Not So Crazy

Before

After

There’s not a lot you can do if you hurt your back. You can’t ride the horses. Well, I could ride the horses if pain was my only concern. I can take pain if I’m motivated enough. I practically dropped my babies in a field when I was giving birth. Not really. But almost. It was at a birthing center. Not in a hospital. It was an actual house that had a kitchen with cupboards and a bedroom with a double bed and a chenille bedspread. There were only midwives. No doctors. I don’t think there was even a Tylenol in the medicine cabinet, never mind any kind of pain drugs.

I once had a colonoscopy while I was awake to save money. If you wanted to get put to sleep, you had to go to the hospital. But if you stayed awake, you could get it done in the doctor’s office and it was a lot cheaper. There was the nurse across the room, uncoiling what looked like a garden hose and passing it to the doctor who was on the other side and who was inserting it inside of me where I watched its travels on a little TV at the foot of the table. I saw the traces of lime green Jell-O in my colon which was my only meal in 24 hours. It looked fluorescent. Let’s put it this way. I haven’t eaten Jell-O since. And I’m not too fond of garden hoses.

If pain was the only factor, I’d be riding these horses. But I know that if the fractures are going to heal properly, I can’t use my back. Especially now that I am in menopause. Women lose bone density on a good day when they’re in menopause. We lose bone, we lose the ability to drop babies in birthing houses and hospitals, and we lose our car keys because we can’t think straight anymore. Sometimes we even lose our minds. You can ask any husband of a menopausal woman if she is still the girl he married or some pear-shaped woman he doesn’t recognize with her head in the freezer who he’s afraid might be searching for her gun in there.

Both my mother and my grandmother had osteoporosis but I’m pretty sure I don’t have it because I hit the ground hard and it was hard ground. It was like cement. Anyone would have broken bones. I think most people would have shattered like a teacup on a tile floor if they hit as hard as I did. So I think I have pretty good bones but I’m not so crazy that I don’t know that if I want to ride again, I have to let it heal.

Therefore I can’t open and close windows. They’re sticky.

This is a big problem in an old farmhouse with no air conditioning and thunderstorms blowing up in 60 seconds flat and then leaving just as fast. Open, close. Open, close. I have to call Kurt or Kelly. You use your back for everything! You don’t realize. Standing up from getting a pot out of the cabinet. Laundry baskets. Climbing in and out of the truck. Bags of groceries, even when they’re filled with cereal boxes and heads of lettuce. A gallon of milk. A pot of water from the sink to the stove. I can’t mow because it’s bumpy. I feel my back muscles strain when I lean down to tuck in the sheets around the bed. Of course there are all the things you expect that I can’t do anymore: emptying a bag of grain into the can, carrying a water bucket, lifting the saddle. Not that I was thinking of saddling up. But these things I was prepared for. I wasn’t prepared for not being able to put my socks on.

Kurt and Kelly help a lot but Kurt is working day and night and Kelly is working too, plus she has her kid things—4-H, FFA, barrel racing, practicing driving for her test, and of course the boyfriend. One of my neighbors asked me if that was Kelly outside painting the deck the other day. It was. She said every time she passes the house, she sees Kelly out there doing something—washing the trucks, digging a ditch in front of the barn, on the tractor, and now painting the deck. How much can I ask the kid to do?

They’re both helping me as much as they can but there’s still so much and I don’t like it when there are weeds in my petunias.

So I got out the weed-whacker. I am the weed-whacking queen and I thank god that at least I can do this because weed-whacking is one of my favorite things. You get a lot of bang for the buck with weed-whacking. When you are done, it really looks like you did something. It looks like you just got your hair cut or you baked a cake. First there’s nothing, then there’s something that you can’t help but notice. Unless, of course, you go to the girl who’s too afraid to take anything off because one time she gave Marion the Avon lady a bad haircut and that got all over town. You don’t think people are still buying Avon but they are. Down here that Skin-So-Soft is still a hot seller because we’ve got a mosquito problem. There’s only so much Deep Woods Off that you can use if you don’t want to worry about getting cancer or something. I can see using it once in a while but when you’re going out on the porch on a regular basis to smoke cigarettes and the mosquitoes are eating you alive, I go for the Skin-So-Soft. (Yes, I am aware of the contradiction of that statement.)

