most people find it hard, but that isn't it for you. what's hard for you is that you don't know what you want. you don't know how to listen to your heart. or maybe you forget. it makes for very good dreams, do you dream a lot? your pulse also tells me that you are sweet and generous, and you do a lot for other people, and you worry for them. but the last thing you want is for them to see inside the garage. the allergies are there too, i can feel them, but they are insignificant. your heart is blocking the connection between what happens here [she touched my belly] and your head. the pain must be enormous. well, i can feel it. i know it is. we should work on this."

work we did, and more shocking talk, and i have been walking around in a heavy daze since.

I heart my physio

it's a good day when i get to see oliver. that's not his real name, that's just what i call him. we have that kind of relationship, the kind where i give him pet names and he laughs at all my jokes. it's my shoulder that brought us together, my supraspinatus to be exact, but our relationship has gone beyond that now. oliver would do anything to heal me, and i would let him. do anything.

why do i always develop such a crush on my PTs? i do not know. i am smart enough to recognize transference when it pulls back the cubicle curtain to say hello, but i've never developed adequate transference in psychotherapy sessions. with counsellors i feel nervousness and shame. with my GP, performance anxiety. i'm neutral with my dentist. but check me into a physiotherapy session and i turn into a daddy's girl.

that's right: this does not happen with physios who are women. with them, i am a co-conspirator, a professional ally, tackling together this ruptured tendon or that torn hamstring. i do not wear my best bra or thrill to the prospect of ultrasound gel. we compare notes dispassionately on range of movement, avenues of treatment, prognoses and cautions. i want their respect. and when i earn it, sure, i think of baking them banana bread, but i don't spend long hours wondering whether their wives would mind me sending postcards from hawaii.

oliver knows everything. he speaks in latin phrases: swoon! his office is full of dangerous technical equipment -- stationary bikes, exercise balls, floor mats, you name it -- and he is the master of them all. "have we had you on the arm bike?," he asks. the arm bike! "no," i say, "but i sure would like to." he picks up a piece of surgical tubing and i feel my heart race: is that for me? he tells me to do three sets of exercises. i do four. i can tell by the furrow in his brow that my shoulder is a puzzle, but i can also tell, by the tender seriousness in his gaze, that oliver is not afraid of a rotator cuff injury. when i'm in pain, he's in pain. we share every triumph.

sometimes it's hard to be oliver's favorite. today, for instance, the girl in the next cubicle said, "okay, well, i'll call you tomorrow after that appointment." what? i retracted my scapula extra hard while i chewed on this. the thing is, though, our relationship just won't work if i get territorial. i can be generous. right? can i? i test out "generous," and it comes out magnanimous. little miss pre-op next door can't touch what oliver and i have.

when he comes in next to check on me i say, "i took the plane back from new york yesterday with a group that had just run the boston marathon." meaning: we should train for a marathon together, oliver. he says, "oh, i missed watching it this year." meaning: i missed you too, heather.

sigh.

i bet he can't wait for tuesday at 9:30.

Food love

i've had a lovely saturday night puttering around the kitchen. it probably started this morning when i made us a breakfast of steel cut oats with tart cherries and almonds, but my endeavours picked up steam after i made a to-do list that went onto page 4. i looked at all the work i have to do in the next three weeks and walked right out of my study and into the kitchen, where i stewed some cranberries for turkey sandwiches during the week, made applesauce with cinnamon sticks and cloves, whipped up a batch of granola for my friend olga, whose kitchen is being renovated, and baked a batch of carrot-nut muffins for mo.

my friend lisa's lovely new blog, threshold of greatness, says that food is love. i agree, though it hasn't always served me well. since christmas, mo and i have been trying to eat better. we don't use the "diet" word, but we have been watching portion sizes and trying to stay away from the cheese popcorn, and the junior mints, and the licorice, and the trail mix, and the late-night bowl of cereal, and the melty-toasties, and the granola bars, and the halloween candy, and the row(s) of cookies, and the one-kilo bag of dried mangoes, and the treacherous members of the cracker family, forever luring you in with their multigrain healthiness, only to hit you with a sandbag of sat fat once you're committed.

