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Author: 459856pwpadmin

I believe I mentioned something about a plague. . . .

Or,

When is Plantar Fasciitis not Plantar Fasciitis?

A little over a week ago, on a Tuesday to be exact, I
developed pain in my right foot. I
hobbled around, used a cane, used crutches (doesn’t everyone keep crutches.) It
got better, it got worse. Walking
became impossible.

I called my doctor.
He told me to see the group PA, who poked my foot in the plantar fascia,
turned my ankle over, tested my motion, ordered x-rays and declared I had
plantar fasciitis. Told me to take
Ibuprofen.

There is a certain genetically programmed part of my psyche
which I call “the good
German”. The doctor said take
Ibuprofen, I had no ibuprofen in my house so I bought Ibuprofen. I took Ibuprofen. It took 36 hours of
constant reflux to realize that Ibuprofen and I are not compatible.

I got better.

Then I got worse, much worse, almost as if I were being
punished for getting better without taking my Ibuprofen.

My feet swelled, but not just in the plantar fascia. In fact the plantar fascia declined to
play in this game of “where does the swelling go next”. My ankles swelled and hurt. The areas above and below my knees
swelled up and turned varying shades of red. By hands and wrists became hot and inflamed. I could not use my hands. I could not sleep because of the pain
in my hands. I could not use
crutches because my hands refused to cooperate.

I tried Ibuprofen. “Gotcha” said the reflux demon. Twelve agonizing hours later I
tried aspirin. I have always taken
aspirin. Aspirin and I get along
easily together. No reflux. Somewhat less pain, reduced to major
annoyance level.

Once again I was referred to the PA. The thought of my taking Aspirin gives
the PA apoplexy. He recommends
some new fangled kind of Tylenol.
Some part of me is rather annoyed at the PA so “the good German” is
shoved back down into the recess of my mind and I do not go to the drugstore to
buy new-fangled Tylenol. Better
stick with my old friend, aspirin. Mr. PA has no other treatment
recommendations despite the fact that my lips on the left side of my mouth had
quadrupled in volume, my left cheek was swollen, and my left eyelid twitched.

It was decided that I was having an adverse reaction to a Bisphosponate
that was recently prescribed. I was told to discontinue it, although the next dose was not
to be for another five days. He also ordered a Lyme Test but I doubted I had
Lyme: First I was involved in the Lymerix study, had all three shots without
any side effects and I think the vaccine has a good prevention rate. Second, I haven’t been bitten by a
tick since the LAST Lyme test (the problem with living in an area with a high
incidence of Lyme disease is every time something hurts or swells, everyone
thinks it is Lyme.) Thirdly, I always practice good tick prevention techniques when I am
working outdoors. Lastly, the new medication seemed more likely, especially
since joint inflammation is a known side-effect, and I had only recently
started taking it.

The eyelid twitch and lip swelling went away but nothing
else got better. I crawled to bed
one night. One night I scooted
across on the house on my bum, eager to just try to hold on to enough fortitude
to get by until this nastiness was out of my system.

…

It got worse.

Two days later my throat swelled during the night and I
could not swallow easily, although I could breathe easily enough. By morning half of my tongue had also
swollen and I could barely talk. I
had more trouble swallowing but could still breathe.

This time my doctor’s office did not refer me to the PA.

After the triage nurse asked to see my tongue she
immediately called over another nurse, said she was taking me to room X, ushered
me into a wheelchair and whisked me away.
They had IV steroids and Benadryl going before G even got back from the
valet parking.

I spent a good part of today in the hospital. I can’t recall when I was so happy to be
there.

Next time I go to the hospital I will get a pretty little
red bracelet to go with the white ID bracelet.

And the hospital parking garage was full. The valet parked G’s car on the
street, not at all unusual, but apparently someone side-swiped it when
driving by and crushed his side view mirror.

Sometimes too much is never enough.

