Tanja power

Tanja is traveling this weekend, out to the East Coast to attend her stepson Wyatt’s graduation. This has meant reunion with friends and family not seen since before the accident, all of whom have been deeply kind and concerned for her and also, likely, a little apprehensive about finally seeing the body that struggles to contain her spirit. I only say this because that’s how I would feel and I operate under the assumption that we are all very similar in our animal reactions. Which has been borne out by the warm smiles and palpable relief that have greeted Tanja at every juncture—everyone is steeled to support her no matter what and fairly thrilled to discover she’s doing pretty damn well actually.

It’s a great reminder for me. All these east coast folks have had to work with is the sudden shock of learning Tanja was in the ICU, paralyzed, followed by updates describing her progress. so, it is almost incredible that she should pop in through the back door, carrying her own bag along with that familiar, easy smile, give hugs all around and carry on as if all were right with the world.

We are incredibly lucky. Tanja has done what she said she would do way back on that Sunday in early March when she announced that she was a baby and, like a baby, she would just have to learn to do everything. She worked hard. She stayed upbeat. She made progress. And she will continue to work hard, I’m sure. She will continue to stay upbeat. And there’s every reason to believe she will continue to improve, however gradually.

But it seems like a good time to remember two of the many memorable things Tanja’s most empathetic doctor told her at her last meeting.

“Some people do all the work and never improve. Some people don’t do any of the work and heal completely. No two injuries are the same. But if you’re looking to up your chances, you do the work.”

Which Tanja has done entirely. And, if you didn’t know her, you might think she was one hundred percent back.

But she is not. There are dead simple things you take for granted which she can’t do right now. And sometimes, though she knows how lucky she is, the inability devastates her.

The second thing her doctor said: “Don’t let anyone tell you how to feel. You’ve gotten so much better. But it’s ok to mourn what you have lost.”

I guess one of the things you can truly count on in this world is this: you will never be the same.

https://youtu.be/D-_IugHFGD8

Back in the day in Portland, it seemed like you couldn’t open a business without giving it a whimsical name–The Burger Baron, the Mattress Man, Mister Pizza, and so on. Among all these semi-eponymous local businesses, one–the Sofa King– truly stood apart as an exemplar of excellence, to the extent that the name actually became common argot–much as Cadillac once had–so that where formerly you might hype a thing by saying, for example, “It’s the Cadillac of hot tubs,” now the Sofa King filled that role daily parlance.

In that spirit, I will say that today is not merely beautiful. It is Sofa King beautiful.

This morning, at 7:30, Tanja went to OHSU on the waterfront, x-rays were taken and we were seated in an exam room to await, not the posh surgeon–he is out–but his colleague, whom we had yet to meet.

There was, after a minute or two, a knock at the door and in rolled a bright-eyed, immediately engaging woman who introduced herself and the med student she had in tow. She had an aura of kindness and competence about her, an open, pleasant demeanor mixed with a kind of brisk efficiency. And she was in a wheelchair which she maneuvered with an ease that suggested long acquaintance.

“Looking at the x-rays,” she said, “I don’t see real fusion–maybe just the beginning of it here.”

She pointed to a spot on the screen.

“Do you see that darker line,” she said, toggling back to the post-op xray. “See that difference? That’s the start of fusion. Which is great. You typically don’t see fusion at 12 weeks, except in maybe 5% of cases.”

The surgeon had said almost exactly the same thing about fusion at 6 weeks and it suddenly struck me that if you were going to tell someone they were stuck with a discomfiting medical apparatus for another 6 or 8 or 12 weeks, who better to deliver the news than an upbeat, high-functioning, competent, confident, empathetic person who is, not wheelchair-bound, but wheelchair-enabled.

She asked Tanja to take her collar off.

“I’ve actually never taken it off myself,” Tanja said, after pulling at it with little effect. I reached over and pried it off her. She seemed to blossom like a flower.

“I’m going to ask you to make some gentle head motions. Go to the point of discomfort, not pain.”

They went through left and right. Up and down. The doctor seemed satisfied.

“So you can start weaning off the collar,” she said. “Two hours a day.”

“Two hours a day,” Tanja said, fear masquerading as dismay. “For how long?”