we're each down about ten pounds since the beginning of january, and feeling healthier. it's fun to go clothes shopping in our own closets. just as the nutritionists promised, i feel empowered to make good choices: peckish after working out today, i bypassed the Big Cupboard o' Carbs and went straight to the fridge for a trio of organic carrots. i have more energy when breakfast is an egg-white omelet with spinach instead of a bowl of raisin bran. everything i cooked today was healthy.

it's nice to be reminded that food isn't love, that there are nonfat ways of demonstrating care, but sometimes i miss the illicit thrill of hot buttered toast.

Teaching and learning

i sit on this teaching committee peopled by smart, well-meaning people, but the meetings are powerfully dull. soon as i walk into the room i feel a toxic sleepiness descend, and it doesn't go away for the next 90 minutes.

the highlight of the meetings, if meetings like this can be said to have "highlights," is talking about teaching practices across campus. it's always interesting (in principle) to talk with people who work in really different disciplines: what is kinesiology, i wonder, and what exactly do you teach in the faculty of phys ed, and what do nurses do when they're not giving practice shots to an orange?

today's topic was problem-based learning, currently the hot approach in health education. the presentation (yeah: put a group of dynamic teachers in a room and they give presentations to each other...) plodded on, reviewing the literature, listing the pros and cons of PBL, rehearsing common issues and their solutions, etc. i got up to get myself another cup of tea.

we had arrived at the handout, a sample PBL case, which goes something like this:

jennifer, a 16-year old girl, and her mother have come to your office because they are concerned that jennifer hasn't started menstruating yet. once a month her breasts get tender and she becomes 'moody,' according to her mother, but she has not experienced menses. when the mother leaves the room, jennifer confesses that there's a boy in her class that she likes, and she's wondering about birth control. looking uncomfortable, she adds that she's tried to use a tampon, but can't.

i consider another cup of tea. the presenter says, "... by wednesday, the learning groups are required to complete their research on the subject, so that on thursday ..."

i turn the page of the handout, and sweet jesus, i'm looking at a photograph of somebody's vulva. i peered a little closer, since i couldn't believe my eyes: this girl had no vagina. dude! i wanted to say, there's your problem. no wonder you were having trouble with the tampax.

nobody else appeared even slightly fazed by the illustration. the presenter was explaining how to address dysfunction in a small group. i stole another glance at the handout. there were sample ultrasound and MRI reports. the ultrasound was -- am i reading this right? -- unable to locate a left kidney and -- my eyes bugged right out -- the MRI concluded, definitively, "the left kidney is absent."

absent? the left kidney is absent? is anybody else catching this? i wanted to wave my arms, stomp my feet, whistle. hello, this girl has NO vagina, NO uterus, and she's down one kidney! did she step right out of an episode of house? i wanted to elbow the prof sitting next to me and ask, sideways, "and didja catch the picture, too? intense!" i was imagining the diagnostic conversation with this girl, imagining her mother, wondering whether they'd recommend surgery, what would surgery be like, what if she didn't want it, how can you have ovaries without a uterus, would i miss having a vagina, could she conceive babies and just not carry them to term, what if her good kidney failed, is everybody else in her family like this?

but it was 5:00, "so if nobody has any questions, i guess we'll see you in april."

Art love

two photographers i'm loving:
robyn cumming
miru kim.

