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.