November 20, 2008
Not Quite Here

It seems like I have been absent lately, not just from this
blog but also from my life, from who I once was and who I might yet be. The past week or two has been
especially tentative, and life seems to have been spent in an even more intense
cycle of waiting, hope, despair, and more hope.

For there is hope now, more hope. Wonderful hope.

And I am ecstatic!

How do I show this?

The floodgates opened and I cried my heart out.

How do you explain the explosion that occurs when months of
despair are confronted with hope?

I saw my husband again. Out of the fog he walked, the man I
married, a man able to see beyond the increasingly narrow constraints of his
own mind. It was a joy and a
shock.

I had never allowed myself to grieve for the loss of that
person who had been taken from me.
How do you grieve for a person who is with you and whom you see
everyday, but who is also only a small part of the person he once had been? How
can you grieve the loss of a life that remains present with you every single
day? Only after being confronted
with how much had been lost was I able to admit how much I grieved

I cried and cried and cried. I cried for what I had lost. I cried for what I had found. I cried because I tried to convince myself to abandon hope. I cried because I can't bear to lose him again.

And in crying I found some piece of myself that had been misplaced.

And then I was visited by a plague. But that is a different story.

November 19, 2008
Two Novels

I
feel like I have been overwhelmed with reading lately and I can’t quite wrap my
head around all the thoughts that are swirling around in my head and form them
into cogent sentences.

It
had been my intention to get back to reading the papers, a habit that had
fallen by the wayside over the summer, and indeed I did. The week I had chosen to expend my
repertoire into reading happened to coincide with all the recent financial
upheaval and “bailout” or “recovery” plans which made for exciting and somewhat
overwhelming work. I had great
plans to read the 4 papers I used to read daily, plus a few online news sites,
but quickly got bogged down. Since
that week I have managed one paper most days with some scanning of the
others. Time is still an issue and
time to put my attention to anything is a rare commodity.

And
yet, reading papers serves a purpose in that one feels less disconnected from
the outside world, but it has never satisfied a basic craving to engage the
mind in the way that reading a book or a good essay do. I am partial to fiction, always have
been, and am not particularly elitist in my tastes in fiction, although I have
pretty wide ranging tastes in non-fiction as well. Recently fiction is better suited to my limited time and
overworked brain because there is not only the mind-expanding aspects that a
good novelist brings to a story, but there is also the possibility of
escape. Sometimes escape is good
in and of itself.

I
have finished two novels, but because my time is limited to the extent that I
can choose to escape and read or I can chose the time to write (and reading is
much easier) I have read one right after the other without recording my
thoughts. The result is that now, although the novels are quite different, they
are already beginning to comingle in my thoughts and it is more difficult to
isolate the finer points of each. Since I need a book for my next excursion on
the exercise bicycle, the danger of contaminating the remaining ruminations
with yet a third story is quite strong.
Must. Avoid. That.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics had been sitting on the “to be read”
shelf for quite a few years (2? 3?) and I had waffled back and forth about
actually reading it. And at first
I did find it a little off-putting.
The author’s technique of throwing in references (both real and
imaginary) instead of character and plot development threw me a bit out of gear
at first, and it admittedly did take me a little time really relate to the
voice of the protagonist, but she did win me over, and in fairly short order. It was not terribly long before the
narrator, Blue Van Meer, proves that she is not just preternaturally bright,
and a bit of an intellectual snob, but really just an out-of-touch teenager who
perhaps has lived too much in her head and books and is struggling to find her
place in the world. She is torn between
emotional and intellectual distance while still craving acknowledgement and
even friendship from her peers.
She is woefully unprepared for dealing with the emotions and reactions
of other young people as she has been brought up in a varied, but rather isolated petrie-dish like environment,
controlled by her peripatetic father.

I
was rather drawn to Blue. In many ways she reminds me of myself as a young
girl, although I was not so confident in my observations, and not so
self-assured or undoubtedly bright.
But then, Blue is a fictional creation. I found it touching that Blue, who prided herself on her
observational skills, and how thorough she was, really missed many things that
were going on around her, things that might have been more obvious to a young
person who had grown up in a more social environment.