Who what where when

in about 12 hours the second annual exposure festival will be half over.

it's a fantastic festival. loud and queer was a sellout; james loney was incredible (i blogged about it here); and i've just come in from screening the incredibly moving she's a boy i knew, by vancouver film whiz gwen haworth, also in attendance to field questions and comments from the audience. tomorrow we deck out the bathhouse with art for a one-night extravaganza that has buzz all over -- well, actually, all over the country: the rumour is that CBC is running the story nationally.

but i am tired.

i knew from last year that this week would be tough, but knowing is not the same as living fatigue. my days are peppered with paying artists' cab fares, chasing down films that don't arrive, finding a stepladder, troubleshooting stanchions, speaking to media (a special hell, for me -- remember, i don't like vacation snaps), and trying to keep everybody else's spirits up. over in another email account, i still have my day job to attend to, and i feel worryingly distant from my colleagues and students this week. dr zwicker, i wonder: who's that? if it weren't for ted's can-do and mo's just-don't, i don't think i'd be standing at 10pm this monday night.

how tired am i? going to a command-performance queer meet-and-greet this afternoon, i found myself sharing an elevator with a woman from the united way, heading to the same event. dammit, i thought, small talk 31 floors before i'm ready. i did what i always do in such circumstances, which is channel my sister, the fund development officer who can chat up anybody. as the elevator doors closed on us, i arranged a pleasant look on my face and said, "united way! november's a busy month for you, isn't it? one of your busiest, i think i've heard. barb, is it? let me introduce myself, i'm heather zwicker. i teach in the english department at the ufoa but this week i'm also the board chair for exposure, edmonton's queer arts and culture festival." she looked a bit uncomfortable, like she was trying to find the right words to say. quick: be chipper. what would shannon do? "it's a multidisciplinary arts and culture festival," i said, "and hasn't it been a fantastic week in edmonton? salman rushdie was here on thursday, and thomas king spoke at city hall on saturday -- oh, and the university mounted a historical production of orfeo on saturday, did you catch that? i didn't, i was actually giving a paper at the parkland conference, but i heard that it was stunning, and i'm sorry i couldn't have been two places at once, because the films they showed as part of the festival of ideas sounded just phenomenal." i smiled super-brightly, then paused to inhale. she seized her moment. "sorry to interrupt," said barb, reaching for the door open button, "but i think the elevator isn't moving." and indeed, there we were, right where we started. just tireder.

Who needs freud?

the school term starts tomorrow, and i'm not even close to ready. in fact, i've developed some awful neck injury over the last few days. i can't look over my shoulder, which doesn't bode well for going back to the faculty of arts. i have no idea what i've done, but the neck is the mind/body connection, and it only hurts when i try to relax.

Poor poor pitiful me

is there a worse feeling in all the world than self-pity?

it's corrosive and induces misery. it close worlds down, eviscerating all that's good and emphasizing everything bad. it distorts narratives so that every little event in the past leads directly to the grim present you should have seen coming. it makes you use phrases like "in all the world."

i've been treating my knee as per last week's diagnosis, as a sprain, but it's not getting better. in fact, it's getting worse. so today i saw a sports medicine doctor, and he was able to narrow the diagnosis a little more. it's almost certainly not ACL. it's almost certainly a meniscal injury. specifically, the meniscus has a tear. or a bruise. or a snag, or a lesion. we'll know more in a few weeks, hopefully. but maybe not. a meniscal bruise or lesion can take months to settle. a meniscal tear can be repaired surgically, except when it can't.

meanwhile, it just hurts. it hurts when i walk and it hurts when i sit. it wakes me at night. it's worse when i use it, for instance walking to the bathroom. it hurts to drive. i find it takes a lot of energy to manage the pain. i can feel the rest of my body starting to adapt. my hips are out of whack and my lower back aches. so i go to yoga, try to modify the poses, but bearing weight of any kind only makes my knee hurt more. the new idea is to give it a good rest -- "but keep it moving." whatever that means.

if i were a better person, i would greet my knee injury with zen equanimity. more, i would take it as a gift: the gift of time, an opportunity for contemplation. i would see the big picture.

as it turns out, however, i am not that person. i do not see the forest, i see the trees. i see the centimetre i took off my waist coming right back on and bringing its fat friends, too. i see the end of soccer. the end of running. immobility. long periods of sedentary depression punctuated by jags of sharp self-pity. old age. death.

