One Hundred and Twenty Degrees
120°.
If you haven’t heard, there’s currently a scorching heat wave suffocating the southwest moving up through the middle of California and this was the projected temperature of Death Valley this week. Pretty sure it exceeded it, but it is an absurd number. No one should have to endure 120° heat.
120° has been haunting me the past almost 3 months. Thankfully, not the temperature. That would be awful. It’s been my main goal in flipping a world turned upside down right side up. 120° urged the surgeon. 120° the physical therapists agreed. Definitely 120°, at minimum, said the chiropractor.
120° by June 5 or my knee would likely never get back to its full mobility.
It was a very traumatic knee injury. But ol’ sunshine, lollipops and rainbows everywhere over here found many ways to minimize the reality of it. Don’t get me wrong, the pain has been real and the limitations have been devastating, especially in a year that I’d committed to stepping into a new decade at my peak. But moving through this process as if the reality isn’t reality is one of the few coping mechanisms that has gotten me through. That and copious amounts of specialty coffee. Finding the tiniest bright spots in the midst of a dark situation gives me a bit of hope that it will not, in fact, be like this forever. It’s already felt like forever.
What happened, you ask? All of the wrong things at once. It was at the climbing gym. The short of it: I slipped/fell/jumped (still unsure) off the wall and my entire right leg took the impact, dislocating and tearing 5 ligaments, 3 of which were obliterated, and a tiny fracture to the top of my tibia. Don’t worry, I couldn’t feel the chip in my bone.
I could go on giving you unnecessary details of the first surgery that happened 2 weeks after my injury and the second surgery that’s happening next week and a likely third surgery that would happen a few months from now. I could bum you out with my journey from using a walker turned crutches and wearing an almost robotic leg brace with a couple of months of not driving (that whole right knee, driving leg thing) and major swelling, but nobody needs to be bothered with that.
What I will say is that it’s been a lot. Like, a lot a lot. My world got really small really fast, having my independence and mobility swiftly taken from me. But, as anyone is required to do when life doesn’t go as planned, I’m learning to adjust. And even in doing my darndest to keep a positive mental attitude (“PMA makes the day!” as my dad says) knowing that it has a significant impact on my healing process, there’s no denying that this is really f***ing hard.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had outcast animals finding their way to me as if I’m a rejected Disney princess. It started with a scraggly squirrel on top of a fence that made almost uncomfortable eye contact with me. Its tail was especially thin, spindly hairs hanging on for dear life, kind of like the ones you see in a bad combover. For whatever reason (maybe it was the eye contact) I felt the need to stop and say hi. The squirrel came right up to me and after a minute of talking to it (no one was around to judge me), I continued on my walk. It followed me. It followed me halfway down the block on the top of the fence until there was nowhere else for it to go and until it seemed to reach the end of its territory of comfort. I was fairly certain it would’ve continued on with me if I coaxed it enough, but on top of everything else, bringing home a pet squirrel didn’t seem like the best idea.
A couple of days later I was doing my second (excruciating) 10 minute stationary bike ride on my porch in an effort to remind my knee what it means to move when, as tears rolled down my cheeks from the pain, a baby opossum crawled out from under the cover of my outdoor furniture. It smiled at me before prancing off toward the buildings behind my place. There is a good chance that this baby opossum is part of a passel making their nest on my Ikea couch, but I’m in too much denial to check. So instead of using my outdoor furniture, I continue to leave it covered and pretend like baby opossum isn’t under there, cozying up on the off-white cushions. (Why does anyone choose off-white cushions for outdoor furniture? I did. I sure did. Not a good idea.)
This past week I had access to a pool and hot tub to do some water therapy, per the suggestion of my physical therapists to help me get to that 120° goal. Both were fairly small, the pool and hot tub, but that didn’t really matter because in all of the times I went, only once was anyone else using it. It was a parent and their kiddo, and they were out of there within moments of me arriving. What I did see on 3 different visits was a skunk, with one of the times there was a surfeit. The first time it casually walked out from behind the wall unbothered by my presence, lingering nearby before strutting up the stairs. The same stairs I was just about to go up to get back to my car. I waited a minute before heading out myself, most certainly not looking as glamorous as my skunk friend, what with my gimp walk and all. With everything going on, the last thing I wanted to figure out was how to not smell like skunk in the very likely event that I’d get sprayed. It would be my luck that I’d get sprayed. It hadn’t gotten very far ahead of me, which is saying something because of how slow I’m walking these days, especially up stairs, so I moved even slower, carefully trailing behind as calmly and undisturbing as a peg leg pirate can. By some miracle, it finally trotted away and I was in the clear. The other times I saw the skunk (and its family once), I wasn’t leaving quite yet, so I waved a simple hello (and goodbye) with no concern of getting skunked.
Nothing like this has happened to me before and I’m trying not to read into it too much. Though I can’t help but wonder if my current vulnerable state is giving off this misfit type of energy where these animals see me and think, “She’s one of us!” In a weird way, these less than snuggly creatures have also been a bright spot for me. Being such unexpected encounters, I’ve felt a sense of trust from them, which in an odd way, makes me feel seen while in my slowing down, I’m also seeing them.
It’s the season for it. Or maybe more accurately the year for it. For slowing down. For tuning in to my body, my small sliver of a world, the present moment, that which might typically make me uncomfortable and my pain and being with it. Mostly because I have to–it’s all I have right now. But also because when life gets hard, I don’t not want to keep living, even if it’s not the way of living that I wanted.
There’s a phrase in German that goes something like, “If the day wasn't your friend, then it was your teacher.” Most days have been my teacher as of late. I might not like it, but I’m learning–or trying to. And if the days can’t be my friend, at least the weird animals can. So don’t you worry about me, I’ll just be over here channeling my reject Disney princess, singing out of my dutch door, summoning the squirrels, opossums, and skunks to do all of the daily tasks that are challenging with a bum knee. I guess I now welcome their company, and their help. See? Told you I’m learning.