And
yet, in the end, Blue grows up, and becomes a more observant, and more
self-reliant person. She learns
that the world was not as she had supposed, and she begins to see from a more
adult perspective. This is
traumatic for all children, and Blue’s transformation is artificially more
dramatic than most.

What
I think now, some time after having finished the book, is that one never knows
how any experiment is going to turn out.
I think back to Blue’s father’s reactions at the end of the book and I
am struck by his sense of surprise battling with pride at the evolution of his
daughter.

It was a quick read, again perhaps because I related somewhat to the character,
and did not find the various oblique references to be an impediment but
entertaining and revealing in their own way. I will read it again.
I look forward to it.

Pretty
much immediately after putting down Special Topics I picked up Linda
Grant’s novel, The Clothes on Their Backs. Although the two novels are
completely different, they both revolve around a female narrator who is
something of an outsider trying to find her place in the world.

I
have to say that I loved Linda Grant's novel — it was an excellent read and
very thought provoking as well. In fact, I had to keep pausing to
reconsider what I had read, occasionally going back to reread selected
sections. This made it difficult
as a bicycle book (this is by no means a complaint.) It is entirely different
that Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which I pedaled through at a
furious pace.

In
fact, when I finished I almost immediately started reading The Clothes on
Their Backs again as I think there are permutations of connections that I
may have missed in the first go-round. It was such a wonderful dissection
of secrets and lies and human failings and perceptions. Vivian tries to
unravel the threads of her family's history as she is also trying to find the
threads of her place in the world. All these threads tie in so well with
the images of clothes and the perceptions and significance of what they say, or
don't say, about the wearer.
The allegorical use of clothes and how they both inform the observer and
hide, or sometimes reveal, the
wearer is fascinating. The threads of memory and self are so intimately tied in
with the threads of clothing and one's place in society are just fascinating.
Really, I do need to read it again and look forward to doing so.

October 20, 2008
Two weeks have passed and nothing….no sewing. In fact, at the moment I have even seemed to lose the incentive. I know it will come back eventually, and I am still thinking of things I want to make, perhaps even more so than usual as I am looking at my wardrobe and saying, "I need this" or "I really like that but it would be perfect if it was just X, Y, or Z". So I know will sew again.

The sewing room just sits and waits:

The bias slip was cut out on Monday and that was after the pattern sat on the cutting table for a week. Now it is draping over the cutting table and the ironing board, rendering each one useless for other projects, and I still feel little incentive.

I had planned to make the slip to wear with the maroon skirt to dinner tonight for our 22nd anniversary. But it didn't happen.

I did have the foresight to try on the maroon skirt on Friday, which proved to be a good thing as I needed to take it up again. So much for all that effort in June. The skirt just sat on the cutting table waiting for me to make a slip and now I need to alter it again. This time I remembered to put a lining in the skirt, even though I had to cut a new one, construct it, and attach it as I had long since ditched the original lining.

Actually I had thought that I could use one of the bemberg slips that I had used to make the slip pattern. I have a couple of those commercial slips and I don't wear one of them often. Since it was all finished I thought I could just sew it in at the waistband instead of making a new lining. No go. The slip was considerably too big, which means that the slip-draft sitting on my cutting board is also going to be too big. Bummer.

Still, I did manage to get the skirt into a wearable state, with lining, and get to the NYS Sheep and Wool festival today, so I really have no reason to complain. Why do I keep getting myself into corners like this and finishing projects at the last minute?

And this all points to at least part of why sewing is not at the top of my wish list right now. I am determined to knock off a few more pounds, and even at 1 or 2 pounds a week, it makes a difference. My sewing time is limited enough that by the time I finish anything it is not likely to fit, so why bother. It is not that I am rich — I am not — but I would rather spend money on basic things to get me through than spend my precious time, and at this point the time is the far more treasured commodity.