what would i think about, if i were a better person? first of all, i'd differentiate injury from illness. from there i'd extrapolate, drawing distinctions between a temporary setback and permanently curtailing my lifestyle. i'd reflect on my great good luck to be middle-class and university-affiliated, with access to orthopedic surgeons. i'd wonder how many homeless people suffer joint ailments: probably a lot, when you think about it, yet such injuries probably never even surface as significant, given all the other pressing concerns faced by homeless people. is there anything more fortunate than to suffer a torn meniscus?

it's not like i didn't try to be that person. i sat on the stairs to SUB and rallied. i tried to reframe all of this positively. won't i love the river valley even more when i get back to it? isn't it great that my ACL is well? isn't anthroscopic surgery marvelous? i wonder what lessons are in store for me: will i learn something karmic or character-building from this?

and then a bird shat on my head.

Age-related wear

that's the actual phrase my physiotherapist used today to describe the decripit state of my left knee. she hastened to add, "i'm not saying you're old..." and then kind of trailed off.

i've been thinking about that phrase, "age-related wear." like so many things, knees degenerate with use. when i think of how much use a knee gets in the course of a day, let alone a week, month, year, or lifetime, i'm reminded of the sighs and groans of that perpetual-motion furniture-testing machine at ikea. hearing suffers from age-related wear, too. i pepper my conversations more and more with "sorry?" and "huh?" and "i can't hear you when you walk away from me." think about skin. arteries. memory. cars. politics. jokes.

does anything get better with age? well, judgment can. bank balances. wine, for a deceptive while, until it turns to vinegar. other than that ...?

it may be the case, as mo says, that i've been spending a bit too much time with aunty jo lately, but i resent the hype. "40 is the new 30," they say. well, it's not. 40 is 40, and as far as i can tell, it's the point at which your "age-related wear" starts coming home to roost.

Never say another mean thing to yourself

i go to this sweet wednesday morning yoga class. it's tiny, usually just three or four of us -- and no, i'm not going to say where, 'cause i don't necessarily want to share. our teacher is terrific: wacky and funny and curious and talented and honest. she's just what you want on a wednesday morning.

i'm quite surprised to groove on this class, because it's very casual. make that extremely casual. and i'm not just saying that because i came up through iyengar yoga, a tradition based on nit-picking exactitude and dead seriousness. iyengar is yoga for protestants, perfectionists' yoga: if you're not being constantly corrected, you're just not doing it right. i first checked out chantelle's class because what's a sabbatical for if not taking yoga on weekday mornings? plus, being near zocalo and the italian centre, it would provide a built-in alibi for any consumer splurges. i didn't really know what a vinyasa class would be like, but i figured it would be self-improving to learn. when i found out vinyasa means flow, i almost fled. BKS and Gita definitely do not approve of "flowing." the next surprise was music. yoga to music? and we're not talking ShantiOm sitar-and-tabla covers, either: chantelle blasts dave matthews, ruthie foster, vintage U2, and colbie caillat.

there's always a lot of laughing in chantelle's classes, a certain amount of chitchat/catching up, as much ranting as necessary, and i usually get teased for analyzing everything. above all, there's a lot of learning. there's something about the immediacy and forthrightness of our time together that means we tackle our questions directly, whether they're about the optimal positioning of your shoulders in a dolphin plank, the name of a given muscle in the rotator cuff or the pronunciation of a sanskrit word. there's no singular agenda, and so we all teach and learn together. it's the paulo freire ideal, in action.

if you've read my earlier comments on yoga, you'll know that i'm not much on the non-physical bits. so when chantelle came back from a workshop with rolf gates and brought his book meditations from the mat into the class, i was nonplussed. turns out, rolf has smart things to say. i don't mind rolf. but what i really love is chantelle herself. at the end of last week's class, she said to us, during sivasana, "never say another mean thing to yourself." the fact of it was shocking enough: it's a terribly intimate thing to say to a collection of women. but the idea behind it is so shockingly revolutionary that it's had me thinking all week. what would that mean, to make a commitment not to say mean things to yourself? how telling is it that my first reaction is, but what will we -- my selves -- talk about, then? could you think mean things about yourself, and just not say them? if you stopped being mean to yourself, could you still be mean to other people? and how long is "never," anyway? what if you started by not saying anything mean to yourself for, say, a week. uh oh: what if you did start that way? far from being the end of a conversation, it might just be the beginning.

