Shedding and Shredding: My Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred

When I played varsity wheelchair basketball, the pre-season conditioning/team building/Stockholm-syndrome-acquiring exercise was "ramps." Both the men's and women's teams would meet at Memorial Hall Football stadium at 6:30 a.m., which at that hour would be would be so cold that your fingers would be too numb to grip the pushrims. The coach would put two trash cans on the bottom level-- they smelled like rotten soda and rust -- for everyone to vomit in. For several hours, we would push up and down the steep concrete ramps: short pushes, long pushes, power starts and stops, backwards. You'd get to the bottom, take off another layer of clothes and gulp some water before the coach shouted 'Go!' and you'd push back up past dead birds and oil stains, sometimes past the maintenance guys on golf carts, the exhaust of which would both choke you and give you a contact high. When "Living on a Prayer" came on the boombox exactly halfway through the workout, the entire team would sing along, and the dozens of voices echoing Bon Jovi off the concrete walls made the stadium sound like church.

Anyhow, it was hard work. It was really hard work.  (Josh Birnbaum documented it in the photo essay 'Uphill Battle.' Click on the link and scroll right until you get to the 5th image). But at the top, you'd get to look for a few seconds out over Champaign-Urbana looking all stark-midwestern-pretty in the August light. Your brain would be flooded with exercise endorphins, the breeze from the windows would feel good against your salt-encrusted skin, and you would think: damn, I have done a really hard thing. During the next hard thing -- say shoveling your car out of a few feet of snow to get to practice in the dark at 5:30 in the morning -- you'd think, "Well, hell. I got through ramps. This isn't going to kill me."

For the past three years since the hip replacements, I have missed that sense of accomplishment you get from pushing your body to its physical limits. Because of the two hip replacements, I can never  play wheelchair basketball again: a fact that's taken me a long time to accept. Given that "Take it Easy" is just a Jackson Browne song in my world, I've been trying to find something that will give me the same feeling.

First, I wanted to be a runner. Runners get to achieve personal bests and cross finish lines and show off their well-toned asses in spandex as they glide along the Vancouver Seawall. Not to mention that running is free, and, unlike using the elliptical machine, you don't have to spend hours pondering why the person next to you felt the need to eat 20 cloves of garlic as a pre-workout snack. So, despite the fact that running is a no-go for people with hip replacements, I downloaded a little training plan from the Internet and set to work. I will spare you the messy details, but let's just say that it's hard to really get a sweat on when people are stopping you every 5 minutes to ask if you're alright. If you need a visual image of me running, think of those blow-up noodle-y figures they have at car lots.

So, fine. Running was out. Next, I got a one-month Groupon to a gym that offered a bunch of fitness classes thinking I would try them all until I found one that worked. Spin classes caused my hip to swell up faster than a Real Housewife's lips. At Jazzercise, the instructor stopped the entire class to a) praise my T-shirt (which featured Omar from The Wire) and b) inform me that I "needed to be a little jazzier." (When you walk through the garden, you better watch your jazz hands). By 'jazzier,' he likely meant "try to look less like a giraffe suffering from a severe neuro-muscular disorder,' but in fairness, it's not easy to be jazzy when you're surrounded by small, pert women who have been taking this class so long that they probably wake up in the middle of the night grape-vining. Exercise classes were out.

I tried biking, but the combination of "missing half your ass" and "jamming your ass repetitively* against a hard bike seat" is not a successful one, no matter how many pairs of padded shorts you wear. Plus, when I realized that the learning curve for biking outside involved the risk of getting beat-up by an aggressive Vancouver cyclist (yeah, chime chime to you too, wanker) or getting smoked by a semi, it became clear that cycling wasn't for me. I try to avoid activities that have a high percent chance of turning me into meat-paste.

*Apologies in advance to anyone who found this post by googling the above phrase and is now deeply disappointed.

And so, I arrived at the wonderful world of at-home exercise DVDs. I picked up the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred (and her 'Shed and Shred,' which I plan to do next) because I watched The Biggest Loser obsessively when I was in bed for 8 months following the first hip replacement, and because years of being coached make me respond well to someone shouting at me. (In fairness, Jillian Michaels is not super shout-y in the videos).

The concept is simple: The 30 Day Shred has 3 levels of punishing circuit-style 30-minute workouts and you do them for 10 days each. I figured they'd be short enough that my hip wouldn't swell up, but challenging enough that I'd feel a sense of achievement when I finished the entire plan.

And I was right! Though I had to make a few modifications for exercises that I didn't have enough hip flexion to do, (looking at you, Mountain Climbers), I quickly fell in love with the program. It was great starting every day with an exercise endorphin high. I could flail around in the comfort of my own home where only my cat and boyfriend would judge me. Actually, being an expert at both 'shedding' and 'shredding,' Mika was more than happy to pitch in. During push-ups, she'd lay underneath me and lick my nose every time I dipped down to her level.  It didn't even matter that, because of my ground floor apartment, people would routinely peer into my living room with perplexed expressions, trying to work out whether I was channeling spirits/ speaking in tongues/ summoning the rain gods. It also didn't matter that my clomping around made the entire apartment complex shake (Arley Stomp! Arley Smash! Arley Do Jump Squats With The Daintiness of Donkey Kong!). I was feeling good.

Now, when you've had two hip replacements and your ligaments are basically held together with duct tape and you've got all of the '-itis'es, there are bound to be hiccups. My 30 Day Shred was actually more of a 33-Day Shred, because I took three days off after my knee took issue to over-compensating for my hip and decided to go rogue. In the days of yore, a sore knee would have translated in my brain into "shut up body! You're not the boss of me! Watch me push through harder until I literally cannot walk and THAT will teach you." These days, however, I've dialed the intensity down several crucial notches. I realized that it's better to do a 33-Day Shred, than a 30-Day-And-Knee-Reconstructive-Surgery Shred. When I returned after the three days, I even helped my knee get through the rest of the workout with ice packs, anti-inflammatories and anti-inflammatory cream. I'm not sure if this is what maturity feels like, or if this what old age feels like.

And so, today, I got ready for the final day of the 30 Day Shred. I imagined how triumphant I would feel. Perhaps there would be an exclamation-point-filled Facebook status update. Perhaps I would cue up "Eye of the Tiger" and dance around my apartment while Mika looked on with deep scorn. My back had been stiff and achy for the past couple days, but during the warm-up I was feeling okay. During the first circuit set I was feeling okay. And then, during the one-handed clean-and-jerks of Circuit 2, I felt a sharp pain in my back. The pain shot down my leg and into my knee. There is the good pain (the kind that leads to you getting mightier) and then there's the bad pain (the kind that leads to bed rest), and this was the latter.

I stopped. I paused the DVD. I limped around my apartment. The pain didn't go away. I got a glass of water. I limped some more. The pain didn't go away. Every step sent a blast of pain from my back to my hip to my knee. I turned off the video and hit the showers, feeling more disappointed than I'd been in years, feeling like I'd fallen on my face a few steps from the finish line. I mean, there is no medal for finishing the 30 Day Shred, but I'd wanted to kick its ass. I wanted to do the thing I had set out to do. I wanted a moment like I'd had on the ramps, where I'd done a hard thing that would propel me to accomplish more hard things (like, say, finishing the novel I've been working on).

Now that a few hours have passed and I am sitting here with an icepack on my back, however, I am trying to see my almost-30 Day Shred differently. Before the hip replacement, I routinely pushed my body further than I should have. I got injured or sick, played through, got more injured, played through, got frustrated because I couldn't understand why things weren't improving, played through, blamed myself for not trying hard enough, played through. I bought into all those Nike commercials about pain being weakness leaving the body. But sometimes pain is not weakness leaving the body. Sometimes pain is just damage happening. Knowing the difference is not the kind of slogan that looks good on a T-shirt, but it does prevent you from having further hip replacements.

And so I will declare my 30 Day Shred to be a qualified success. I did have to modify it. I did take more than 30 days to do it. I did stop with 11 and a half minutes left to go in the final damn workout, turn off the DVD and walk away. But I also achieved more leg strength than I've ever had. I did both walking and traveling push-ups from my toes. I did lose an inch around every part of my body and about 6 pounds overall. And, if I do say so myself, my ass is looking damn impressive...ish.

I guess that's the take-away message for those trying to work out with arthritis, or post hip-replacement. You push until you feel the wrong kind of pain, you take a step back to recover, and then you push on. Your path to success looks like stairs, not like a ramp. You do small difficult things over and over again until they are no longer difficult.

Pulled Pork Injury!!

There's a new season of America's Next Top Model coming up and I know you'll all be shocked that I'm not trying out. It's been nearly three weeks since my surgery and I am clearly on the fast-track to hotness. I mean, check out what I have to offer:

• Legs that have not been shaved because of the whole "hip restrictions and bloodthinners" thing. Well, that and they're longer than the "Clan of the Cave Bears" saga and I have trouble reaching them at the best of times.
  
• Legs that have not been moisturized on account of said hip restrictions, making me a more ideal contestant for America's Next Top She-Lizard.
• A uniform of dri-fit shorts and workout T-shirts accented with dried noodles and honey-mustard sauce. Stylish and tasty! Bra not included!
  