“Every day. The collar has been supporting you for 12 weeks. Your ligaments and tendons have had time to recover, but now your muscles are probably a little tight. We want to give them time to adjust.”

“Oh,” Tanja said.

I think the doctor could tell something wasn’t hitting right. She expanded her explanation.

“Two hours today. Four hours tomorrow. Then six, then eight.”

“Oh!”

“Honestly, I think some people leave here and never put the thing on again. But to avoid muscle strain and to avoid introducing new pains into your mix, I recommend the gradual method.”

Tanja had a lot of questions about what she could and couldn’t do. The answers were all pretty much what you’d expect. No skydiving, for example. No bull riding.

And at some point the doctor gave Tanja a little, I guess you’d call it a pep talk.

“Spinal injuries are fascinating. No two are the same. Like you, I’ve got a spinal injury. But my injury is not like yours. All spinal injuries pick from this big bag of symptoms, only they seldom pick the same things–is it pain? Is the pain sharp or dull, is it throbbing or electric? Or is it numbness? Or tingling? Or weakness? Or itching? Or temperature sensitivity? Or the inability to sense temperature? Is it on your left? Your right? Does it move around? You might feel like, “Ok, my injury isn’t as bad as someone else’s?” And yes, you can always find somebody worse off. But they aren’t in your body. This is your injury. You are the only one who experiences it. Now, you are recovering so well–is it going to be 92%? 98%? It’s clearly going to be up there, but I can’t tell you how high. Maybe 100% So celebrate what you have, for sure. But it’s ok to mourn what you’ve lost. Don’t ever feel bad about that. It’s your journey.”

Tanja had made an appointment with her aesthetician today, just in case the news was good. I left her there, just now, dropping her off on Sandy, collarless, looking like a new person, but actually just the same old person she always was.

We are less than 24 hours from Tanja’s appointment with the neuro team. We are hoping that they will tell her to cast aside her collar and go free, but there’s always the chance they will not do that but do the other thing instead. We’ve been practicing relentless positivity, but as the hours tick by there is a general tension building around the non-zero percent possibility that we will be given the option which must not be named.

It’s all anyone can think about. And since we’re also determined not to talk about it, things are quite quiet here tonight. Almost too quiet.

The other day, when I was maybe 11, I was killing time after school watching a thing called an “after school special.” It was a foreign film, some sort of Scandinavian production, presented with subtitles, självklart, that told the story of a boy, about my age, who was hurrying home with a gift for his mother, some sort of crockery that he’d purchased using money earned doing chores around the neighborhood. He was hurrying, as I mentioned, which led to him tripping on a root and smashing the crockery.

I remember feeling absolutely gutstruck on his behalf. So much so that I hardly attended to the couple, a young man and woman, both tall and beautiful and blond, who came upon him as he sat there crying. They buffed him up and bade him come with them to their destination, a little hut just a bit deeper in the wood.

What they were all doing out in the woods, I have no idea. I just assumed that’s how it was over there.

At any rate, they arrive at this hut and, whereas today it would likely reveal itself to be a DIY abattoir for wayward children, this was ’71, so it turned out to be a little studio that held a potting wheel, paints and a kiln. This couple sat the boy down, helped him turn out a very credible looking plate, upon which he painted, with simple bold strokes of red paint, a friendly dragon, if memory serves.

Everyone was delighted with what he’d painted–the attractive couple, the boy himself and me. The young woman held it up and admired it, smiling. Then she summarily dipped it in a white glossy liquid that entirely covered the design. It was suddenly just a white plate.

The boy and I were horrified–I can’t speak for him but I felt very much the same thing I’d felt when the original crockery had smashed, but this time there was this added feeling of betrayal and disbelief at the casual, careless nature of the betrayal.

“Vanta!” the young woman said when she saw the boy on the verge of tears.

“Vanta! Vanta!” the young man added.

I’m assuming Vanta is Scadanavian for “pussy.” The boy got his tears under control and the trio proceeded to place the plate in the kiln. Then they had tea and moments later, thanks to the magic of editing, they were pulling this thing out of the fire and the dragon painting was now visible again, vibrant and glossy on the plate.