Migraine

the day started off normally enough. i let the skylights guy, glenn, in at 9 and headed off to my 10 AM appointment in st albert. by 11:30 i was starting to feel the warning signs: a little tightness in the neck, sinus pain, a sore jaw. but we were out of coffee beans, and the shop was right there, so even though i was starting to feel migrainous, i made myself run the errand. which took longer than i expected. by the time i was driving back into the city, 12:15, i knew i was in trouble. or, rather, in retrospect it's clear i was in trouble.

the thing about migraine is, i start making bad decisions. poor judgment, not a visual aura, is the first sign of danger. and the trouble with poor judgment is that i don't recognize it as anything out of the ordinary. while this migraine is working itself up into a real state, i'm still living my regular life, acting as though i am my usual competent self. in this case, i'm wondering whether i should stop at the grocery store now or later -- and, as if it's the most natural thing in the world, noting at the same time all the possible places to pull off the road should i need to throw up. because by this time, vomiting is a real possibility. the pain in my right temple is hot. i keep thinking, in the back of my mind, that if i could just pull out my eyeball, things would get better. in the front of my mind, i'm trying to decide on the best route to my 1 PM physiotherapy appointment. i drive through intersections with my hand over my eyes. it occurs to me, briefly, to wonder whether i should be driving at all, but what are my options?

i suffered my first migraine when i was 8. i remember lying face down on the bed i shared with my sister and picking at the bright yellow chenille bedspread. the texture of the bedspread was troubling under the influence of a migraine, but what i really remember is how unbearable that sunshine color was. ever since, i have done my bedroom in soft, soothing colors. some people decorate for romance, some people for sex, some for the civilized pleasure of reading in bed or the less civilized pleasure of watching TV, but i have always decorated for migraine. we go back that far, megrim and i.

and my bedroom is where i want to be right now. correction: where i need to be. i don't remember the last ten minutes of the drive. i don't remember pulling into the garage. my sinuses are abscessed and my stomach is spasming. my right eye is watering. i know where i am now, i have been in this hell before. time for the rules, things i have observed when i am well and that i have promised myself i will believe when unwell. rule number 1 is that migraines give you bad judgment, so you have to follow the rules. rule number 2: make simple lists.

item 1: cancel the physio appointment. i am sheer will now, not body, not mind. i walk past the couch without looking at it. i am going to my study. there is a business card with the physio's phone number on it. i will pick up the phone and dial the number. i will explain myself efficiently and apologize. i will offer to pay for the session. i will rebook later. the phone call will not take long, and then i can get to my precious drugs. but there is a snag; i am asked to hold. "of course," i say, courteously. inside i am screaming. when the receptionist comes back i stumble over my name, then recover and say, professionally, that i have a 1 PM appointment with glenda, that i'm very sorry to call on such unforgivably short notice, but i am developing the sort of migraine that means i can't drive, let alone -- at which point the receptionist cuts in and says, "i get migraines too." "you do?," i say, "really?" under normal circumstances i greet these declarations with skepticism. lots of people use the term "migraine" as a synonym for "bad headache," the kind they take 2, maybe 3 aspirins for. it is emphatically not the same thing. today, however, i find myself weeping with relief. "then you know," i say. "yes," she says. "do you want to rebook later, when you're feeling better?" it is a tiny miracle; i am not alone in the world.