Back at the Amityville Horror House I weed-whacked continuously. I’d start on one end of the property and by the time I got to the other, I’d turn around and there’d be a jungle behind me and I’d have to start all over again. I can’t say weed-whacking there gave me any satisfaction. But I got a lot of experience. So I’m pretty handy with the thing. As long as Kurt starts it for me, I don’t have to use my back at all. I didn’t put the strap around my back, just held it with my arms, and stood straight. I should have done this years ago because stooping while weed-whacking with the strap around my back is probably what contributed to all the disc damage I’ve got. I was surprised at how well it worked—I wasn’t feeling any strain in my back at all. I felt it more when I was making the bed.

I weed-whacked the hell out of the place. I did around the house, the garden, the barn, the fences, the equipment that hasn’t moved in a year, the wood pile. I did all along the road; on both sides, even though one of the neighbors stopped by and said I didn’t have to do that. I let the head rest on the ground without shutting it off (because then I’d need Kurt to restart it), took off my goggles, removed my earplugs and said, “What was that?”

He said, “Let the public works guys do that. They’ll come around and mow.”

“Ah, thanks, but I kind of like doing it,” I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy. He doesn’t know me yet. He doesn’t know that I get colonoscopies while I’m awake. But I swear that I will not get on the horse.

Things to Do

In actuality, I am hurt. It’s been over a week and it’s not any better. It’s not like any back pain that I’ve had before. It’s not sore from overuse and some rest will do the trick. It’s not like I tweaked it and if I move a certain way, it’s going to spasm and “go out,” and maybe I need an anti-inflammatory. This is different. This feels like something is wrong. It feels like my spine is collapsing in on itself like an accordion. Like the air was let out of it. It reminds me of what the Twin Towers looked like when they collapsed.

When I first get up in the morning, it feels pretty good. And then as soon as I start bending (and everything you do, whether you realize it or not, requires bending—I empty the coffee filter into the garbage, I bend. I fill the cats’ bowl, I bend. I turn on the faucet in the tub, I bend), it starts hurting. I can’t sit at the computer. I can’t put my socks on. I can’t get up in the truck. The only time it feels better is when I’m straight, standing up, or especially, lying down.

I wish Kurt could give me one of his massages where he gently stretches my spine apart (I swear, he missed his calling—he should have been a chiropractor) but he’s been working day and night. He has worked twenty days straight. He is working today, even though it’s Sunday and it’s Memorial Day weekend. He comes home when it’s dark and all I can see are the whites of his eyes because he is covered with grout or flooring patch or whatever he is using. I can’t ask him for a massage.

I thought it would get better and I’d be back to riding this week but that’s not happening. This is not good when I’m trying not to smoke because one way I stay off the cigarettes is by staying active. I keep busy. I ride my horse, I do projects, I plant flowers. I want a cigarette, I get up and move! It not only distracts me, but it keeps me from blowing like a big fat whale. I think I’ve already gained an extra ten pounds just this week now that I’ve been out of commission. Now I’m craving cigarettes even more because I’m depressed about how fat I am and I can’t do anything about it. There is nothing I can cut out food-wise. I don’t overeat. I never overeat when I quit smoking because I couldn’t care less about food—I want my nicotine! But I have started eating breakfast. I never used to eat breakfast. Suddenly, since quitting smoking, I am hungry in the morning. That’s normal and that’s good. I have a cup of yogurt and a small bowl of granola cereal. That’s all. The only other thing is I’ve been treating myself to half-and-half and flavored creamers in my coffee after supper. But that’s it. I shouldn’t be blowing like a whale! And now I can’t exercise!

I’m insulted. I can’t believe I had the nerve to get hurt. I can’t believe I’m not bouncing right back. I always bounce right back. I’m just like my mother. She bounced back from everything. Her claim to fame was how she gave birth to my sister and that weekend she was dancing on a bar, that’s on the bar, in Hoboken. When she fell and broke her hip (not off the bar; this was thirty-something years later on said sister’s icy porch), she was back on her feet so fast that her doctor called in other doctors and they crowded around her bed and polled her, wanting to know if she was some kind of positive thinker because we all know that attitude is half the battle. What else could it be? They all saw the broken bone on the X-ray and there was no denying it; it was bad. “No. No,” she said, waving a hand. “I just have things to do.”