• The finishing bag-lady touch: stained, falling-apart Mary Janes, which are the only slip-on shoes that don't give me blisters.
  
• Stress-induced eczema! Don't worry, it just looks like ringworm!
  
• The red-hot three-weeks-post-surgery strut, coming to live from that catwalk known as "the block around my house."
  

Oh yeah. I know you're feeling it.

But today, I took hotness to a whole new level. For the past few weeks, my poor mom has had to slave away making me meals. (Thanks, mom!) On today's menu: pulled pork sandwiches. Now, pulled pork and I have a long and storied romance. Half of the world's greatest love songs could have been written about my feelings towards this dish. You could literally put pulled pork on ice cream and I would be down with it.

These days are not exactly filled with epic highs. I mean, the zenith of last week was eating those Swedish Fish candies. So you can imagine my emotional state leading into this moment of pulled porkery. I already had my stretchy eatin' pants on. I picked up my sandwich expecting a warm, gooey, sweet bite of pulled-pork awesomeness. Instead, here's what I got:

A first-degree burn from molten BBQ sauce on my face and hand! Yes, I sustained a pulled pork injury. When porky goodness attacks! Unnatural! I have given pulled pork only love and respect and this is how I get repaid? Pulled pork is supposed to bring only joy, comfort and occasionally mild-to-moderate gastrointestinal distress when it is served in certain dim sum restaurants that are now out of business. Because what I really needed to bring my attractiveness quotient to the next level was a burn that looks like I have some sort of sexually transmitted ulcer. Thank you, life! Thank you very much.

The Theory of One Less Gross Thing

It's less than a month until my new surgery date and I'm trying to get mentally prepared for it. Granted, it will be nice to no longer have the surgery hanging over my head, so that I can get on with my life. I've been avoiding dating because I don't want to have to end some hot date by saying, "We'll have to do it again sometime soon....like next week, when I'll be using a walker and will be whacked out of my tree on morphine. Oh, and just FYI, here's a handout of acceptable post-surgical sex positions in case you make it to the third date." Yes, it's time to get the "walking properly" show on the road.

Still, I suspect that this time around will be harder than the last. Last time, I was relentlessly optimistic. I'd done my homework on the surgeon. I'd done a significant pre-hab routine to build up the muscles around my hip. I was young, I was fit, and visions of strutting around the hospital showing off my impressive recovery to the other elderly patients were dancing in my head. Even though it all went off the rails, I was able to power through it mentally by adopting the Theory of One Less Gross Thing. (Okay, I know that technically it should be One Fewer Gross Thing, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it).

The Theory of One Less Gross Thing rests on the premise that the surgery is a one-shot deal and that every gross, humiliating, painful or unpleasant thing that occurs does so for the last time ever. When I was puking up fluorescent-green bile, I wasn't thinking, "Damn, this sucks," but "This is the last time I ever have to do this. This is one less gross thing I have to go through." When I was getting my staples torn out of my incision perhaps a few days too early by an 80-year-old doctor with shaky hands, I wasn't thinking, "Hot damn, remind me to apologize to all the stapled sheets of paper I have unwittingly violated over the years," but "This is the last time I ever have to do this. This is one less gross thing I have to go through." Shuffling along with a walker; trying to use a long-handled sponge probably created to bathe elephants to scrub the pink antiseptic wash off my toes; injecting my stomach with bloodthinners in a drug-induced haze: all of these were one less gross thing I had to go through, one less gross thing that was standing between me and my sexy new walk.

Well, of course it didn't work out that way and now I'm gearing up for the hip-replacement sequel. Like most sequels, this hip replacement promises to suck more than the first. Part of the reason is that the Theory of One Less Gross Thing no longer applies. I'll be going through everything again and, worse still, I know exactly how gross it will be. Actually, considering that I don't know whether I'll be weightbearing or not, if I'll be following hip restrictions or not, or whether the additional gluteus-medius reattachment will make it more painful than the last time, I could be up for even grosser Gross Things.

Oh well. I aim to make the most of my three weeks of freedom. I've been swimming, walking at least a mile a day, doing the elliptical machine, and doing little weight-training circuits with ab workouts. If I can't be optimistic, at least I'll be fit.

It's the Final Countdown...No, Just Kidding, Psyche!

For the past few months, I've been preparing to move back to Vancouver. (Well, okay, preparing mentally, since I haven't really done the whole "packing" thing yet, even though my dad comes to get my car tomorrow). I had wrapped my mind around the fact that I would leave Champaign on June 14th, then have surgery on June 24th. You know how advent calendars give you a little chocolate every day until Christmas? Well, I had a little surgery advent calendar in my mind, except instead of getting chocolate, all I got was iron pills and an overwhelming sense of dread.

This morning, however, my world was rocked when I received a phone call from my surgeon's office letting me know that my surgery has been bumped to July 28th. It was like opening that last day of your advent calendar expecting a huge-ass chocolate Santa and instead finding a little piece of paper that said, "Christmas has been moved to January 27th. In lieu of chocolate Santa, please accept another month of anticipation and mall Christmas carols." Wrong and unnatural!

On one hand, I was disappointed. Leaving Champaign has actually been really hard for me, but I've had my goodbye party, said farewell to most of my friends, and reconciled myself to ripping off that big bandaid known as "the last four years of my life." I've spent weeks full of emo-ness mentally reenacting that scene from Thorton Wilder's "Our Town" where the chick is a ghost and is lamenting all the things she'll miss about earth ("Goodbye world! Goodbye to clocks ticking and my butternut tree...and Mama's sunflowers...food and coffee...and new-ironed dresses and hot baths..." ), except instead of clocks ticking and butternut trees, it was more like cheap bourbon, barbeque, $250 rent and fireflies. (I freaking love fireflies. They don't have them in Vancouver). I was mentally prepared to leave and I wanted to get the ass-reattachment show on the road.

On the other hand, however, I recognized an opportunity to cling harder to America. Even though my bags were packed, my apartment was sublet (subletted?), my dad was flying down to get my car and my cat had her own little kitty airplane ticket, I didn't have to leave. I could go up to Canada for a week for pre-op appointments and work-related stuff, (I'm off to Montreal soon for a tournament), then come back down for a whole month of rekindling my turbulent romance with the old U. S. of A. America and I could have one of those relationships where it's like "Oh, darling, I know we broke up because you cheated on me with my sister, but let's get back together because I'm lonely and have daddy issues, even though we both know that this will end badly. Turbulent relationships give my humdrum existence meaning!" You know, those people for whom the Facebook status "it's complicated" was invented.

Some might say, "But Arley. Aren't you just prolonging the inevitable? Why don't you just get it over with, move back to Vancouver and begin the chapter of your life entitled 'The Part Where Arley Goes to Concerts By Herself and Tries to Appear Both Receptive to New Friendships And Repellent to Drug Dealers/ Fetishists/ Men Who Believe "So, What's Wrong With You?" is an Acceptable Pick-Up Line'' Wouldn't that be the mature thing to do?" To you, I say: hells no. I have spent at least six months of the past year in bed (or at physio, being out-run by 95-year-olds, which is worse) and I am about to spend another god-knows-how-long doing roughly the same thing. I'm in a "months of bedrest" sandwich and I fully intend to make the filling of that sandwich be as exciting, entertaining and meaningful as possible. And if that means traveling back to Champaign for an extra month of seeing the people I care about...well....so be it.

Yes, it looks like I'm going to have to rebook my ticket on the Struggletown Express. The new plan is that I'm leaving Mika with A., going back to Canada for a week or so, (which will involve a trip to Montreal), then returning to Champaign for a month of couch-surfing, BBQ-eating, and hearing the phrase "hey, didn't you leave here a while ago?" from random people on the street. Because, hey, if my life wasn't relentlessly complicated, I wouldn't have anything to blog about.

Got My Mojo Workin' But it Just Don't Work on Shoes

In the year since my hip replacement, I have not exactly been bringing sexy back. In fact, between the lack of hip flexion, the post-surgical rashes (which happily have resolved themselves), the swamp-creature gait pattern, the incisions, and the semi-detached ass, sexy and I aren't even Facebook friends. For a long time, most fashionable clothing pressed painfully against my hip or my detached gluteus medius, so I've gotten into a rut of jeans, sweatshirts and a five-year-old cami with a built-in bra that has holes in it, but I won't throw it away because American Eagle doesn't make them any more and long camis with built-in bras are rarer than hen's teeth.

In my defense, when it takes you about 8.5 hours to bend down to pick something up, you don't want to throw the "trying not to expose yourself on account of your short skirt" factor into the equation. (No good can come of it. No good at all). And when you're spending months at a time lying on your back (and not even in a sexy way!), your main fashion concern tends to be "do I have instant noodles stuck to my chest?" A few days ago, however, I said to myself, "Arley, do you ever wonder why the only cat calls you get are people mistaking you for a gay man and shouting homophobic slurs at you? Do you think that's a sign that maybe you should break out the party dress? Or at least put on some lip gloss?"