At the moment dressing is an exercise in frustration. The jeans that fit perfectly last month are not so great now. I should have realized when I put them on this morning that if they were loose right out of the washing machine they were going to be downright baggy after a few hours. An outfit I loved two weeks ago seems hopeless today. At the same time a sweater-set that seemed dowdy and outdated in August looks fabulous today and was just pulled out of the donation bag. So there is good and there is bad and I just don't want to waste my time, not that there is that much of it right now. For the moment though, that time seems better spent reading, or exercising and dreaming of the things I am going to make when I reach my goals.

Where it will end up, who knows? But by then I will have a list of projects at the ready.

October 18, 2008
Goodbye Summer

The pool was closed on Friday. Even though I love Autumn more than I love Summer, it is always sad.

It was a warm sunny day, almost as if the weather was chiding us for giving up so early. What, there was only a week of cool weather, it seemed to be saying. Did you give up so easily? Now that the pool is closed the days have been sunny and warm. It is supposed to be in the 80's by mid week. I might miss that cool blue water.

I actually don't look forward to the warm days. I love the crisp mornings, the thick fog rising off the Hudson, the warmth of the afternoon sun combined with a touch of a cool breeze and chill in the shade. I love the cool days, the sweaters and the boots, the fall colors. Fall always seems like a new beginning to me, more so that in January.

This year closing the pool marks a mental transition for me as well. With the closing of the pool I am saying farewell to the responsibilities of summer, and the self-imposed guilt that goes along with all the things that did not get done. Now I can just close my mental book of all the things I haven't done, haven't managed well, I can close my book of failures. Next year will be different. Now I can release the stresses and pressures that have been building up, and prepare myself to move on.

I am painting the deck, slowly, but making progress. I am going to the gym again even though at this point I am more tired from the extra effort than energized. I am determined to control my levels of stress. There is much in life that I cannot control. But I can control how I define my place in all of this, how I define what I should be or do, how I react. I can control my reactions.

Goodbye pool. Goodbye Summer. I am sure there will blips along the way. But the past is just that, past.

October 12, 2008
A few accessories for the transition from summer into fall

Thank you for the advice on the bias slip. I am going to go ahead and make it. I have wanted to copy this slip for some time so there is no doubt that I will use it, and my opportunity for that quick project is now passed anyway.

The cutting table was occupied yesterday while I sewed up a sweater. Although I didn't spend all the assembly time in my sewing room, just when I was sewing in the sleeves, when I needed a large flat surface, I may have exhausted my allotment of personal project time for a day or two.

Anyway things are a little more scattered today and the CO is a little more agitated so it is best to lay low and out of the sewing room for now.

Since sewing progress is slow, I have decided to entertain you with a few accessories that have been making my heart sing now that the weather has turned cooler.

I picked up the two long gauzy cotton (or whatever they are as I took the tags off) scarves on sale at Macy's over the summer. As the weather has turned cooler they have proven to be the perfect thing to wear with a simple sweater or tee and jeans. It is not quite time for woolens yet and these bridge the season perfectly.

It wasn't long ago that I would have said the long gauzy scarf was just not me, and I would have denied that I have any inclinations toward the romantic/boho/gypsy whatever you want to call it style. But I think I was just deluding myself. Anyone who is familiar with my penchant for large statement jewelry, sometimes of the ethnic variety, would probably have had to stifle their laughter to hear me talk about conservative my clothing choices were.

Not this year. As I have mentioned before I have been letting myself go and embracing my style this year with little regard for other's opinions.

The horn necklace is another recent acquisition, procured in a late night pity party. It is huge. It is also very me and the day it arrived it pretty much came out of the box and went right around my neck. Although I love big statement necklaces, really big beads are often difficult because I can't get them to lie right around my neck, or I can't just can't get them to work in actual outfits. But this one has been just perfect for me, sitting just right on my neck and making friends with many other garments in my closet.

October 2, 2008
Slip-Up

This is the week that I am supposed to start sewing something for myself. It doesn't have to be anything new, I can just finish up a few UFOs, but it has to be for me. I am tired of sewing things for other people.