It was a miracle.

They took the boy back where they’d found him and sent him on his way, smiling and waving and saying gå försiktigt which means, “look for our invoice.”

I was convinced he would drop the plate again but, in fact, the last scene is his mother opening the gift and just loving it. She said, I remember clearly, something that sounded very much like, Verkligen? Ännu en jäkla drakplatta, which must mean something like, “Am I dreaming? you’re my favorite child.”

The reason this comes to mind is probably pretty obvious. I was looking at Tanja tonight as we sat on the porch. She said:

“Sure, my hands tingle all the time, my shoulders feel like a block of wood, I can’t feel heat in my legs and my arms are freezing cold unless they’re burning hot, and they move like I’m a marionette. I can deal with all that but I cannot take this fucking collar anymore.”

And I thought, she really seems more herself than I’ve seen her in weeks. Her posture, her gestures, her energy. I feel that she is coming through the kiln and the underlying dragon, as it were, is beginning to show through more and more clearly. It’s a very unscientific observation, but I’ve had my eyes open, so I will stand by it.

Just four days on the Collar Countdown. A short time, but just try holding your breath.

Tonight’s song is one that I’ve never much loved, but tonight it popped up on the radio and, for the first time, I really heard the bass line and I thought, “Okay guys, I see you.” It’s probably the best known McFadden & Whitehead tune and it feels right.

See you Monday.

As previously stated, yesterday was a big day for Tanja with five separate “events” spread across her schedule, from PT to OT to Aesthetic Adjustment to various social commitments–this not even including the normal things one does throughout the day.

Today, by contrast, has been low energy.

A while back, as I’ve mentioned, I was lucky enough to spend a couple weeks in the basement of a major NBA star who I am forbidden to name due to contractual obligations. But it was probably Kevin Durant. I came away from that experience with a few solid observations.

First, given the extreme oddity of his situation, he seems like a really decent human being who is very, very focused on basketball.

Second, and more to the point, if he had a big day on Wednesday–a game, in other words–he would spend 0% of Thursday wondering why he wasn’t performing at peak levels. Rather, the entire day would be passed on the couch, a fuzzy blanket pulled over his epically long legs, while his chef brought him various foodstuffs tailored to enhance his recovery.

It was wonderfully eye-opening to see one of the world’s most physically able human beings, whose life was built around peak performance, spend his day doing absolutely nothing.

Not once did he say, “Well, I scored 40 points yesterday and today I’ve scored zero points so, if I look at the trend, I have to say things are not looking good.”

He seemed to trust in the process.

There are literally just five days left in the countdown. Patient, energetic people may begin the drum roll now.

Today was a mighty day for Tanja. She began with her first attempt at making the morning coffee since 3/3, an experiment that began well and ended with mixed results. The filter, and the grounds it contained, went on an unintended journey, creating a situation across the stovetop which Tanja found disheartening. The coffee however was excellent.

Next she went downtown for 8:00 PT followed by 9:00 OT. (Her driver holed up at Spielman’s bagel shop where, thanks to their generous rewards program, he is a quarter of the way to earning a free t-shirt. ) At OT, she again climbed aboard the Proprio machine and this time was more successful–though no one ever masters the Proprio. Her therapist noted the improvement and gave Tanja the encouragement that, these days, is so necessary to her.

In the afternoon it was back to the Pearl for a visit to the spa; again her first since 3/3. Here she met with her longtime and much beloved aesthetic professional for an epic sesh. She emerged from there simply glowing, carrying an orchid she’d been gifted.

“That’s lovely,” I said. “Is that part of the treatment?”

“It’s a get-well gift,” Tanja said, patiently.

“That’s pretty sweet,” I said.

“Well, she’s pretty sweet.”

One of the things Tanja has taught me, that I ought to have noticed on my own, is that people are, for the most part, pretty sweet when you meet them in their natural habitat, unstressed and unthreatened.

I found myself thinking for some reason of the first time I celebrated her birthday with her. She invited me to go with her to the house of long-time friends of hers–it was a small cottage, set back from the road, a kind of handcrafted hideaway, as efficient and tidy as a yacht, inhabited by these two quiet, thoughtful, watchful people. They did their best to put me at ease–and their best was quite good, as I recall– but I felt very much like a thing from another planet.