Point. Taken. After all, I am decidedly less gimpy than I was before and in about a month, I am going to have surgery all over again and will once again be getting dressed using a specially designed grabber with a hook on it. It was time to get my mojo working before my mojo got surgically removed. When Erin McQ and I went shopping and I found an expensive Calvin Klein sweater dress on sale for less than $20, it was like the heavens had parted and a sign had been handed down to me. That sign read: Arley, thou shalt wear thine sexy-ass sweater dress to thy sports banquet thou art attending for work in Ottawa in a few days hence.

Now, don't get me wrong. My goal with the sweater dress was not to score/hook up/get a little somethin'-somethin'. I have very little interest in dating at the moment because a) I'm moving halfway across the country in a matter of weeks and b) you know what's not great to do in the first few weeks of a relationship? Have major surgery that requires you to use a walker for extended periods of time. Plus, I'm pretty sure that "work function" + "skanking it up" is a recipe for "unemployment." But sometimes you need to give your self-confidence a boost by putting on a tight (but professionally acceptable!) dress, looking in the mirror and saying, "You know what? I am wearing the f*ck out of this dress. I am wearing this dress so hard that when people look at me and say 'daaamn,' they will not mean it in the sense of 'daaamn, what happened to you?"

Well, that was the plan anyways. Here was the reality. I spent all evening issuing press releases, so that I had only 10 minutes to get ready for the banquet. I was sweaty, my hair looked like I had been involved in a vigorous headbanging session, and I'd forgotten a makeup brush so I'd applied eyeshadow with my fingertip and I'm pretty sure that I got at least some of it near my eyes. I threw on the dress and a pair of red shoes I'd brought and strutted out of there with the best strut I could muster.

Still, for a moment, I felt as if the plan had succeeded. I catwalked (somewhere, Miss J from Project Runway is giving me side-eye) down to the banquet all with my shoulders back and my head held high. I did not even get to the banquet hall, however, when I saw the folly of my plans. I had not worn my sexy red shoes since the surgery. The last time I wore the shoes, I did not walk like a stroke-addled zombie. Now, my sexy red shoes were a little redder, because they had worn all the skin off the back of my heels, which had started bleeding.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I spent the entire banquet in bare feet limping even more than usual with my shoes in my purse. And that is also why I have been wearing a pair of my mom's old flip-flops even though it's raining, because there is a huge chunk missing out of my right heel and putting on real shoes makes them bleed. And that is maybe why I felt the need to pull an all-nighter before I left at 5 a.m. for my flight home, which resulted in me showing up on A's doorstep to pick up Mika back firmly in my jeans and sweatshirt, with make-up raccoon-like under my eyes, limping and complaining of sleep deprivation. The only good side was that A. took one look at me and identified that I had a serious need for french toast, so we went to Le Peep and then I had a 3-hour nap. Le Peep french toast cures everything.

Oh for Cat's Sake!

During my first flight after the hip replacement, I was a portrait of patience and tolerance. Mostly, this was because my incredibly slowness meant that I was the one holding up all the lines and stopping traffic. Back then, my attitude was, "yeah, it sucks to have to wait in line, but it's better than getting your leg cut off then put back on again in the wrong configuration." I was the Buddha of the Bank Line. The Gandhi of the Grocery store. If you took 5 minutes to select the exactly perfect box of Tic Tacs while standing in line, I would merely smile beatifically, basking in my own newfound sense of perspective.

Right now: not so much. Over the past year, I've gotten faster and with every second I shave off my sprint to the boarding gate, my tolerance levels wear a little thinner. For example, this morning I was waiting in line in the Champaign airport to go through security and the young couple ahead of me with a baby were receiving a failing grade in the Putting Your Shit in the Little Trays and Walking Through the Metal Detector 101. Could not do it. Could not.

They stared at the baby buggy as if it might fold itself up and slide itself through the screening machine. They gestured helplessly. They expressed surprise at being asked to remove their shoes, despite the three signs posted informing people to do this. The woman walked through with her cell phone in her pocket, then walked through again with her keys in her pocket, and while I fully understand that this woman's brain is probably fried with sleep deprivation, I had a brief flash of wanting to inform her that if she doesn't know that her cell phone or her keys or the change in her pocket or Lord knows what else is made of metal, then she's too stupid to reproduce and she should probably give the baby to me. (Part of this could have been the coffee deprivation and the fact that it was 6:30 a.m.).

I have no idea why this is. You'd think that the fact that I spent a good three months taking 20 minutes to walk around the block would give me some empathy towards other people's struggles. Incorrect. Instead, I want to go around telling people, "Look. I'm gimping along on a semi-detached ass and a hip socket that clunks more than the dialogue in any of the Twilight movies, and I seem to be doing just fine in the 'taking care of my shit' department. Please explain to me why you, with two working legs and two working arms, are finding the act of taking off your shoes, putting them in a bin, and running them through the screening machine to be so insanely difficult."

Alas, my bitchery has earned me an ass-kicking in the traveling karma department. First, my flight was stranded on the tarmac because of storms in Detroit for 2 hours. Then, it finally landed in Detroit was was delayed for 3 hours. So now I'm sitting in the Metro Detroit airport trying not to stare at a skinhead who has a swastika tattooed on his scalp and skeleton arms tattooed over his actual arms. (If you're going to be a neo-nazi, wouldn't you pick a place other than Detroit to live?). An elderly woman is standing by the gate, clutching her ticket and saying loudly, "For cat's sake! It's going to be another hour? Oh, for cat's sake!" (Somewhere, Mika is approving of a person substituting the word 'cat' for the word 'God'). It's clear that I have some serious atoning to do to the Gods of Travel if I ever want to get to Ottawa (I'm heading here for the Canadian national wheelchair rugby championships). Maybe I should sacrifice a chicken.

Balancing On One Wounded Wing/ Circling the Edge of the Neverending

It's been nearly a week since I sustained my wrist injury and, yes ladies and gentlemen, I'm already pulling out melancholy New Pornographers' lyrics to capture my mood. If this keeps up, you're going to find me writing rhyming poetry about the state of my soul in my "Emily the Strange" notebook that I got on sale from Hot Topic (My heart is red/ my soul is black/ I walk like a zombie/ addicted to crack).

The bottom line is that my wrist still hurts and my wrist splint is starting to get that swampy cast smell and because I can't walk with my cane, I have to do the zombie-lurch around town, and twice today people have stared at me aghast and asked, "What happened to you?" When I responded that I'd injured my arm playing basketball, they looked at me with this expression that said, "No, I mean...in life." Of course, the zombie-walking has thrown off my back and my shoulders and I am basically one red-hot ball of cranky.

You'd think I'd be able to take this shit in stride (well, maybe "stride" is too graceful a word to describe what I do). I mean, last summer someone cut the ball of my hip off, replaced it with another one, but (whoops) forgot to reattach my ass. After that, you'd think a little wrist sprain would be par for the course: like, "lay it on me, life! A sprained wrist? That's all you've got? A few short months ago, I watched in an opium-induced haze as my surgeon showed me the detached ball of my femoral head." (That concision I was hoping I would learn from this wrist injury? Not so much).

Instead, however, one little sprain has earned me a first-class ticket on a fast train to Whiny-ville. Turns out, my right arm is a pretty useful appendage. In addition to that cane-carrying, it also helps me do the 8 hours a day of typing my job requires, as well all those life skills like dish washing and driving and being able to walk down the street without people thinking you were involved in some horrific car accident. Oh, right arm. I will never take you for granted again.

To make matters worse, for some reason this week I keep getting introduced to new people (and really awesome people at that) and let's just say that I am not exactly making a good impression. You want to know what doesn't exactly make all the gentlemen swoon? The whole "please to meet you, allow me to lurch forward in your general direction to shake your hand, then realize that I cannot shake your hand because my hand is in a splint and so stare nervously at the few inches of space between us" routine. When you add this to the fact that meeting new people is not exactly my strong suite and it tends to exacerbate my normal elaborate-hand-gesturing, train-of-thought-losing, over-caffeinated-ness....yeah, not the greatest of impressions.

So, if you met me this week, allow me to offer this message: "Please to meet you. I would like to clarify that I am not, in fact, a meth addict and that it is possible for me to speak actual words that make sense. I hope that you will find that when you get to know me, I'm not as ridiculous as I first present myself. Can we please find some way to blame this on my sore wrist/ damaged hip? Sincerely, Arley."

Now if only I could get that printed on a business card.

At Least My Left Arm Still Works

Recently, I have been on a mission to find a new cane. Well, I am happy to report that the search is over. I no longer need a new cane....what I need now is a new wrist. Yes, today I took my gimpiness to new and unparalleled heights by fracturing/spraining my wrist. The same wrist I use to hold my cane. The same cane that prevents me from walking like the Phantom of the Opera. Translation: in the past 24 hours, my gimpiness has increased by roughly 200%. You know, because I really needed some special sauce on my disability sandwich.

The end result is that instead of being a six-foot-two chick walking in a slightly gimpy manner with a broken cane, I am now a six-foot-two chick walking in a highly gimpy, zombie-heroin-addict manner, minus the cane, with a broke-down wrist covered in a huge splint. (Unexpected bonus: because of typing difficulties, I might finally learn the noble art of concision). Someone really needs to give me my own category in the Darwin Awards...or at least a show on TLC. ("The Girl Whose Body Fell Off.")

