Got home Sunday from a Friday surgery.
I didn't think I was ready for being released from the hospital, but Blue Cross only approved one night's stay. I think I stayed five nights last time. In the end, it all worked out fine. I continue to get stronger by the hour. Matty and Babbo are waiting on me hand and foot. Babbo wants to spend a night in my single hospital bed with me. I don't think so. I do let him pile in after school and watch cartoons before dinner or before bedtime.
I got taut little black nylon stitches this time. I am a bit allergic to the monocryl they sometimes use. They are handsome stitches, and Dr. Perry seems quite pleased with how everything turned out. I got an epidural (first time ever) and there are three wee bites in my lower back to show for it.
In addition to the doctors and their schedulers, I am indebted to the kindness and competence of nurses - as always.
I was shocked, again, at how useless my leg became. In in the first day post-op, it took a lot of focus, sweat, and help to move it even a few inches. Yes, they sawed the bone in half, but the muscles should have theoretically still worked.
Waves of mild nausea and sleepiness come over me several times a day. It's the painkillers, the four hours of anesthesia I was under, and the vitamin supplements. I will forgo the iron supplements - they make me really sick- and just eat like a piggie instead.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Surgery got moved up a week
Have been running around like a headless chicken. Surgery got moved up a week, but Doctors Mast and Perry will be there. I am really still incredibly touched that Dr. Mast will drive down from Reno for this. I am touched, too, that I work in an incredibly flexible workplace. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.
It was not a pleasure to wander around the streets of LA in the rain last week. I tried going to a Target in a large mall, but the sensory overload was too much, and I retreated to the peace of my car. My eyes also glazed over at a midsized Whole Foods, too. I'm such a hick.
I did run around Sunset Blvd. very late at night for two nights in a row to see two shows at the Echo. It'd been decades since I did something like that by myself. The adrenaline surge was huge. When I was getting gas at 11:30 at night off some unknown freeway offramp, all I could think was, "What the hell am I doing here?"
In the end, it was a huge pleasure to see Matt Salas' band, the Rhone Occupation. They are a young band, and they've been gigging hard. They have purdy songs and sound like a cross between Radiohead/Elliot Smith/the Phoenix Foundation. Their free set didn't start until after midnight, but they played as if their lives depended on it to a room of about 25 of us. I know Matt from going to the Phoenix Foundation shows in LA in 2006. He was with Sony digital music at the time and tried really hard to help the band out in any way he could.
It was even a bigger pleasure to see Steven Schayer, the Jazz Butcher, Downy Mildew, and the Black Watch the next night. It was a lovely treat to hang out with Marc Horton, Owen Harris (who was on a stopover in LA on his way back to NZ), John Andrew Frederick (the English prof and fellow William Boyd fan behind the Black Watch), and Steven Schayer in a Latino bar in the late afternoon before the show. Steven, Owen, and I met through the Able Tasmans/Humphreys and Keen/Puddle gig that Owen put on in Auckland in February. Marc and I met years ago through the Mutton Birds' listserve. I'd seen Steven's band, the Clay Idols, once when I was a teen. I wasn't prepared for how sad and lovely Steven's songs were and how well he could sing. There is something outgoing and endearing about Steven which reminds me of certain Lew cousins very very much.
Marc and I killed a few moments waiting for the Echo's doors to open by having some of the Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban I brought down. We sat in the heavy rain on Sunset Blvd. and toasted our lovely spouses and small children. Our spouses may not also be huge geeks, but they allow us to be. Bless.
So a group of us have become friends or have become better friends through geeking out over our love of New Zealand music. The friendships have gone from the days of going to the post office and sending blank cds so that somebody could make a compilation to the age of Facebook and Yousendit, where we can cut to the chase and crank the mixtapes out.
Motorcycle Michelle put me up in her fabby apartment in Glendale. I talked her ear off the first night, when I was hmming and huhhhhing about getting ready to leave at 11 pm for a midnight show. I did my best imitation of a a lump on her couch for the next two mornings in a row.
It would appear that boots and tights and skinny jeans are in with the in girls of the Republic of Silver Lake. The porkpie hats on the boys must go, though.