My first goal was to make a slip for the wine cotton skirt that I altered in the early summer and never finished after I left the lining out.

My idea was that I would just make a bemberg slip that I could wear with the skirt because I was too lazy to rip out the waistband again. I know, I know, I am probably making a simple project harder. But wait; it gets worse.

I have a couple of a-line bemberg slips that I absolutely love. They came with a wool skirt with cut-outs and the idea was that you could change the lining/slip to have a different color underneath. These slips are fabulously comfortable and they drape really well. Each one is just two pieces of fabric with hooks and eyes at the opening. How hard could this be?

Well, I underestimated the available time and didn't get to this project until after 10 tonight. I had the bemberg washed and pressed, and I had the original lining/slip, but I hadn't looked at it that closely.

Then, when I was about to trace it off to make a pattern I discovered something I hadn't anticipated, although I should have: the slip is cut on the bias. This should have been obvious because there are not darts and it fits perfectly — duh.

So my simple project is not so simple.

I have never made a pattern for a bias garment before. Do I just trace the slip to paper, or is there some adjustment that has to be made because it has been worn before? How do I account for changes as the skirt is sewn or hangs out? I am not sure I have enough bemberg to make two if I mess up the first one. What kind of seam allowances do I add as all the seams and hem will be on the bias too?

Is this even worth doing? This skirt is a little shorter than the one the original slip was made for. If I make a lining for the maroon skirt, can I also wear it with the wool cut out skirt? Am I putting a lot of effort into a slip for a skirt that really isn't likely to last more than another season?

Maybe I should just use the original lining pattern, cut a new lining and attach it the proper way. It might be faster to just redo that waistband than fiddle with this new idea.

It might be even easier to just forget the whole lining thing and just wear the skirt with a slip since I don't think I will alter it again, or probably wear it beyond this fall.

Whatever I do, it isn't going to happen until tomorrow.

September 30, 2008
How do you spell relief?

It is amazing what a little recognition and positive
encouragement can do to bolster the spirits even in the face of a less than
positive future.

In many ways watching ones spouse descend into increasing
cognitive difficulties can easily become an isolating situation for the
care-giving spouse as well.
Many doctors do not want to speak to openly about their thoughts, fears,
or prognoses without proof. HIPAA makes
it more difficult to communicate with the spouse’s physicians. Even with letters of authorization from
the patient, power of attorney, medical power of attorney, each conversation
can become a hard won battle that often ends in disappointment as the
information needed is either not there or not forthcoming. Doctors are humans too and react to their patients on a human
level and watching a once-colleague and friend decline can cloud the waters of judgment.

Social life also becomes more limited. The confused spouse becomes easily
over-stimulated and easily confused.
Personal relationships falter as conversation becomes difficult, and
many people, not sure of what to say or how to be of help simply disappear. On
a purely intellectual level it is quite interesting, and I suspect I have
engaged in this kind of activity far too frequently in my own past. One doesn’t know what to say or do so
one says nothing and disappears. I
don’t believe this is purely intentional:
it is just so much easier to avoid the situation. If one is not directly faced with the friend
or colleague is no longer completely who he once was, or faced with difficult
conversations or inappropriate and embarrassing outpourings of emotion, then
one can more easily convince oneself that things are going well, or as well as
can be expected.    “Take
care of yourself” becomes the unwitting anthem of abandonment. Remind myself never to casually toss
out that phrase again.