They had gifts for Tanja.

He had made a small box of dark oiled wood. It seemed to glow in her palm and her thumb naturally found the circular hole in the lid and lifted the snugly fitting top.

“I dunno,” he said. “For jewelry or whatever you womenfolk do with such things.”

“It’s beautiful,” Tanja said.

“Instead of nails,” his wife said, “He fixed the joints with small brass pins. You can see them there on the edge. Isn’t that cool?”

It was super cool.

Then she produced her gift for Tanja. It was a jar of cherries in dark liquid.

“Are these from your garden?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’ve spent the last six months in a liquor I made from squeezing the juice out of their siblings.”

“Look at the stems,” he encouraged.

On closer inspection, there was something distinctive about the line each stem.

“The actual stems came out during the soaking,” she admitted. “So I replaced them with fake stems I carved from the branches and dyed in the liquor.”

“Built-in toothpicks,” Tanja said. “I love it.”

Like a character in a b-movie, I felt in my pocket for the little box that held a piece of jewelry I’d bought in a mad rush the day before. It seemed best to wait a bit, like maybe forever, before giving it.

The idea of holding someone in your thoughts while you carve stems or fit brass pins for a gift that wouldn’t be due for months–it was new territory for me and I wanted to scoff at it. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

I don’t know what this has to do with Tanja’s recovery except that she has been the recipient of so very much kindness from the moment she was hurt. People have gone out of their way to help in all sorts of ways that have made a real difference to her. It has been wonderful. None of us are angels, of course–not even PFTanja–but she does a good job, just in the way she lives, of reminding one that it is pretty much always worth trying to be sweet.

Way back when, when I was first so far away from home, I found myself with my first commute by car to work. It was the gateway to listening to NPR . And one day, inevitably, I heard a filler piece, a fairly sycophantic interview with a known musician, a pianist, whose name escapes me, but not one of the very bigs. Someone a piano maven circa 1999 would have perhaps known but not a Keith Jarrett or even a Hank Jones. I got a bit of a new age hit off him, which soured me.

But that’s not the point. He was a talented and respected pianist who was returning to his career after a long hiatus caused by some sort of trauma–I tuned in too late to hear what the event or disease was.

When I tuned in, he’d begun describing his agonizing return to serious practice. Whatever the trauma had been, it had put him back to “zero.” I have heard this benchmark described before–Dylan, after his motorcycle accident, had to relearn guitar “from zero.” Clapton, it was rumored, had the same challenge after his epic fall, or something. But my sense is, these people are not starting “from zero” the way you or I might be.

In the case of the NPR interviewee, he clearly had a sense of where the keys were, what they meant, how they related to the totality of music theory, as well as the physical ability to press any keys in any combination or order and according to any timing. These mere physical things were no mystery to him, nor even a challenge.

But he no longer knew how to play. That was what he had to relearn.

He said, “I developed a discipline, and it was all about finding the mental space where I could access that higher order. I would sit at the piano until I found the space, and then I would touch the keys… Find the space, touch the keys… Find the space, touch the key… Find the space, touch the keys…You see?…Find the space, touch the keys?… Until finally I could touch the keys and find the space.”

I remember thinking this was a remarkable load of crap. Oh my god.

But I totally get it now.

C-Collar Countdown is at 7. One week to destiny. Find the space, people.

The key metric these days is definitely the CCCD, which is now comfortably into the single digits, at 8. That number assumes a lot and, given all the conflicting timelines we’ve been given along the journey, there’s a possibility this assumption is ill founded.

Originally, someone mentioned that the collar would be on for two weeks. That estimate didn’t really sink in as, at the time, there were so many more dire questions in the mix. But we were quickly told that two weeks was not realistic and we were encouraged to regard whoever it was who had given us this number as soft-hearted or, perhaps, misguided and/or ill-informed. The real number was six weeks. Yep, that’s right. Six to eight weeks. Call it two months.