And how did this happen? You can blame wheelchair basketball. Actually, you can blame me for returning to wheelchair basketball even though I was the proud owner of both a damaged hip made of ceramic and a partially detached ass muscle. You can further blame me for making a decision as I was being launched a few feet up in the air and was hurtling towards the ground to save the hip by sacrificing the wrist. I mean, I have been around the wheelchair-basketball block. I know that the first rule of falling is not to put your wrist out. I should also have realized that my hip is basically being replaced this summer and is therefore the prosthetic equivalent of a rental car. That shit is getting returned to the dealership around June. My wrist, however, is something I'm kind of stuck with. Bad read.

I have therefore abandoned my search for the perfect cane in search for the perfect way to not walk like you're about to eat someone's brainz. My immediate thought (because "House" is like crack to me) is that I could switch my cane to the opposite hand and walk like Dr. House. (House walks with his cane beside his injured leg, which is the opposite of what they teach you in cane-walking school). After some experimentation, however, it became clear that you must need to be a complex, twisted medical genius to rock that look. I don't have the coordination and wound up looking like someone's grandma who won't use a proper medical device because those are for "old people" and so drags herself around her apartment by using a broom handle as a "hiking stick."

The only solution is for me to go au naturale in the cane department. True, this will probably result in me frightening small children, but I've got places to go and things to do. Like hen-peck typing with my one good hand. Or explaining to the nice police officer that I'm not drunk, it's just that I had a hip replacement and my ass fell off and...

Hey, did I just get through an entire post without quoting Dan Bejar?

Why are you such a liar, Dan Bejar?

Throughout this blog, I have given remarkably few helpful hints for people recovering from hip replacements. Well, I'm pleased to report that I finally have some advice to dole out: if you know that your left leg sort of gives out every once in awhile when you stand up, do not stand up when holding a cup of coffee directly over your laptop. Just FYI.

That is, of course, exactly what I did this morning. I was busily working at my job, watching the Olympics, drinking coffee and generally enjoying a sweet-ass morning, when I stood up with coffee cup in hand. My Freaky Cyborg Hip saw its chance and caused my hip to short circuit a little. I tripped, spilling my coffee all over my brand new Macbook. And my couch. And my leg. And most of my living room. As the youngsters on the internets say: FML.

Fuck. My. Life.

I immediately sprang into action (well...maybe not "sprang" so much as "swore and limped at great speed") and googled "coffee on Macbook," which yielded several helpful tips, most of which involved dismantling the machine and cleaning it out. Well, the chances of me successfully dismantling the laptop and putting it back together again in one piece are about the same as the chances of me winning the Olympics in downhill slalom, but I tried my best to use Q-tips to soak up the coffee between the keys, then a hairdryer to dry everything up. Somehow during this process, a bowl managed to fall off the drying rack in the kitchen and shatter into a million pieces for no particular reason, just to make everything that much more exciting.

The computer seemed dry, but the keys were still sticky, (shut up, those of you with dirty minds) so I called A. to see if he had any computer-cleaning solution. He came right over after referring to my mishap as a "very Arley thing to do" (why is that among my circle of friends my name has become a synonym for fucking up? is that a bad sign?) and helped me to clean off the computer. He also convinced me that I probably should take it to the Apple Store to be on the safe side, which I agreed was probably for the best.

When I got into the car still stinking of coffee, the first sound I heard from my speakers was "it's going to be alright...it's going to be alright." Dan Bejar singing "Snow White." (As I've said before, I've had a single Destroyer CD in my car since probably last spring). I felt greatly cheered. Clearly, this was a sign from the universe. If Dan Bejar is telling me that everything is going to be alright (it's going to be alright), then it is going to be alright, because Dan Bejar speaks the truth. Was he wrong when he said "remember the wolves that you run with are wolves?" He was not. Was he incorrect when he said "love is a political beast with jaws for a mouth?" No he was not. Was he lying when he said "Praise be the delightful muezzin tending his flock and praise be those alabaster hands running amok on your body?" I have no idea, but probably not. Point is: Dan Bejar speaks the truth. And also the Truth. I had nothing to worry about.

Which I believed, until I got into the Apple Store and some skinny-jeans-clad undergrad wearing studded wrist cuffs that kept tapping against the machine took my laptop apart, dried a few things off with a piece of paper towel, then said with the seriousness of an emergency room doctor that the computer was (to paraphrase from the technical language he used) supremely fucked. I could, if I wanted, dry it out for 48 hours to see what happens, but it's probably better to buy a new laptop. Well, fuck. This is, by the way, my new laptop: the one my parents surprised me with for Christmas. Dan Bejar, you've been telling lies! Cryptic, allusion-laden, poetically dense lies!

So, yes, I recently consumed the world's most expensive cup of coffee. (Apparently, Maxwell House's "good to the last drop" motto should have the caveat of "...unless those drops are residing on the video card of your brand new Macbook.") Even worse, this is entirely my fault. I can't even blame this on my Freaky Cyborg Hip (well, I kind of can, but I knew full well that standing up is not my greatest skill). I have only myself to blame.

So my laptop was DOA and there were only two things left to do: buy a chai latte (which the barista, who recognized me because I am such a Starbucks yuppie, gave me for free...which kind of restored my faith in humanity), and go out shopping for the tightest, sluttiest little black dress I could find for my friend Bridie's birthday party tonight. After all, I need to save money for a new laptop and those nine-dollar appletinis aren't going to buy themselves! Alas, this was not to be. The atrophy on my left side has gotten so bad that all the tight dresses sagged out around my left hip, which looked ridiculous, and there was no time for tailoring. The Freaky Cyborg Hip strikes again.

Anyhow, the bottom line is this: if you're looking for me, you can either find me at Boltini's tonight drinking to forget (men of Champaign-Urbana, plan your night accordingly) or else tomorrow morning at the Urbana Free Library, wildly hung over and attempting to get some work done without being distracted by trying to figure out whether the guy jiggling his leg up and down while looking at porn via Google images is masturbating or just....overcaffeinated?

If anyone has a spare laptop they can lend me, give me a call/email.

You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling

You ever break up with someone and then, after a few months of their absence, begin to wax poetic about all the warm, fuzzy things that person used to do until it becomes clear that you threw away the best relationship in the history of the world that no other relationship could ever top with the person of your dreams and that no one will ever love you again? And then you're ridiculously happy the next time you run into (read: stalk) that person, until after 10 minutes of conversing with them they say or do something that reminds you all over again why you're glad to be single and that your nostalgia was a mere product of your own loneliness, boredom and fear of spinsterhood? (No? Just me?) Anyways, that's the relationship I think I have with wheelchair basketball.

Last March, I broke up with wheelchair basketball because it was causing me nothing but hip-ache and pain. I was so burnt out that I literally felt a bit nauseous when I passed the bus we used to travel on. After watching a tournament a few weeks ago, however, I began to get that lovin' feeling. I missed playing a sport (rather than just exercising). I missed blocking shots and laying the smack down. So even though my hip was not exactly ready for action, I decided to suit up.

I found a wide chair and developed a strapping system that wouldn't hurt the place where my gluteus medius detached. The fact that this so-called "strapping system" was nothing more than a stretchy luggage strap that perpetually came undone and caused me to basically stand up every time I turned a corner did not particularly phase me. For a few weeks, I was joyous. I was playing the sport I loved! I was having fun! I was getting back to normal! The things that usually annoyed me about the sport (people bitching at one another, the fact that sport is a socially acceptable way to unload your rage on someone) seemed to be merely amusing quirks! Everything was hugs, kisses and cuddly puppies!

This past week, however, I've remembered why I broke up with wheelchair basketball and I've begun to suspect that my relationship with the sport might be better left to the occasional booty call. The problem is that the Type A personality in me wants to do things well. If I can't do something well, I at least want to do it to the best of my ability. I've therefore become frustrated with the fact that I'm using a chair set-up that would have been considered archaic and clumsy 15 years ago. (When your chair set up went out of style along with blue eyeliner, you might just have a problem). Because of my ongoing hip problems, I can't strap my knees down (because, when I do, sometimes my body zigs and my hip zags and I get flashbacks of last season). I can't use snowboard bindings (which will rub against the side of my hip). I'm beginning to get the off-and-on numbness and shooting pain down my leg that signals that my lower back is quitting me. My hip is perpetually sore.

Bottom line: my balance is bad, my speed is bad and my turning radius is bad, and it's hard to focus on the finer points of the sport when you're still stuck on the finer points of how to not suck at everything. Right now, the gap between the knowledge I have in my head and my ability to execute that knowledge is worse than it was before the hip replacement. Besides, now that I'm working, I have an outlet for the massive amount of energy I seem to possess, which means that wheelchair basketball is beginning to fail the "Is this worth missing "House" for?" test.

For this reason, I'm considering shuffling off back to retirement. My plan, however, is to wait until I get back to Champaign and am reunited with my own chair. Perhaps there's a way to change my strapping system for my chair so that I can keep up. If not, however, I think I might have to concede that while I love wheelchair basketball, we're just not meant to be. Wait...What's this? Have I also dropped out of the Screw-You-Body-You'll-Do-What-I-Tell-You-To-Do School of Decision Making and Pain Management? Have I turned in my membership to the Cartesian Dualism Society of Body Awareness? Am I actually being mature for once?

