Every body is healing

First, the Costa Rica update: My girl was having a wonderful time, then her husband and I received this text on the day before she was to return to New York: 

What we couldn't see was that as she was texting, she was crumpled on the beach, unable to move, her ankle throbbing and ballooning. A woman photographer came over to her and held her hand and talked to her soothingly while the surfing instructor went to find a rescue vehicle. Then some men on the beach helped carry our girl to the vehicle and helped settle her inside, after which the instructor drove into town in search of a medical clinic. The first two were closed. Finally they found a pharmacy staffed by a "lovely woman doctor," according to my daughter. The doctor spoke no English, but there was a woman there who translated the Spanish, and my daughter understood that though her ankle was very painful and she could put no weight on it, no bones were broken. 

Then the doctor brought out a syringe to inject something into the swollen joint and my girl, who is needle phobic, began to hyperventilate and cry. An older Black woman who was shopping in the pharmacy heard her distress. She came over to my daughter and hugged her and stroked her head and tried to comfort her. "She began rubbing my heart," my daughter told us later, unperturbed, because the woman's actions did help to calm her as the doctor administered multiple shots to her ankle and foot. "Honestly, Mom," my daughter said afterward, her voice bright, despite the ordeal she had just been through, "I felt as if I was surrounded by angels the entire time."  

"What did the doctor inject you with?" I inquired.

My daughter, who was back in her hotel room FaceTiming with her husband and me by then, burst out laughing. "I didn't ask," she admitted. "I wasn't even curious. I guess I was just trusting the universe."

I hyperventilated a bit myself at that point, but what could I do? My husband said later the injections were probably a steroid to keep the swelling down.

For the rest of her final day at the beach in Costa Rica she iced and elevated the ankle, ordered room service for dinner, and got around in a wheelchair the hotel provided. She said everyone, to the last person, could not have been kinder and more helpful to her. The next morning, someone at the hotel made her breakfast to go for the hour and a half trip back to the airport, where she would be met by a wheelchair. While she was in the car, I was having my PT session in New York. I called my daughter so that my wonderful physical therapist, Deidre, could give her a few tips for the plane: wriggle your toes, do ankle pumps to the degree your pain will allow, move the leg back and forth from the knee, and ice the ankle if you can. 

Her brother met her at JFK, along with her sister in law and her husband. Her brother brought her crutches and showed her how to use them. On their way to his car, our girl sent her dad and me a picture of her brother pushing her in a wheelchair, big smiles on all their faces and I thought: She's still surrounded by angels. That was the moment when I finally exhaled. 

The next day, our intrepid traveler summed up her Costa Rica experience in a text she sent me: "I had an adventure. And I remembered that I trust that the world. Doesn't stop bad things from happening but I'm surrounded by good energy to bring me through those times." 

May this forever be her truth.

She went for an X-ray to confirm nothing was broken and is now doing PT, recovering slowly. She and her husband are supposed to travel to Paris at the end of the month for her birthday, and her PT person thinks she will be able to make the trip. In the midst of it all, she had a job interview yesterday for an internal transfer at her company, and was up till 3AM the night before finishing a deck for her presentation to the four-person panel. Apparently she aced it, because they offered her the job at the end of the interview. I am in awe of her.

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In news of my own healing, I had my six-week follow up with my surgeon this week, and everything appears to be progressing well. My son drove me to my appointment and waited for me as I underwent X-rays and the physical assessment of my gait and how the joint itself is operating. The new titanium hardware and rotating ball are playing nicely with the bone and surrounding tissue, fusing where needed, rolling as appropriate, and I have now been released from movement precautions. This means I can bend past ninety degrees again, cross my legs, turn my feet inward, bend over a jigsaw puzzle and peer closely at the pieces to my heart's content, and lean far forward to study the flow of sentence on my laptop screen, all without worrying about dislocating the new hip joint. 

I confessed to my physical therapist yesterday that my arthritis flares are back, which I suppose is to be expected given that my post surgery medications have now been stopped, including the twice daily mega doses of aspirin, which served as a blood thinner, and the morning dose of meloxicam, an anti-inflammatory to help tame swelling in the surgical leg. Both of these also nicely throttled back random body pains. But, as I told my husband when I became aware of the old aches returning, "Everything hurts, except the hip, and that is massive." 

In the past, people always insisted to me that the remedy for arthritis pain is movement. Nah, I'd think. That's just more pain. Of course it was. I was walking on a broken limb. But now, when I ache, I find that my actual impulse is to grab my trusty cane and go for a walk. It's what my instinctive brain is telling me to do, and I obey. And it does help. The pain recedes. My body feels more limber. Holy moly, walking actually feels good. 

My son and I had some errands to run after my appointment. In the Whole Foods store, as I trundled along, he said, "Is that pace comfortable for you? Because you might want to slow down." Apparently I was moving faster than he was comfortable with. I walk just fine without the cane at home, but my PT person wants me to use it in public until at least three months post surgery, as apparently the bulk of my healing will occur between six weeks (now) and three months. As well as I feel, and despite my incision being externally sealed, internal restoration is ongoing. I am also working hard in my weekly PT sessions to reawaken and strengthen muscles that I have avoided using for fourteen years. My therapist points out that the cane is a visual cue to people that I'm not yet entirely steady so please don't run me over. I find I'm becoming fond of my cane, which is ironic given how I spurned the use of one when I severely needed it. Oh, me.