item 2: cancel my 2 o'clock meeting. how. i have no phone numbers. it requires email. email requires the computer. i do not let myself think about how it will hurt, because it must be done. i open the computer. i wince at the blue light. i squint. and then, using my touch-typist fingers, i key a perfectly chipper note saying why i can't meet, apologizing, and closing with the upbeat promise that i'll be back in touch as soon as possible. email cancellations -- and i've had to do a lot of them, i've grown good at them -- make me feel utterly fraudulent. i feel guilty. i think there should be more to show on the screen for the agony i feel. there is such a disconnect between my bodily experience and my verbal representation that people must assume i'm faking it. which in turn reinvigorates the bad judgment and makes me wonder whether i shouldn't soldier on. okay, i can't drive, but maybe i could just take a cab? at this point, i remember the first rule. this is why i am not allowed to think when i have a migraine.

item 3: drugs.

but before i can get there, glenn, the guy installing our skylights, appears at my study door. if the first mystery of migraine is that even after all these years i don't recognize when i'm getting one, and if the second is the guilt i feel at cancelling meetings when i am ill, then here is the third: shame. i am so ashamed to feel ill that i can't stand for glenn to know. i muster everything i have and ask, cheerfully, "how's it going up there?" his lips move in answer and there is sound coming out, but i cannot follow it. i have no idea what he's talking about. the veins in my head have dilated, and sulfuric acid is careening through them. mechanically, i follow him up the stairs. my drugs are upstairs. to follow glenn is to get closer to my drugs. he is showing me something: apparently he has plugged a piece of equipment into our bedroom outlet. i think he is asking whether this is allright. i don't know what the answer is. why wouldn't it be allright? but what if it isn't? it's too much responsibility. i nod, a bad idea. my brain hits my skull and i wince anew. i try to avoid talking. the less i say, the sooner i will get to my drugs. this migraine is a bad one.

when glenn leaves, i realize the severity of the situation. i am standing in the bedroom, my oasis of dark brown and cream. i need to lie down for 50 minutes. the drugs will start working in 50 minutes. but in the room next door, glenn is sawing a hole through the ceiling. it is very loud. what are my options? he and his helper are walking garbage out the front door. i will be seen if i lie down in the living room. the spare room is out: more skylights, saws, sawdust. the basement? no, the smell of cat litter will kill me. the closet floor. i could lie on the closet floor. it would be dark there and no one would see me. it would be hard and cold and i know there are nails sticking up, but it is my best bet. i fall onto the bed to consider how this will work.

i am lying on my right side, digging my fingers into my right eye socket. if i could just pull my eye right out ... i can feel dry heaves building, but now that i have taken an imitrex, i do not want to throw up. i try to figure out how long it will take for the imitrex to dissolve into my bloodstream. i wish i had an IV. i wonder whether i should go to the hospital, but now i can't move. now that i have fulfilled all of the jobs on my simple list, and collapsed onto the bed, i cannot move. i am bested. my stomach heaves again, dangerously. i wish i had taken some gravol before i lay down, but now glenn is in the bathroom where the drugs are. i must wait. my eyeball aches. i wonder if there is a world beyond the pain. i lie as still as i possibly can. i get smaller and smaller and smaller while the migraine gets bigger and bigger and bigger. it's ferocious now, and triumphant. it trumpets like a wapiti. it tramples like an elephant. it mauls me like a tiger. it laughs, it dances, it trounces and jigs. i lie even stiller, forcing my head down into the pillow. my hands reek of steel. i wish they were clean. i want to whimper, but that will hurt more. i am on the brink of tears, but crying will hurt more. i grind my fist into my eye socket and try to stop thinking. thinking, willing, deciding are all too much. the migraine has my head and my stomach and i give up my will. now it's just a matter of time passing.

i hear footsteps on the stairs. mo is home. i must have called her. did i call her? i dimly remember, but it is all quite jumbled. her hand on my forehead is cool. she brings me gravol. better, she leads me to the basement, where she has set up a mattress in the quiet cool. i fall asleep, eventually, and when i wake up i can roll over and take my fist out of my eye socket. the drugs are working. i will make it.