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled "Young and Hip" Post to Join this Pity Party in Full Swing

After my mom's SmartCar abruptly quit in the middle of the highway, mechanics weren't sure what was wrong. They ran every test in the book, took the SmartCar out to try to replicate the problem but found nothing. The mechanic called us and said that they might not ever know what went wrong, but sometimes "these things happen" (yeah, and when they happen I nearly get crushed by a semi) and they would keep looking. To me, this was a worst-case scenario. I was not about to get in a car that, for reasons unknown, had nearly killed me and could do so again. I was therefore actually happy when they discovered that rats had been making a spaghetti dinner out of the car's electrical wires. Even if it meant that the car would be in the shop for weeks, even if it meant picturing dirty, dirty rodents crawling around my vehicle, knowing is better than not knowing.

It's the same thing with my hip. Yesterday, I went to see a new neurologist. I had originally planned on canceling the appointment, since I've been stuffed with more electrified needles than a robot porcupine and no one's found anything interesting. A. convinced me, however, that I should never turn down an appointment, so off I went to get up on the needle table, lie back and take it like a man (well, you know what I mean).

Which is what I did: first, the strength tests, second, this weird cattle-prod thing that basically does the same thing as the needles, only less needle-y and more zappy, third, the needles, done by a neurologist in training under the supervision of an older, more experience neurologist. You know what's worse than getting electrified needles in your sore hip? Having those needles put in by a rookie while the expert leans over saying, "Give it a little more effort. Sometimes those nerves are really deep in there."

At the end of the test, (surprise, surprise), the result was the same: nothing showed up. No evidence of nerve damage. No evidence of anything. This neurologist (who has actually fairly nice) took it one step further from the usual "we don't know what's wrong." The verdict: I've got a case of the crazies. Clearly, I don't want my new hip to work. I'm putting up mental blocks to keep myself limping like the queen of the polio zombies because it drives all the boys wild. After all, a hip replacement can be "pretty traumatizing" (not to the 8.5 million old people who shuffle on in there every year) and stressful and if I would just take an anti-depressant, I might "feel less anxious about the hip replacement" (no, I would feel less anxious about my hip replacement if I could, you know, walk on it) and "sleep better" (I'm sleeping fine) and maybe this would convince my crazy self to walk better.

Sitting on the hospital bed in that ridiculous hospital gown with pen marks all over my body from where they'd marked the cattle-prod trigger points, it was all I could do not to burst into tears. It's not like I haven't heard this before. When I was 11, my leg kept collapsing after the surgery to repair my slipped growth plate and they told me it was all in my head. In reality, a screw had come loose and was poking up in my hip socket, causing avascular necrosis. Chances are that if some surgeon hadn't been so quick to dismiss me as crazy, I would be able-bodied right now. When I couldn't work my abductors post-hip-replacement, they told me I was crazy and I just needed to "reconnect with my body" because my mind was shutting off my hip. And while they were blaming me, my gluteus medius was detached. Who knows what would have happened if they'd discovered that the week after the surgery, as opposed to six months later? When I complained that my hip had become more painful as opposed to less during my hip-replacement recovery, my surgeon told me it was nothing to worry about. And now the socket is probably loose. You can therefore see why I'm skeptical about this latest diagnosis.

I just don't know what more I can do. I just don't know how I can want to walk any more. Before the hip replacement, I was fully confident that it would go well. I did 6 months of hip-strengthening exercises pre-surgery and was bragging that I would be doing laps around the oldsters in the hospital within a day. I even offered to do my mom's friend's birthday cake a week after the operation. When the surgery happened, I stayed awake because I wanted to see the hip after it was taken out. I wasn't traumatized, wasn't even particularly worried (the sedatives helped with that). I was just chilling beyond the little curtain they put up so you can't see, singing John Cale's "Half Past France" inside my head, higher than a Romantic poet after an opium binge.

So when the epidural wore off and I realized that I couldn't move my leg, no one was more surprised than I was. Since then, I've done every physio exercise that anyone has asked me to do. I've swam, I've biked on the stationary bike until my ass was literally worn raw, I've ran on the elliptical machine, I've done weights, I've gone for walks, I've done core training, I've had electrified needles stuck in my hip, I've had someone stick a long needle into my hip socket to inject freezing there, I've tried to think good thoughts, I've done absolutely everything. None of it has done any good. From the moment I woke up, I knew that something was wrong and something is still wrong and, if the doctors are right and it's "all in my head," something will be wrong forever because I don't know what more I can do.

These past 8 months, my damaged hip replacement has cost me nearly everything I cared about (except for family and a few friends, who I'm grateful for). It cost me my last year in Champaign. I can't stay in the country past July and I will never get back those lost months. Because of my hip, I'll be deported if I don't move back to Canada on my own free will. I've lost most of my friends who have (understandably) moved on with their busy lives, or who are tired of the constant medical drama surrounding my life and want out. I've lost my athletic career. I've lost my creative spark. I've lost 8 months when I could have been dating. I'm living at home with my parents, (who I love and my grateful for), sponging off them at 27 years old. After a four-month respite in Champaign, I'm going back to Vancouver for more surgeries, surgeries that have fairly bad odds, and I'll have to stay there.

After the appointment (where my socks somehow disappeared after the technician took them off), I pulled myself together enough to go back to work for a few hours. Then I sobbed all the way home in the car, and for a few hours thereafter. Because this neurologist appointment means that nothing will get better. If I am crazy, then my mind's rejected my hip. I don't know what else I can try and even the surgery (though it will reattach the hip, fix the socket and raise my leg length) won't make me walk better. If I'm not crazy, however, then it means that the doctors have stopped looking. I mean, damn, they put my mom's SmartCar through more rigorous testing to determine what's wrong with it and you can get out of a SmartCar.

Can I Put Boggle-Master on my CV?

So, 2010 is only a few days old and already it's off to a rip-roaring start. There is a dead rodent in the walls of my house and my mom has busted out a half-dozen air fresheners, which has given the house the odd smell of dead rat flesh and lollipops. The exterminator who came out said that barring ripping up our walls, there's nothing to do but sit back, relax, light some incense and wait for putrification to work its magic. We're really getting the decade off right around here. (On the plus side, isn't burning sage supposed to ward off bad spirits? Can you buy it in bulk?)

It's therefore no surprise that I was looking for any excuse to leave my house, which is one reason why I showed up at a wheelchair-basketball game for the first time since the hip replacement. I think I've mentioned before about how, after a season of being hung from doorframes after every game while people tugged at my spasming leg to put it back in the socket, I was burnt out beyond belief, disappointed in myself for not being able to play through the pain (what? You mean that sometimes life doesn't go according to the script of Nike commercials?) and basically of the opinion that I would rather stab myself in the eye with one of those electrified neurologist needles than do another triple-switch within the tea-cup defense. You would therefore expect that I would be able to watch a game and think only, "Yeah, that shit used to be fun....until it made me want to rip my stupid hip off and beat myself senseless with it...and then it was not."

You would, however, be wrong. Apparently, when I said "I never want to play basketball again" I meant "I never want to play basketball again until 6 months of wearing an ass groove in my bed makes me long for the feeling of hitting a sweet-ass jumper with only a few seconds on the clock." (Shut up. I have probably hit at least one sweet-ass jumper in my career). The game was surprisingly hard to watch (and not just because of the ass-bruising involved in sitting on bleachers). I was practically humming with nervous energy, in full-blown basketball mode thinking, so-and-so should have switched earlier on D because he was in help position and so-and-so would be more successful playing up on the press if she'd sag to the level of the ball and that was a nice pick-and-roll because the off-side created good spacing....and....and.... I can't help it. When someone coined the phrase "Type A personality," the A stood for Arley.

The last time I tried wheelchair basketball, I ended up sore and disappointed. This hasn't, however, stopped me from getting coach Cheryl to bring me a wheelchair to Wednesday's practice so I can suit up for round 2. I have already started planning elaborate schemes involving neoprene straps, the removal of side guards, and the re-arranging of other straps to make my hip more comfortable. Now, some of you are probably thinking, "Uh, Arley. Could the fact that you need a ton of modification to even SIT in the wheelchair, let alone PLAY in the wheelchair be a sign that maybe you should take up needlepoint and leave wheelchair basketball to those of us who do not have semi-broken hips made out of ceramic?" To you, I respond, "My doctor said I can't do any more damage and that I could do whatever I wanted." And to those of you who say, "Could it possibly be that your doctor's definition of 'doing whatever you want' and your definition of 'doing whatever you want' are slightly different because he is banking on the fact that you are not insane?" I say, "Hey, the stupid thing is already broken and I'm going to have surgery anyhow. How much more damage can I do?" And to those of you who say, "Isn't that the same logic that got you into this mess in the first place?" I say, "Good point, but I'm doing it anyways."

After all, if my new hip is going to act like my old hip, then I'll treat it like my old hip, and let's just say that I treated my old hip rather poorly. Actually, today has really been a day of deja vu. This morning, I woke up with a sharp pain in my hip and when I forced myself into a sitting position, I heard a loud clunk as the hip went back into place. It's been a little off kilter the whole day and tonight, as I was leaving dinner with some of my basketball friends, the stupid thing locked up and my ankle got twisted around, forcing me to pull myself up using the table and stand there with my leg at some grotesque angle while everyone (except my friends, who had already left the restaurant) stared at me. Just like old times! Nothing to see here, attractive gentlemen of Granville Island! I'm just going to give my hip a sharp twist and send that bad boy back home! Seriously, if someone told me that my old hip had miraculously grown back, I would believe them.

