It has been more than a half-year since I last posted to this blog and, perhaps equally importantly, it has been 7 years since I arrived in Asheville to live here. Those of you who know me are aware of my penchant for recognizing mileposts and this is one that seems worthy, so I have decided to post a bit of what has transpired over the last 6 months or so and perhaps share some of my thoughts on what appears to be coming.
When I last posted I was nearing the end of a very pleasant stay in the home of my friends John and Signy Cowle in Picton Ontario where Abner and I had decamped for a couple of weeks. We stayed there until July 1st and then drove to a campground near the Michigan border to spend our last night in Canada. As it happened, it was the weekend of both Canada Day and Independence Day in the US so space wasn’t easy to come by. Nonetheless we checked into a campground that was filled with holiday celebrants and made no plans for the evening, as it was just a stopping point. The plan was to drive to Fort Wayne on the 3rd of July and spend the 4th through the 6th visiting my parents. Since I had already made arrangements to leave the trailer at Earthbound for the day of the 7th in order for them to try to figure out what had caused the wheel well damage this timing seemed to work.
The visit to Fort Wayne was relatively uneventful. The only real difficulty was the distance from the campground in which I was parked to my parents’ house. In cities the size of Ft Wayne and larger, there aren’t a lot of campgrounds in close proximity to the city centers and I faced a drive of close to 30 minutes each way but the campground was lovely and the people were nice. I got to watch 4th of July fireworks from my father’s office on the 18th floor of a downtown high rise overlooking the ball park from which they were sent up. Great view. It was particularly interesting though to see fireworks shows going off all along the horizon irrespective of what direction I looked. When I was growing up there were two or three fireworks shows in the whole city. This July it looked like there could have been a hundred.
The last night there I spent the night at my parents’ house with the trailer in the driveway so I could get an early start and be at the Earthbound factory around 8:30. Bill Hughes, who made the appointment with me, had said that the earlier I could get the trailer there the more they would be able to get done so I was eager to drop it off, drive into Indianapolis to spend the day with my youngest sister, and then drive back to Marion to pick it up for the rest of the trip back to Asheville, via Cincinnati where I would see my other sister for a couple of days.
Unfortunately, none of this went as planned. At this point I will not go into the details because I probably will end up in litigation with Earthbound over the trailer and I have been advised by counsel not to go public at this point with the story of the trailer and what has happened with it.
As a result, all I can tell you is that I left the Earthbound factory by mid-morning and headed for the Cincinnati area where I had booked three nights in a suburban campground right on the Ohio/Indiana border. This too was a substantial distance from where my sister and her husband live in Ft Thomas, KY but it was an easy freeway drive almost door to door so it really wasn’t as time consuming as the commute had been in Ft Wayne. I had a really nice visit with Jan and Chuck and got to see a few sights in Cincinnati I had not seen before. I enjoyed a downtown modern art museum immensely but the biggest surprise is the old Deco train station that has been converted to a huge and spectacular multi-discipline cultural and event center. The building is one of the most impressive train stations I have ever seen and while we were there we saw a show about Egypt and specifically about Cleopatra and her family. The exhibit was great fun but seeing the building was the highlight of the visit here.
After three nights, I packed up the trailer, got Abner into the car, and headed south for the final leg of the trip back to Asheville. The plan had been all along to have a couple of days overlap between my return and Josh’s departure. Since he was staying at my house for the whole summer except for his family’s vacation in Costa Rica, it seemed to make sense that I should be there for a couple days to take over before he left and have a few days after his return before my planned second trip of the summer to California.
Things have a way of changing though when you don’t expect them to. Again I cannot discuss the details of what happened with the trailer but suffice it to say conditions were not such that I could head out on a cross-country trip of an intended 6-7 weeks duration. Making matters worse, on Bastille Day (July 14th) Peter and I went climbing at the gym. It was the first time I had climbed since before I had left and I probably was unrealistically ambitious but I was doing pretty well and toward the end of our session I decided to try a new route that had gone up since I had last been in the gym. As it turned out it was harder than it looked and I took a fall, hyper-extending my right arm in the process and hurting my shoulder pretty badly. It hurt enough that I stopped immediately but I was hopeful that a short period of recovery would allow it to heal.
Over the course of the next couple of weeks though it didn’t improve so I went to see my primary care doc because I feared I had torn my rotator cuff. Many of you know that I had rotator cuff repair surgery 13 years ago so I had a pretty good idea of what this injury feels like and unfortunately what I felt in July was quite reminiscent of the previous experience. My doc agreed with me and said I would have to be referred to a surgeon.
This too didn’t go well. He gave me several names of people he was comfortable with my seeing but a friend here who is a pediatric surgeon suggested a guy he knew at a local sports medicine practice whom he believed was the top shoulder guy around. I made an appointment to see him as soon as he could get me in on August 2nd.