And yet I was completely surprised at how buoyed up I felt
after G and I had contiguous
appointments with my internist who is also G’s new internist after his previous
physician retired.    For
the first time a physician actually spoke to me and said that what G was going through
was pretty obvious and discussed the possible outcomes and what I needed to do
to take care of myself as well. He
made sense. He explained how G’s
keen intelligence has in many ways helped him to mask what is going on, and how
easy it is to fall under that spell because no one really wants to believe that
someone they love/respect/admire is failing. But he also explained the obvious signs and what they
mean. He was the first doctor to
acknowledge that the things I observe actually fit in the pattern relative to
the fairly subtle but still obvious signs that he, the physician, saw. He was
the first physician who has acknowledged that although G is highly intelligent
and obviously still is, there is a good bit of cognitive loss and the best we
can hope for is to be able to stop the decline, and possibly gain a little
ground. But that possibility
depends highly on the results of tests that G is undergoing now, and the other,
more likely, possibilities are far less positive.   And although he did not tell me anything that I did
not already know, the fact that he said something, that he acknowledged the
situation and actually did help me in understanding some of G’s behavior and
how to cope with it, was like receiving a gold star in kindergarten.

Although nothing has changed, everything has changed.

September 27, 2008
Another One Bites the Dust

I've had this photo of a dress by Narciso Rodriguez on my computer for some time.

It was from the spring collection, and I think it was shown more like a light coat, but I think of it as a dress. More exactly I think of it as a fall or spring dress, but definitely not a summer dress.

It has been on my mind a lot lately, and I was thinking of making it. In my vision I see the dress with a little more structure than the original, which seems gathered and soft, where as I am thinking of a more dramatic flared line in the skirt out of something with a little crispnes like a doupioni or shantung.

Today DH saw he photo on my monitor and told me I can't wear that because I would look like a Cardinal (as in Rome). Now I can't look at the dress without imagining it as a Cardinal's robe. Too bad and I like the color combination too, and I know it is the idea of a black dress with a wide colored band at the waist that has captured his imagination.

What do you think? Could I pull it off with a crisper hand, in a more stylized version? Perhaps I should skip the black and go for a deep blue-green with a lighter band at the waist?

Well, anyway, it appears to be off the "must make" list for now.

September 23, 2008
Please just finish something

Would that I had gotten my sewing room as organized as the sewing room closet, also known as home to the turtleneck collection, the sweater collection, and the boot collection as well as some fabric. At some point during the summer I had shoved all the UFO's into that closet hoping to consolidate them and go through them, perhaps even finish a couple, but I haven't gotten to that yet.

Now they are all on the cutting table, a mountain of reproach, a testament to dreams unrealized. The weight of unfulfilled promise is crushing.

How can I begin something new when each new project gets started and abandoned, only adding to the pile of "could have beens".

My short term goal is to finish a UFO (or more) a week. And also to finish every new project I start. I cannot add to the mountain of regret.

My determination has been strengthened by the completion of another project, albeit one that is non-sewing related with the exception of a few pattern drafting/alteration. Who knew that pattern paper was so useful?

Presenting the new landing at the top of the basement stairs. I take no responsibility for the landing, which was created by removing the door at the top of the stairs (edge by first blue step) and putting in a new door (out of sight at the bottom of the photograph).

The floor however, is mine.

This is just a commercial-grade vinyl, left over from something else. I had planned on glueing the vinyl down to an underlayment I asked the carpenter to intall after he ripped up the old carpet.

Somehow, in my distracted state on Monday, with the carpenters, electrician, pest-control guy, and a very confused and unhappy Mr. Distracted, I managed to let the carpenter leave without putting down the 1/4" plywood. He did trim the opening where the door had been very nicely with molding down to the yucky subfloor which was complete with a few holes. Obviously it would not do.

After I got the DH calmed down from the hubub, and after dinner, I assessed the situation and realized that I could not put down the vinyl floor, that the stair-lift people were coming today to install the stair-lift, and I had a lot of work to do.

There was no way I would take up the molding, put in the floor and put the molding back, trimmed to size. So I had to work around it. Hence the table paper. Since the landing wasn't square anyway, it proved handy.

I had feared that my skills with a saw and would not be adequate for cutting the plywood to the right size and shape. But I managed to get it in just perfectly,

I am most proud of those little notched corners around the opening to the once door. Sometimes any finished project is a great boon to creativity, and there has been a severe shortage of completed projects, on any front — home or personal — the past few months.

Now to tackle those UFO's. Well, perhaps I will sleep first.

September 23, 2008