I am glad I got the chance to get out of Bishop for a few nights, glad that I missed Matt and Babbo and Bishop, glad I got to eat ramen twice, and glad I got to do something different before facing being laid up for a long while.
It was not a pleasure to wander around the streets of LA in the rain last week. I tried going to a Target in a large mall, but the sensory overload was too much, and I retreated to the peace of my car. My eyes also glazed over at a midsized Whole Foods, too. I'm such a hick.
I did run around Sunset Blvd. very late at night for two nights in a row to see two shows at the Echo. It'd been decades since I did something like that by myself. The adrenaline surge was huge. When I was getting gas at 11:30 at night off some unknown freeway offramp, all I could think was, "What the hell am I doing here?"
In the end, it was a huge pleasure to see Matt Salas' band, the Rhone Occupation. They are a young band, and they've been gigging hard. They have purdy songs and sound like a cross between Radiohead/Elliot Smith/the Phoenix Foundation. Their free set didn't start until after midnight, but they played as if their lives depended on it to a room of about 25 of us. I know Matt from going to the Phoenix Foundation shows in LA in 2006. He was with Sony digital music at the time and tried really hard to help the band out in any way he could.
It was even a bigger pleasure to see Steven Schayer, the Jazz Butcher, Downy Mildew, and the Black Watch the next night. It was a lovely treat to hang out with Marc Horton, Owen Harris (who was on a stopover in LA on his way back to NZ), John Andrew Frederick (the English prof and fellow William Boyd fan behind the Black Watch), and Steven Schayer in a Latino bar in the late afternoon before the show. Steven, Owen, and I met through the Able Tasmans/Humphreys and Keen/Puddle gig that Owen put on in Auckland in February. Marc and I met years ago through the Mutton Birds' listserve. I'd seen Steven's band, the Clay Idols, once when I was a teen. I wasn't prepared for how sad and lovely Steven's songs were and how well he could sing. There is something outgoing and endearing about Steven which reminds me of certain Lew cousins very very much.
Marc and I killed a few moments waiting for the Echo's doors to open by having some of the Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban I brought down. We sat in the heavy rain on Sunset Blvd. and toasted our lovely spouses and small children. Our spouses may not also be huge geeks, but they allow us to be. Bless.
So a group of us have become friends or have become better friends through geeking out over our love of New Zealand music. The friendships have gone from the days of going to the post office and sending blank cds so that somebody could make a compilation to the age of Facebook and Yousendit, where we can cut to the chase and crank the mixtapes out.
Motorcycle Michelle put me up in her fabby apartment in Glendale. I talked her ear off the first night, when I was hmming and huhhhhing about getting ready to leave at 11 pm for a midnight show. I did my best imitation of a a lump on her couch for the next two mornings in a row.
It would appear that boots and tights and skinny jeans are in with the in girls of the Republic of Silver Lake. The porkpie hats on the boys must go, though.
I am glad I got the chance to get out of Bishop for a few nights, glad that I missed Matt and Babbo and Bishop, glad I got to eat ramen twice, and glad I got to do something different before facing being laid up for a long while.
Undertheradar.co.nz : The Bats Virtual Show
The lovely Ian Henderson - whom I've known through things New Zealand music related - is putting on this show. He's fronted his own cash, and I wish him well!
Undertheradar.co.nz : The Bats Virtual Show
Undertheradar.co.nz : The Bats Virtual Show
Friday, October 09, 2009
Mad neurotic scratchings
- I was not very zen this morning when I tore the house apart looking for my old Moleskine notebook. Yes, I guess I would have been very sad if I'd lost my mad neurotic scratchings from the past few years, but I would have lived. I found it in the very last place I would have looked- well, well, well under the couch. I have started a new notebook. It is sexy and red and unmarked. Clean slates and all that.
- I have temporarily damaged my fingertips from moving around frozen pyrex bowls.
- Going down to Los Angeles to see AT, Karen, part of the New Zealand music mafia.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Date with my orthopedic surgeons
Doctors Perry and Mast will do me the favor of giving me another femoral osteotomy - this time on my right hip. It's hurting like hell in this low pressure system we're having, and I'm ready.
The left hip still has some arthritis, but that was always going to be a given.
The left hip still has some arthritis, but that was always going to be a given.
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