Oh well. Besides feeling like a total tool for having to gimp out of the restaurant like someone's stroke-addled grandmother, the night actually turned out very well, mostly because it involved Jameson and a rousing game of Boggle with Shira, Elisha and Cheryl where I conducted a master's seminar on the art of Boggle-ry. Seriously, I brought the Boggle Thunder. I was throwing down eight-letter words like they were Thor's mighty hammers. I may not have a job...or a love life....or a social life....or the ability to get through a dinner without having to wretch my hip back into its socket...but sweet Mary mother of Jesus can I play Boggle. Hey, I will take an ego boost wherever I can find it.

Must. Remain. Positive.

Well, it's a few days after the news from Dr. SecondOpinion that I probably won't be becoming a professional salsa dancer any time soon, and I'm doing my best to be positive, since a) it's the holidays and b) there's no point turning "Young and Hip" into "Deep Shit I Would Have Written In My Lisa Franks Diary Circa 1998 During That Phase Where I Used to Wear Capes And Once Composed a Poem Dedicated to My Eyebrows, Which I Had Recently Had Plucked For the First Time." It has, however, been a rough few days: disappointing news at the doctor's office; a close friend who is apparently tired of my endless barrage of bad medical luck and wants out; Christmas stress; oh, and I went to my family doctor today and apparently I'm also anemic. (I had been thinking that the redness in my face was fading nicely thanks to a new lotion I've been using, but, no, it's just a lack of iron. Every day, I seem to take another step closer towards becoming an laudanum-addicted Victorian socialite).

It's weird, though. Since I was 11, I've had a chronic pain condition and that moment during the arthrogram when they stuck freezing (translation for you Americans: numbing) in my hip and the pain went away for the first time since August of 1994, it felt like someone had turned off a radio that had been playing static so long that I had forgotten how annoying it was until it wasn't there. It's weird to think that the pain relief I only got for 45 minutes after someone jabbed a needle into my hip socket was what was supposed to happen forever, and for 95% of patients does happen.

It's also weird to think that it may never happen: that I may not have an escape-hatch for my disability anymore. Before, yeah, I was disabled, but only until the hip replacement. Now, if this surgery isn't successful, I guess I better finally invest in the gold-plated cane that shoots lasers I've been wanting because that thing will be by my side forever til death do us part. Kind of like a marriage...but without the 50% divorce rate. (Actually, 50% is the success rate they're giving my surgery).

And so, today, I took a walk to clear my head (and buy a Christmas present for my brother Denver). It all went downhill rather quickly when realized that I was playing Nick Cave's "People Ain't No Good" (I didn't mean it! Most people are very good!) and Ray LaMontagne, who I find hard to listen to at the best of times because I associate him with a moment I had a month or so after I moved to Champaign in 2006, driving with A. and R. in R.'s truck coming home from a party at the farm of the director of the MFA program, a moment where I thought, "hot damn. Life is good. It's all sunshine and lollipops from here on in. Ain't nothin' that could possibly go wrong."

Anyhow, long story short, I walked too far (in inappropriate pants, which kept falling down), wound up sore and had to resort to listening to the Phantom of the Opera to prevent me from feeling like I was in the sad part of a movie walking alone in the rain while emo music plays. I find The Phantom of the Opera endlessly cheering and not just because I know all the words and once wanted more than anything to play The Phantom (or the narrator in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat...but strangely not Christine, who I thought was a wimp). After all, no matter how bad your life gets, at least you're not being stalked by a demented, hideously disfigured evil genius who lives in the cave-like basement of an opera house and is posing as the angel your father promised to send you before his untimely death. Silver linings, people. Silver linings.

"This sure here is a lot of shit happening"

A few minutes ago, I picked up the phone to hear someone say, "This sure here is a lot of shit happening." It was some carpet-cleaning guy calling, unaware that he'd already dialed my number and that I had answered, but it kind of encapsulated my day. Today, I went to see Dr. SecondOpinion. I was hoping that I would get an early Christmas gift in the form of, "No, you don't need surgery! A steady diet of jujubes and gingerbread will clear the problem right up!," but no such luck. Alas, it looks like I found myself once again on Santa's Naughty List because I just got handed a big old lump of coal in the form of medical news. Not the worst news, mind you, but not exactly what I was hoping for.

But first, the good news: Dr. SecondOpinion and his staff/interns enjoyed the X-ray Christmas cookies. His secretary was very impressed and if I've learned one thing from grad school, it's that secretaries secretly run the show and you should do everything possible to stay on their good side. Dr. SecondOpinion's response was particularly priceless: "Those cookies are really...imaginative," which made me laugh a little on the inside because it's exactly what you say to two-year-olds who show you their scribble drawing: "Oh, honey, that's a nice pony you drew...I mean, airplane. Yes, it's a very nice airplane. You're very imaginative." Anyhow, yes, if Dr. SecondOpinion thought I was smoking crack to have given him such a strange Christmas gift, he didn't show it. He even ate one.

My Freaky Cyborg Hip, however, refused to share in the Christmas joy. Since I don't want to rain on your holiday parade, I will keep it brief (okay...brief-ish): it's apparently really hard to re-attach the gluteus medius muscle and Dr. SecondOpinion only gives me about a 50/50 chance (at best) that the problem can be repaired. My socket might be loose (the test was apparently inconclusive...the only thing it proved is that I can swoon faster than a Harlequin romance novel heroine). If it's loose, they're going to repair it and give me one that's more "appropriate" (whatever that means). They're also going to make me an extra half-inch longer on my left side because even though I feel like I'm taller, I'm actually still too short. And, yes, that is the first time that the word "Arley" has been found in the same sentence as the phrase "too short" in the history of the universe. (Seriously, TLC better break out the cameras because by the time I get done with this crazy carnival ride, I'm going to be like 19 feet tall). Still no word on why my hip flexors are going all Rip van Winkle on me.

And when can all of this be done? According to his secretary, probably not for another 6 months. (This is not terrible news according to his secretary because the wait-time used to be 3 years, so I guess I should count my blessings on that front). Part of the wait is because the month-long cluster-fuck known as the Olympics is coming to town, which puts everything into a crazy back-log because they're not allowed to do elective surgeries during that time. (Just in case, you know, the entire German hockey team does a massive amount of steroids, gets avascular necrosis and all need hip replacements). The other part is that my case isn't technically an emergency and so I'm not high on the wait list. Now, you might think, "Wait a minute. Isn't your tendon flapping around in the breeze like the backdoor flap of an old man's pajamas?" Yes, this is true, but that shit isn't going to kill me. It's just going to make me walk like a heroin addict. Possibly forever.

At the end of the appointment, Dr. SecondOpinion asked if Dr. ___ would be performing the surgery and my heart momentarily skipped a beat at the thought of having to kick off my New Year with SurgeonWatch2010; (at least I know that I can stalk him at Starbucks now). Luckily, however, when I explained that Dr. ___ had kind of....uh...vanished....Dr. SecondOpinion agreed to do the surgery. I was so happy I could have made him 12 more batches of X-ray cookies.

None of this, however, explains what the hell happened in the first place. I'm not the most aggressive person in the world. To borrow A.'s phrase, I am "too fucking polite," possibly because I am "too Canadian." I am willing to ask a question, but I'm not willing to say, "Hey! Answer my question right fucking now!" Though Dr. SecondOpinion is a fantastic doctor, he doesn't really have time to answer the full page of questions I always write out. (That, to be fair, was actually a strong suit of Dr. ___'s. He didn't mind being peppered with questions). Seeing any surgeon is a little like releasing a genie out of a bottle, except instead of having three wishes, you maybe have time to toss out one or two questions before he dashes out the door to serve the next 12 people who are waiting. Since I knew I could probably only ask one or two, I decided (a good decision, I think) to focus on future-oriented questions, instead of "seriously, how did this happen? Like, seriously, who should I be directing the full force of my rage towards?" questions. This means, however, that I may never know exactly what went wrong: did Dr. ___ fuck up? Did I fuck up? Will I fuck up again during the next surgery?

I left the appointment in a bit of a tailspin. When my mom and I went shopping afterwards, however, there was a minor Christmas miracle. For the past 6 weeks, I have been looking for a pair of Olympic mittens for Karo. She's done a lot for me and I figured this was a small thing to repay her with. It turns out, however, that those Olympic mittens are rare as a sunny day in Vancouver because they tend to sell out 45 minutes after a shipment comes in. Seriously, trying to find those things is like trying to buy ketchup in the Soviet Union circa 1986. Vancouver has a case of mitten fever! To make a long story short, I thought I'd got the right mittens, but they were youth ones, so today I went to the Bay to see if I could find the adult ones. When I asked the clerk, she originally said that they'd sold out and I should try again on Wednesday. Just when I was about to leave, however, she said that she'd bought a pair for her grandson but since it's too late to send them before Christmas, I could have her pair. Aww! What a nice lady. I could have hugged her.