He did the standard range of motion tests and a few x-rays but concluded that it could be several different injuries and he wanted me to take a month to let it rest and prescribed Naprosyn to cover the pain. I told him in the first couple of minutes of our conversation that I was in something of a hurry to have this diagnosed because if it was a rotator cuff tear I wanted to have it fixed before it got bad enough that an arthroscopic procedure wouldn’t be possible. He insisted on waiting 4-6 weeks and then seeing me again so I left.
After two weeks I stopped taking the Naprosyn since I realized that while it was effective at covering up the pain it also eliminated my ability to distinguish when I was aggravating the injury with movement. Besides, I really don’t like being on medication.
With my plans for the remainder of the summer scuttled I had to book a trip to California by plane for about a week around Winesong, the annual fundraiser I have attended for 20 or so years. I had thought Josh would be able to stay with Abner since the plan had been for him to be at my house through the end of September, but even that didn’t turn out as planned. He had decided that he wanted to start school in New Jersey in the fall semester and would have to leave on the same day I would be flying out to California. Fortunately my last remaining dog sitter, Ben Fowler, was available so I was still able to go.
So on September 3rd, in the early morning, Josh backed out of my driveway with his dog Layla looking forlorn in the back seat and I went back into the house to prepare for my departure later in the day. By that time Josh and I had lived together for 6 weeks even though it had not been planned that way, and to my amazement, when he and Layla left that day I realized that I would miss them. The significance of this is that I haven’t had another human being living with me since I moved into my own apartment in early 1973. I was pretty sure the days of my being flexible enough to share living space with another person had passed so this was a real revelation. I am sure part of it was that Josh worked most days so I still had a lot of time to myself, and he occupied the downstairs of the house so our paths didn’t necessarily cross unless we wanted them to. It also didn’t hurt that in the 6 weeks of sharing my house I fell completely in love with Layla. When Josh would go to work, she usually came into my office and lay on the floor as close to my feet as she could manage. She is a very sweet dog whom I missed the second she left.
This isn’t to take anything away from Josh. He is an easy person to get along with and deserves some of the credit for things working as well.
The California trip was much like others I have done under similar circumstances. For 8 days I raced around like a mad man trying to see a lot of people and do a lot. I didn’t make myself quite as crazed as in previous years by limiting the number of people I visited to a lot fewer than in previous visits, but it is still a rough way to go back to a place where one has lived for 33 years. I had a good time and returned to Asheville exhausted on September 12th.
Since I didn’t want to waste any more time I had booked an appointment with the Dr. Thompson, the sports medicine doc for the 15th. At this point he said that since there was no discernable improvement I would have to have an MRI with an arthrogram to accurately determine what was damaged. It was at this point, a month and a half after I had told him that I wanted arthroscopy for any procedure I would have to have if at all possible, that he told me that he doesn’t do arthroscopic procedures and he would have to refer me to another partner in his practice.
So, I went for the MRI and had a third appointment with Thompson at which he told me what I had suspected all along. I had another rotator cuff tear as well as a labral tear and some osteophytes. He said that a surgical correction was appropriate and suggested that I see the younger guy he had mentioned previously. The problem was that this new doc wanted to do another whole workup on my injury and me and charge me for it again. It was at this point that I decided Dr Thompson had treated me unethically and that I was not going to be charged still more by another partner in his office when I felt cheated already. This had been a very costly venture which, had he been open with me in the first place and said that he didn’t do arthroscopy I could have gone to another surgeon and saved a lot of time and money.
In the end I saw an orthopedic surgeon my primary care doc had recommended in the first place. His name is Chris Elder and I have felt like I have had excellent care since I switch to him. It just took a lot of extra time and money to get there.
Because my friend Jonathan Boynton and his long time love Shaghig Kodbashian were getting married the weekend before Thanksgiving and I had committed to attending the event in San Luis Obispo, CA, the earliest reasonable day for my surgery was December 1st so that was the day we chose. Some arrangements had to be made for some help for several days after the procedure since I had good reason to believe I would not be able to fend for myself.
My friend Ben committed to the first 24 hour shift which consisted of driving me to the surgery center, waiting while the surgery took place, and then scooping up my remains to take me home and tend to my pathetic drugged up self for the first night. As it turned out, Ben got the easy part. As part of the procedure, I was given a nerve block that completely deadened all feeling in my right arm and shoulder and it didn’t wear off until just about when Ben had to leave for work on the Friday following the operation. There was about an hour between when he left and my sister Jan and her husband Chuck arrived to take over for a couple of days. This unfortunately, was also when the pain became quite intense and I discovered that the Percoset they had prescribed for pain management just wasn’t helping. I was groggy and disoriented but still in really serious pain.
Of course since it was relatively late in the day on Friday, by the time I called Elder’s office to get some help on finding alternative pain management the office was closed and I was referred to one of his partners who, to put it succinctly, refused to help in any way. What I realized was that I needed dilaudid, a narcotic I had used before with some success and a small amount of which I still had. It requires a written prescription and the doc on call obdurately refused to write me a prescription in spite of my offer to meet him at the location of his choice. Fortunately I have other resources and was able to get enough to manage my pain through the weekend until the office opened on Monday.