for hours afterward, my whole body feels like it's been through a wringer -- a literal wringer, the two metal rollers on an old-fashioned washing machine. i am a limp shirt. i am sore everywhere. everything hurts: my legs, my arms, my feet, my hips, my back. oliver sacks says this is the consequence of being hyper-toned before a migraine; hyper-toning is one of the prodromes he points to. i can't say that i've noticed that. my warning signs are too quotidian to remark, even after all these decades of acquaintance with migraine: excessive sleepiness (but who's not tired all the time?), lapses in judgment, a chill. in spite of our decades-long dance, every migraine is its own event. each one is a terrible surprise. though there is a certain pattern to the pain itself, migraine sneaks up on me more often than not. how can this be, after all this time? how can bodily agony take me unaware, yet frequently? how can my longest and most intimate companion come trailing newness? why can i not get used to migraine as a constitutive element of my life, a structuring influence? -- for that is what they are, even a stranger could see that. why can't i? i can't recognize myself with migraine. would i recognize myself without it?

Confession from the yoga mat

the worst part of every yoga class is, hands down, the breathing. i understand the theory behind it. i'm a teacher too: you always need some sort of transition from the world beyond to the task at hand. and when it comes to bodywork, and especially the spirit-infused bodywork of yoga -- well, breathing just makes sense. of course you start with the breath.

but i gotta tell you, i hate it.

it's not like i don't try. i cross my legs and straighten my back. i allow my shoulders to relax and my chest to rise. i feel my spine like a long string of pearls. i close my eyes. i visualize The Breath of Life, i ponder the miracle of the pulmonary system (not in those terms, i use appropriately mystical terminology), and i feel:

nothing.

everybody else in the class seems serene. focused. even occasionally transported. i know, because i peek. they love to breathe. they groove on it. their bellies fill and their bellies empty and sometimes they smile. they feel at one with the universe. meanwhile, over on my purple mat, things are not going well. my feet are cramping. my anklebones hurt. my neck is stiff and i'm trying not to fart. worst of all, this breathing is having exactly the opposite mental effect than it's supposed to. instead of dwelling in the present, i'm becoming panicky about the future. i can't help listing the number of important things i could be doing with this time. a reckless multi-tasker, i generally breathe while i answer emails. you know, simultaneously.

when we finally, finally start to move, it's a relief beyond words. gingerly i unpretzel myself and before i know it, i'm lost in the bodywork. is there anything more satisfying than a really challenging pose? i'm amazed that i can wring out an inner organ, recalibrate my skeleton, and hover just a few inches off the ground on a good chaturanga day. i find relief in the exertion, and knowledge. every once in a while i get a bodily glimpse of what an asana is supposed to be like -- what it's supposed to "do" -- and i comprehend from the inside out. realization doesn't come at me in the usual way, like a cosmic baseball to the head ("suddenly, it hit me!"), but spreads like a pool inside me. i can't even pinpoint an origin. i just get it; i know.

at those glorious moments, the distinction between mind and body shimmies just enough that i can imagine what it might be like to sit quietly and follow my breath.

Mind-body connection

i'm no philosopher, but i was raised cartesian enough to be habituated to a strict distinction between mind and body. "cogito ergo sum" was a way of life -- a way of thinking about life -- long before i knew enough latin to translate it. you'd do things so differently if you believed "i breathe, therefore i am" or "my heart beats, therefore i am" or "being part of a community produces a sense of individual being" (which i don't think has a fancy latin tag, though undoubtedly there's a nice phrase for it in some language).

it's not like there haven't been opportunities to unlearn the subjugation of my body to my mind. for one thing, i suffer migraines. what is a migraine if not a painful reminder that the brain is a bodily organ? likewise, i received one of the best health diagnoses ever from the venerable dr aung, years ago. in chinese medicine, each fingertip represents the function of an inner organ. dr aung clipped a sensor to the end of each finger in turn and together we bent over the hand-held meter to watch the electrical currents register. my lungs, it appeared, were functioning at about 35%, my kidneys struggling for 30% and my liver ticking along at nearly 40. finally we came to the right index finger, connected to the brain, and the dial redlined. "aha!," said dr aung. "you are theenking too mach!"