I came home all excited and went to my computer to see if I could find Karo's email asking for the mittens to see if she needed them before Christmas or not. For the life of me I couldn't find the email, which means that perhaps I'm on crack and hallucinated Karo's mitten-related needs, or perhaps someone else asked me for the mittens, not Karo. So Karo, let me know if you do need the mittens and when you need them by. I will send them your way!

And So This is Christmas And What Have You Done?

Everywhere I go, I feel like I hear the world's most depressing Christmas carol: the one that goes "and so this is Christmas and what have you done? Another year over and a new one just begun." They should give a free sample of Xanax out along with that CD because that song is basically designed to give you a full-blown anxiety attack with a side order of quarter-life crisis. Like, shut up, Christmas carol. Don't judge me just because I've spent literally half of this year in bed nursing a semi-detached ass and a failed hip replacement and I have no long-term job/life prospects and not even a clue as to where I'll be this time next year. (Is it a bad sign that since I've laid up, TLC has had the time to debut four different series about midgets/dwarves: The Little Couple! The Little Couple Who Just Had a Baby! The Little Couple Who Run a Chocolate Shop! A Dwarf Adoption Story! Ok, TLC, you clearly have an embarassment of little-people riches, so can you please wake me up when you're doing casting for "The Very Tall Girl Whose Ass Fell Off?")

Anyhow, what have I done this Christmas? Well, my little black stormcloud continues to wreak a special brand of holiday havoc. When I first returned home from the U.S., the first thing I did was have a shower....which promptly caused a little rain storm in the kitchen below the bathroom. (My mom accused me of "showering wrong" as if I had been flinging the hand-held shower around with wild and reckless abandon and for a week I had to shower in my parent's bathroom, which meant nearly killing myself trying to get my gimpy ass in and out of a huge clawfoot tub). That was flood #1. I guess my black magic has a special love of destroying waterworks because today, just as I was about to bake sugar cookies, the garbarator backed up and spewed sludgy water all over the floor. I think I need to consider a career as a dowser because I have become an expert at finding new and exciting sources of water (water on the floor....water from the ceiling....).

Here's hoping that my little storm cloud takes a break over Christmas. We do not need to be celebrating this holiday season by building an ark.

Man Down! Man Down!

You know, there's never a dull moment when I'm around. If I'm going to have a hip replacement, it's not good enough to just get one of your plain, old vanilla "uncomplicated hip replacement that actually results in you being able to walk without looking like a swamp creature." No, I go big or go home (and then, you know, stay home in bed for months at a time). Same goes with routine tests. I mean, why just get a test, when you can get a test AND faint like a wealthy Victorian woman whose organs are being warped by her corset? Exactly.

First stop in the Neverending Needle Tour: a trip to see the neurologist for a friendly course of electric needles. When we got to Richmond General Hospital, I went to the washroom while my mom hung out in the lobby, where she witnessed a sighting of a rare and exotic creature whose presence has been endlessly speculated about but never confirmed: Dr. ____! Yup, after the many long weeks of SurgeonWatch2009 trying without success to get ahold of Dr. ___ and doing battle with his secretary, it turns out that the way to find Dr. ___ is to haunt the Starbucks at Richmond General Hospital. Yup, after a long day of working the orthopedic power saw, homeboy needed to recharge with a tall, skinny, nonfat cinnamon dolce latte. That's the power of Starbucks, ladies and gentlemen: bringing the people together.

Well, almost. Dr. ___ said hi to my mom, but by the time I came out of the loo, he had vanished back into his natural habitat with nary a trace. This is probably the best because I'm not sure what I would have said to Dr. ___ if I'd seen him. It would be like one of those awkward run-ins with your ex, "So....hey.....how's it going?...Yeah....it's been awhile....How's that monstrosity of a hip working out for you? Still causing you a world of pain and making you walk like a polio-stricken zombie?" or it would turn into a full-fledged Jerry Springer smackdown. It's a good thing I didn't end up going on those steroids, because I might have had to throw a few chairs.

After meeting one prick in the lobby, it was time to head to the neurologist for a few more; (sorry, that wasn't very nice. I don't mean it Dr. ___! I'm sure you're a very nice man). Yup, I had another one of those "being penetrated multiple times by an electrified needle plunging in and out of various muscles while the neurologist urges you to 'just relax.'" Yup, for about half an hour, I was sweating profusely, closing my eyes and thinking of England. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why so many people arrive at this site via a google search for "sex with needles." (You're welcome, fetishists...I can't help you with the sex, but we've got plenty of needles around here).

And the results of my needle orgy? The neurologist is again giving me the diagnosis of "WTF?" Apparently, my hip flexors are getting worse, but there's no reason why. Maybe my hip flexors are just lazy. Who knows? Dr. Needles McNeedleson is therefore sending me to another neurologist for more red-hot needle lovin'. Fun times.

The next day, it was time for a second date with the needles: this time, for another try at the nameless "big-ass needle in the hip joint" test. I'd tried this 5 days earlier, but because my body isn't a fan of the X-ray dye, we had to cancel the test and go back to the drawing board. They were going to give me steroids, but I guess they didn't want me howling at the moon and turning over cars (any more than I already do) because they found some magic MRI dye potion (which my radiologist informed me was literally worth more than gold) that wouldn't give me a case of the shakes. Crisis averted.

Well, almost. The test went off without a hitch. On the CT monitor, I got to watch the needle snaking its way into my hip joint, (which ranks right up there with some of the more awkward sensations I've ever experienced. I was frozen, so I couldn't feel pain, but I could feel the needle poking against the joint and stuff). It was actually kind of cool. They put in the special dye and you could see it leaking out where the tear was. Then, they injected some freezing and presto, I was done!

But the excitement of the day was not over. I got up off the bed and was walking around pain free (it was a Christmas miracle!) and thinking, "Man, that needle was not a lot of fun, but sign me up for this whole 'no pain' thing because this shit is good. Maybe radiology-needle guy can follow me around for the rest of my life, topping me up." As the doctor was giving me some last-minute instructions, however, things started to go black and I felt like I was going to throw up. It was a "man down" scenario because I had fainted faster than an opium-addicted Victorian lady in a romance novel.

This was highly embarrassing. I mean, I've had hundreds of needles filled with sugar water injected into my spine, been hung by doorframes as people tugged on my out-of-joint hip, stayed away throughout my hip replacement so I could see my old hip, and had countless electrified needles jammed into my ass. Did I faint then? No. But when someone takes the pain away, all of a sudden I'm swooning like a delicate lady flower. WTF, body? WTF indeed. I guess my body had had enough of the pin-cushion routine and decided to check the fuck out.

So, that was it. I had to hang out on a gurney for an hour hooked up to monitors to make sure I could remain upright and then I went home and slept for three hours straight. Hey, all that fainting is hard work!

'Roid Rage

If sometime around the evening of Dec 7th you find me out on the street lifting cars over my head and bending street lights into sculptural shapes while beating my fists on my chest, don't worry. Either it's a full moon or I've been endowed with super-human strength thanks to the dose of steroids I'll be taking. But Arley, you might be saying, don't you already have the strength of a lady ox? Why are you playing a friendly game of "Day in the Life of Mark McGwire circa 1999?"

Well, because nothing is ever easy when you're riding the Arley train. Today, I showed up bright and early to Vancouver General Hospital ready to have my hip socket receive some sweet lovin' from a big needle so that they could get a picture of what's going on with my Freaky Cyborg Hip. I changed into some sexy 18-sizes-too-big hospital shorts and limped off ready to steel myself, lie back and think of England. Soon, the technician came in to explain the procedure. He asked me some questions and everything was going swimmingly until I mentioned that I had experienced a freaky reaction to iodine contrast fluid a couple of years ago.

Long story short, when I was experiencing the world's most ridiculous case of mono, my spleen was so enlarged that you could see it poking out from under my ribcage and they did a CT scan to figure out what exactly was going on down there. After I filled out 8.3 million consent forms, they injected me with iodine to get a better look at my SuperSpleen, which was apparently cranky that it served only a minor purpose in the body and wanted a little more attention. I guess that SuperSpleen wasn't ready for its closeup, though, because a few minutes after the dye was injected, I turned bright red from head to toe and began to shake uncontrolably, which ironically wasn't one of the 8 million reactions listed on the consent form. The nurse gave me a big, old WTF, called a code something-or-other into the intercom and people started running around putting oxygen on me and hooking me up to monitors. Besides having to stay for an hour for observation (and being unable to drive my car home, which meant that A. had to come and get me), however, I was just fine.

Well, it turns out that sometimes when it comes to allergies, what starts as "shaking and turning red" could quickly turn into "big old heap of trouble" with repeated exposure. Long story short, they wouldn't do the test. Access denied! At first, I thought, "Well, darn, Arley. You should have kept your big, old mouth shut!" I realized very quickly, however, that it's better to postpone the test for a few days and be sure that I'm not going to have one of those "patient on 'House'" reactions.

So what's an allergic gal to do? Well, they're going to put me on a course of steroids and anti-allergy medications a day before the test and hope that the second time's a charm. Luckily, they were able to re-schedule me for Dec 8th, so the delay won't affect my appointment with Dr. SecondOpinion on the 21st. And, hey, maybe the steroids will make the rash I've had since the hip replacement clear up. Hey, a girl can dream.