There was a repeat of this situation on Saturday when an itching and burning rash appeared under my right armpit and down that side almost to the waist and to the elbow. It was spreading rapidly and was frighteningly reminiscent of a bad rash I had developed the first time I had rotator cuff surgery. The last time I had ended up in a dermatologist’s office with a rash covering my whole trunk from crotch to neck. He gave me a shot of some strong steroid, some prednisone pills, and an ointment called Clobetasol all of which stopped the spread and slowly got rid of the rash. Fortunately for me, I had a small amount of prednisone and a couple of ancient but apparently still effective tubes of Clobetasol so I was able to self treat the rash and get it partially under control over the weekend as well. The advice from the doc on call was to wash the rash with soap and water and to take a benadryl. Suffice it to say, a week later when I went back to Dr. Elder’s office for my first post operative checkup I let him know in detail of my displeasure with the utter lack of care offered by his partner the previous weekend.
It seems to me that the duties of a doctor in the time period immediately post surgery are to manage pain and to deal with any complications. This guy refused to do either. I will not mention his name because I think he has already been told of my serious displeasure over this episode.
On Sunday my sister and brother in law had to drive back to Ft Thomas so a couple hours after their departure my friend Rob, who was visiting during a break between his two jobs in New Hampshire, mercifully arrived to take over. In some respects Rob had the hardest tasks since by the time he came I was treating the rash with two ointments about every 8 hours and with my inability to move much this soon after surgery, he had to slather the stuff on me. I felt like a piece of pork being basted but Rob was a good sport about it. He was soon to head off to Nantahala for a certification course to be a Wilderness First Responder so he said that rubbing these various goos into my bruised and swollen old body was nothing compared to what he was going to be preparing for.
Rob had to leave after 3 days so at day 6 I was left to my own devices. As it turned out, this was a little early. I was on pain meds for a total of 11 days and they do make you groggy. Driving to and from physical therapy and doctors’ appointments, not to mention picking up groceries was quite a challenge at the beginning. Still, after the first two weeks were over I was feeling semi-human and aside from a big honking brace I had to wear, was beginning to be able to take care of my own needs again. I don’t know what I would have done without the help that I got from Ben, Jan and Chuck, and Rob in that first week.
It has now been almost 7 weeks and while I still am dealing with some pains and lack of range of motion, I am doing a lot better. I am told by the PT people and Dr. Elder that realistically I shouldn’t expect to feel great until about 4 months out, and that to completely heal will take a year. As it turned out, I had not only badly torn one of the tendons of the rotator cuff complex, but it was also detached. I had two tears in my labrum, bad osteophytes on my collarbone that had to be cut off, and a badly torn bicep tendon that was removed resulting in the disconnection of the long head of my right bicep. I am told that when I have recovered I won’t feel any difference in what I can do with that arm but that it might look a little weird. I guess I now have a monocep on that side.
After all of this though I am glad I had the work done. It was in much worse condition than I realized and probably would have only gotten worse if I had put off this procedure. Now I just have to get through another 10 plus months of recovery and then will have to decide whether or not I should start climbing again. Not an easy decision. Climbing has brought me great joy and has allowed me to meet some amazing people but it has now been the source of three injuries, two of which required surgery. I am not sure this is a wise activity for me to continue.
In other news, Ben’s mother Kristen moved to Asheville in August and is finding her way in this new town remarkably well. She lives very close to Bruce and Nora in a rental for now and is starting to think in terms of something more permanent. In spite of the fact that I was hoping she would only work part time so she would be available to me as a hiking companion, Kristen was pleased to get a full time job almost immediately upon her arrival here. How inconsiderate.
Bruce and Nora said goodbye to their beloved Pyr Madeline a few weeks after Abner and I left on our summer trip but decided relatively quickly that they would not want to be without a dog in their lives and so, after a trip to Portugal in the early autumn, the returned to Ashville via Athens Ohio with a new female Pyrenees puppy named Beckley. She is a wonderful sweet dog who at 6 months, is getting over puppy like behavior (typical pyr) and is turning into a total charmer. Her photos will, no doubt, appear on this blog one of these days.
So we are all settled into the quiet winter in Asheville. Most of the tourists desert us from New Years Day to about mid-March so the town is quiet and manageable. The weather has been mostly mild and as my mobility improves I am doing more and more hiking. Life does go on.
So that is a seriously abbreviated version of the last 6 months. There has actually been a lot more but much of it involves my dispute with Earthbound and as I said, I am not at liberty to go public with the details at this time. Still, Abner and I are both okay and just on cruise control through these next months. In the spring I should be feeling pretty well healed and will, no doubt, be a little stir crazy and aching for an adventure. Rob is supposed to go to work teaching climbing at a school in the mountains in West Virginia and Peter still goes up there about every other week so I am thinking that when the weather is good perhaps I will take a drive up there to see them both in their element.
So it goes. I trust my regular readers are well. Write an email if you have a chance.