When we went in at about 6 weeks for the follow up with the surgeon, the man who took Tanja’s x-rays was incredibly encouraging–he is forbidden from interpreting the film but let’s just say he was feeling positive–so we went into the meeting ready to cast aside this most visible and uncomfortable affliction.

“You don’t really see fusion at six weeks,” the doctor said, looking at the x-rays. “But I could almost convince myself I see the beginning of fusion here. That’s a very good thing.”

Awesome.

“But I have to insist the collar stay on for another six weeks.”

That’s 12 weeks, if you’re counting. I am still a little flummoxed: if you never see fusion at 6 weeks, who in the world suggested the collar might come off at six weeks?

Anyhoo, water under the damn, as they say.

This morning Tanja announced that the shoulder pain was officially gone. It crept back in as the day went on and was accompanied by a pervasive itchiness, but all these little shifts and changes feel like signposts on the road forward.

On Sunday, Tanja came out and did some gardening. One of our rosemary bushes had succumbed to the late cold–it had dropped its guard with an eye to spring only to be double-crossed–and Tanja began clipping it up to fit it in a lawn debris bag. However the woody stalks proved too much for her and I could see her spirits plummet.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t spiral. You’re getting stronger. It’s just a matter of time.”

“I just want to be able to do things,” she said.

“You can do things.”

“I can’t do this,” she said. “You do it.”

She thrust the clippers at me. Felco #2, a solid clipper, though I personally carry the #8.

“Jeez, I can’t do it either,” I said.

“You’re playing.”

“I am not,” I said. “It’s like a block of wood. Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like.”

I gave a mighty heave and managed to complete one cut.

“I could do it with the eights. These things are bullshit.”

Good-by and Keep Cold
BY ROBERT FROST
This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm
All winter, cut off by a hill from the house.
I don’t want it girdled by rabbit and mouse,
I don’t want it dreamily nibbled for browse
By deer, and I don’t want it budded by grouse.
(If certain it wouldn’t be idle to call
I’d summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall
And warn them away with a stick for a gun.)
I don’t want it stirred by the heat of the sun.
(We made it secure against being, I hope,
By setting it out on a northerly slope.)
No orchard’s the worse for the wintriest storm;
But one thing about it, it mustn’t get warm.
“How often already you’ve had to be told,
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold.
Dread fifty above more than fifty below.”
I have to be gone for a season or so.
My business awhile is with different trees,
Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these,
And such as is done to their wood with an ax—
Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.

Just eleven days in the Collar Countdown, but it seems longer, I think, when you’re wearing the actual collar.

There are lots of interesting phenomena moving through Tanja’s beleaguered corporeal instantiation these days–arms on fire one morning, tingling by noon, icy in the afternoon, only to suddenly feel quite pain free but comparatively weak by evening. Meanwhile, her energy drops away and recovers with dizzying frequency. Some things she really couldn’t do two weeks ago–sit and chat with a friend for an hour–are now fairly pleasant–not that the friends have changed, to be clear, but rather that her energy sustains her through the visit. And, honestly, “fairly pleasant” undersells it a little. But the point is, she can do it now where before she couldn’t. Meanwhile other things, working in the garden chief among them, remain very taxing and must be done in short bursts, as if she were a pearl diver who can only stay down there so long…

But, as you’ve noticed, in general the trend is toward progress and the progress is slow. So slow as to be difficult to track, day to day. So, barring any major developments, this blog will go silent for the weekend. Think of it as a harbinger of that happy day when Tanja will be just another civilian, going about her life without a dedicated blog tracking her. She will like that.

Nothing to see here today. No anecdotes to illuminate the complex beauty of life. No pithy observations. No incisive metaphor. Just two very tired people and a seemingly inexhaustible 15 year old who is moving from room to room singing “Pancho and Lefty” in a bold baritone that seems to be constantly threatening to make contact with the conventional melody.

Tanja did many things today, including three social “events.” Once upon a time (two weeks ago) this would have slayed her, but tonight, while she is tired, she is still up and about, pursuing little chores with something of the energy she used to bring to these pre-bed moment–as if the chores somehow wouldn’t be there in the morning but must be dealt with tonight.

The battery is low, the mood is stable and the focus is on the long haul.
Collar countdown drop to 12! Tomorrow is another day!