in spite of all these ... learning opportunities, i remain painfully mental. migrainous. im-patient. unrealistic, idealistic. the connection between mind and body keeps eluding me. however, in this latest diagnosis, vasovagal syncope, i've been given another chance. in fact, i've learned how to name the mind-body connection. it's called the vagus nerve.

from the latin for "wanderer," the vagus nerve runs from brainstem to viscera, branching off at the heart, lungs and stomach along the way. (seriously! and how about this, from our good friends at wikipedia: "research has shown that women who have complete transection of the spinal cord can experience orgasms through the vagus nerve"?) in situations of extreme pain, fear, or anxiety, your vagus nerve causes your heart rate to slow and your blood vessels to dilate. the combination of low blood pressure and blood pooling in your extremities results in fainting. being prone on the ground means that your circulatory system no longer has to fight gravity. blood can circulate back up to the head, so consciousness is restored.

if i understand all of this correctly, it means something like this: physical and emotional distress so taxes the mind-body connection that the normally vagabond nerve centre panics and shuts everything down. fainting -- prostration without consciousness -- is the body's way of recalibrating.

or am i over-analyzing?

Paging doctor zwicker

it's always the small things that do you in. in my case, the hospital gowns. i don't get it: why not make a single, standard robe, the type of garment a person could figure out once and for all? -- the type of robe even someone like me, someone who needed help putting on her own bra yesterday, could master? i stripped down three times today for the final phase of my heart testing, and each time found myself confronted with a poser. for the ECG, the gown appeared to be kimono-style. but how can you have a kimono-style gown with just one tie at the neck? thus i found myself flashing the entire cardio ward in my search for a loo.

down in the x-ray unit, i caught the tech before she left and asked, casually, "anything i need to know about the gown?" "nope!," she said brightly, "just the usual. three arms."

three arms? three frickin' arms? what is this, some kind of joke? i pulled one down off the shelf and, sure enough, the innocuous-looking pale blue gown turned out to be built for a mutant. an ungainlier garment you have never seen. and that's before i put it on.

i'll say this for the cardiac ease clinic at the uofa hospital: they run a helluva shop. my appointments were scheduled for 9:15 (holter monitor removal), 10:00 (ECG), 10:30 (xray) and 11:30 (cardiologist), but i was moved efficiently from ward to ward and was done everything but the consult by 9:50. i wasn't particularly looking forward to an hour and a half of outdated chatelaine, but the cardio unit had other surprises in store. "let's get you set up with a pager," said the receptionist, "and you can go off and get some lunch." i stared. lunch at 10? but also: a pager?? nobody's ever paged me for a literary emergency ("doctor zwicker, doctor zwicker, we have a poetry situation in the humanities centre"), so this felt like a big moment. she passed over a round red disk with a flashing beacon. "it'll work anywhere in the hospital and even over at the tim hortons," she said. seeing my confusion -- have they mistaken me for a real doctor? -- she added, "it works just like the pagers you get at restaurants." no help. but i nodded sagely anyhow.

they didn't page, but i still enjoyed the fantasy that they might. i felt important, sitting next to my little pager. i kept picking it up, just to be sure it was working, then imagined what i'd say if they did page me. i played out the fantasy all the way back to the cardio unit and into the exam room. i was phrasing introductions with the cardiologist: "dr haraphongse? dr zwicker." "dr zwicker! i'm dr haraphongse." handshakes all around, when --

-- when the nurse practitioner interrupted my reverie by suggesting, ever so gently, "you might want to turn that gown around before the doctor comes in."

oh, and the diagnosis? "vasovagal syncope." translation: "you're a fainter." treatment: "if you're going to faint, try to avoid hitting your head."