Uh, You Guys Did Replace My Hip, Right?

If you had asked me last April whether I planned to play wheelchair basketball again, my answer would have been a big, fat "hells no!" After a season of trying (unsuccessfully) to stuff my hip back in the socket every time it came out during a game and trying (unsuccessfully) to get through 15-hour bus rides when my hip prevented me from staying in any position other than rigidly upright and trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid having a pain-related meltdown on the court because my hip had been out of alignment for two freaking weeks and my leg wouldn't stop spasming, I was more burned out than a college student after a three-day Adderall-induced study bender. Someone should have stuck a fork in me because I was done.

Well, as the great Bob Dylan sings, the times they are a'changing. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder; (actually, it makes the heart obsessively watch NBA basketball and remember what it was like to actually do something useful with your life). A few months into my hip-replacement recovery, I found myself fantasizing about push-til-you-puke chair skills. Then, I was dreaming about wheelchair basketball. It was therefore no surprise that I did today what I said I was never going to do: I sat in a basketball wheelchair, even though I had told myself that I would never again get into a chair if I was still in pain. (This is not as body-smart as it sounds, since if I could play successfully with pain, I would be the first one on the court. The unfortunate truth, however, is that long-term pain causes me to suck at basketball and there's no point ruining your body for something that you suck at).

When I'm in Champaign, I still work out at the gym where the disabled athletes work out and when I came in today, everyone's basketball chair was lined up along a wall and were singing to me in that siren song that said, "Come on, Arley. You know you want to strap your ass into this chariot of titanium and go for a little spin. Before, you were a wheelchair athlete. Now you're just plain old gimpy. Don't you want to take a little push down memory lane?" I couldn't resist. A few minutes later, I'd strapped into my friend's chair and was cruising up and down the hallways of the Disability Resource Center. A few more minutes and I was dribbling up and down the halls and rolling the ball out in front of me to see if I could pick it up.

I was having so much fun that I didn't realize two things: 1) the hip replacement hadn't made one single bit of difference. I still couldn't bend past 90 degrees. I still couldn't pick the ball up on my left side. I still couldn't rotate well on my left side. 2) I was still in pain. Now, part of this is because the strap of the wheelchair rubs against the place where my gluteus medius should be attached, but the other part of it is that I hurt just as much as I did on my last day of playing basketball and the only thing that's changed is that I have a few pounds of cobalt-chrome where my hip should be and a tendon flapping in the breeze. I briefly wondered whether Dr. ___ had just lied about replacing my hip and had given me a hip-replacement placebo. (Somewhere, my dad is saying, "I'm high on placebos!," which is one of his catch phrases).

And how did I react to this news? Did I say, "Well, at least you tried and maybe you can try again after they repair your hip replacement?"No. Did I say, "I thought you hated this sport? Weren't you going to take up Paralympic swimming?" No. My very first reaction was this: "I could just move my strap so it wouldn't rub! I could put a piece of foam between myself and my chair! I could take off my side guards! Maybe I could still play! Maybe I could practice!" If you give a rat an electric shock every time he goes the wrong way in a maze, that rat will stop going the wrong way. I, however, seem incapable of translating "this activity hurts" to "I should stop doing this activity." Self preservation: you're doing it wrong.

So, yes, the chances of me successfully playing wheelchair basketball again are minimal. Hey, Paralympic swimmers, got any use for a 27-year-old, six-foot-tall chick who doesn't sink in water?

Girl With the Parking-Lot Eyes

If you live in the Greater Vancouver area and suddenly feel like a little black storm cloud is following you around, it's because a) you live in Vancouver. If there aren't storm clouds now just wait 5 minutes and b) I'm radiating an intense level of grumpiness because tonight is the Neko Case concert in Urbana and I'm not there. Perhaps, in some branching-worlds universe, some alternate-dimension Arley is putting on her skinny jeans and trying to apply mascara without stabbing herself in the eye and causing partial blindness while humming "Maybe, Sparrow" in anticipation of a night of musical awesomeness. In this universe, however, I'm laying in bed, watching an episode of "Say Yes to the Dress" that was boring the first 2 times I saw it, and contemplating taking off my skinny jeans because they're aggravating the swelling around my hip.

I was, however, not willing to stay in bed playing "Margaret Vs. Pauline" (the only Neko Case song that I know how to play) on guitar while wearing a red wig in order to give myself an imaginary concert experience. Instead, I decided to bite the bullet and go swimming at Canada Games Pool. I've written before about my various bizarre experiences at Canada Games Pool (most of them involving getting a special glimpse of the man business of various elderly patrons), so you can understand my hesitation. But since our backyard pool has been shut down for the winter and my hip was too sore to do any land-based exercise, I steeled myself and hoped that my orange-tinted goggles would act as blinders to whatever strip-teases were going on around me.

I am happy to report that I had no X-rated encounters. I am also happy to report that I did not kick anyone in the head (either accidentally while swimming or out of a misplaced sense of rage at missing the Neko Case concert), that I did not pass out in the jacuzzi (though Lord knows what raging infection I will develop) and that I got my lap-swimming in even though it's possibly the most boring activity in the history of the world since you don't get the adrenaline rush of beating anyone, you don't get to listen to music and you basically feel like a goldfish without the benefit of the whole "3-second memory" thing. (God, that last sentence was a little Victorian-esque).

I must admit, however, that I've been spoiled by months of swimming in my home pool. Not only did I have to wear a proper bathingsuit, but I had to shower in front of old ladies (luckily, my athletic career stripped any sense of modesty I might have naturally possessed), navigate slippery tiles, find some place to put my locker key (I attached it to my cane), find some place to put my cane, get the side-eye from other swimmers as I tried to find a free lane, and get changed while having some young girl checking me out and not liking what she sees. Just getting in and out of the pool was more exhausting than the laps!

At the end of the day, however, it was mission accomplished. I put my hip through its paces with only mild-to-moderate aggrevation and burned off some of my seething disappointment. Now, it's off to Steph's to eat my weight in pizza. (Hey, I worked out today!)

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You: Okay, This Shit is Getting Boring

SurgeonWatch2009 has been going on so long that I've run out of snarky ways to discuss my surgeon not phoning, so I will give it to you straight up, no chaser: no, Dr. ___ did not call today. After countless days of playing the most one-sided game of phone tag ever, (tag, you're it! Tag, you're still it! Tag, you've been it for three weeks!), I took a day off from SurgeonWatch2009. But today, alas, was not without its disappointments.

You know how I've been talking about how badly I wanted to get down to Illinois to see the Neko Case concert because my friend knew the guitarist and had VIP access, and how my plan was to book a flight the minute I saw the surgeon and knew what the hip-timeline was? Yeah, well, the ticket kind of fell through. So, now, endless questions: do I try to purchase a ticket without knowing whether I can even make the concert? Is there a way to purchase a ticket so that, if I am not able to go, A. could go in my place? Can I even purchase a ticket? Should I take this as a sign that the concert is not to be? This question is made all the more prudent by the fact that I've learned that Sarah Harmer is opening for Neko Case and Sarah Harmer's "Dogs and Thunder" is one of the first songs I ever learned to play on guitar and is my very, very favorite to sing when I'm having a bad day and I really want to hear it live. Fuck. Why can't Urbana be closer to Vancouver?

It did not help that it was dark and rainy in Vancouver today and that I was a dumbass who decided to walk for an hour, then do half an hour on the elliptical machine at my mom's friend's house, then try to walk back home. I slogged through the rain for half an hour until I got a couple of blocks from my house and my hip quite literally refused to go any further. I had to stop, rest, and turn off my Ipod so as to devote my full powers of concentration to walking the last block or else I would probably have still been standing there, humming "I Believe I Can Fly" and trying to levitate home, since it probably takes more than the Jock-Jam remix to get all 160-odd pounds of Arleyness of the ground.

When I used to play basketball, Tuesday practices were devoted to "chair skills," which is a euphemism for "push so hard you vomit your breakfast several times in your mouth and have to swallow it because you're in the middle of a set and can't stop" (sorry, gross). I actually really loved chair skills (there's something so fantastic about being done, when you've exerted absolutely every ounce of energy you have and you're pleasantly tired and that drink of cold water tastes like the best thing in the world), but every once in awhile when I would hit the wall, I would count down how many more pushes I had until I could rest. Just knowing that I only had 50 more pushes (even if it was untrue) gave me something to focus on and made everything seem more managable.

So, there I was, dragging my hip along the wet-leaf-strewn minefield of the sidewalk, counting outloud to myself. I'd set 200 steps as my target goal and it actually turned out to be pretty accurate because I reached my front yard at 190 steps and I got inside the house at 212....where I promptly took a shitload of Extra-Strength Tylenol and had my mom make me tomato soup (thanks, mom!). When I got home, I also learned that my brother's girlfriend's mom (who's an orthopedic nurse) had sent me tons of information about repairing a torn gluteus medius. (Thanks!) I'd found so many conflicting reports on the internet that it was great to read some information that's been sanctioned by an authority higher than Google. Here's hoping that Dr. SecondOpinion can get the surgery party started.