On a good note, I had been wondering how my bones were going to hold up on the next fall. My mother had osteoporosis and I’m in menopause so I was worried about it. The last time I fell was back in Virginia when I was vacuuming up ladybugs off the ceiling and the stool slipped out from underneath me and I landed full force on my back and nothing happened. Obviously my bones are good because this time I fell even higher. The video shows me up in the air, over his head, before I fell onto the ground. So it was quite a distance. No broken bones. I’m assuming no broken bones because I haven’t seen the doctor yet but like I said in my last post, I don’t think I’d be walking if anything was broke. No, my guess is that I popped a disk.

I see the doctor Tuesday evening. But the way it works nowadays is she won’t be able to tell me squat. She will offer me pain pills which I won’t take because I’m not a pill-taker. She will give me a referral to get some kind of scan thing. Might be a regular X-ray. Might be an ultrasound. Or an MRI. It will take a week before I will be able to get in to see those people, then a few more days before they send the results to my doctor. Then I will have to go back in there so she can tell me what they saw. The whole rigmarole will take so long that I will be all better by that time. That’s my hope. Because I have things to do.

Practicing to Be a Cool Old Lady

I don’t want anybody to be shocked when they see me when I go back to Jersey. I’ve really aged in the last year. It’s probably from the stress of losing my mother plus I turned fifty and I’m going through menopause. All of a sudden I have wrinkles all over the place and I’ve got this paunch in the middle that I see a lot of middle-aged women get. I’m not too worried about the paunch. I’ve watched all the women in my family get it when they went through menopause and then when they were done with the changes, a few years later, they got skinny again. I ride horses and take care of this whole farm myself so I’m not too worried about it. I’m very active. But the wrinkles. They’re not going away.

What bothers me about it is what other people are going to say. They will whisper, “Oh, what happened to Debi?” And “Debi looks terrible!” I know I look tired. I feel tired. I feel like I’ve been through the mill these last few years. If it wasn’t for what other people are going to think, I really wouldn’t care too much. It’s not like I’m going to let myself go. I’ll have blonde hair on my deathbed. But you can’t control everything.

The problem is, they haven’t seen me for eight years. We all age and I know they have wrinkles too. But they’ve seen each other regularly so I’m sure they don’t notice it in themselves like they’ll notice it in someone who they still think of as being forty-two years old, the age I was when I left. And then I’ll show up and I’ll be fifty. It’s like when someone dies. You always picture them the age they were when you lost them. But I’m coming back. And yeow! It’ll be a shock.

But who cares? I’m going to be a cool old lady. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later so I figured I better find a way to accept it. If I can’t look like a hot number when I’m old, at least I can be fun and make people smile. You know, like a Betty White type. So I’m practicing. One time I took a sip of water and spit it at Kelly. Got her right in the head too. I also race her up the stairs and I beat her because I cheat—the trick is I hold her until I get ahead of her. It helps if the dog’s involved because he grabs her by the ankles.

We talk with English accents. I encourage her to call me “Mum” and we stop whatever we are doing whenever Russell Brand comes on the TV so we can study him and make people chuckle. (They often chuckle in England whereas we Americans tend to laugh or giggle.) Today in Cato’s, Kelly held up a shirt and I exclaimed, “That’s quite lovely!” Kelly said, “I know Mum. It’s splendid, isn’t it?” Kurt told the clerk, “They’re not really British you know.”

I’ve also been practicing in Walmart. It’s so dreary in there—what better place to spread some joy? I always talk to everyone anyway. Now I go out of my way to do it.

I make a point of using the cashier’s name. “Thanks a lot Ruby. You have a great day.” They always look surprised that I read their name tag and used their name. Like it actually took effort. You get easy credit for this one.

I make jokes to strangers in the aisles. “Now if only I could hit the lottery I could buy some meat to go with all these snacks!” (We’re big on snacks in this house; hence the paunch mentioned earlier.)

I always stop and chat with the greeters because they get a bad rap. Like that’s an easy job. I’m fifty and I couldn’t stand on my feet all day long like they do. Most of them are senior citizens and they don’t even let them sit down. Why can’t they say hello from a stool? Why isn’t there a stool on the side so they can at least take a load off when no one comes in?

And I try to be helpful. “I get the store brand salsa,” I told a woman who looked confused, her hand hovering back and forth between the Pace and Chi-Chi’s. “The lime and garlic,” I advised. “It’s delicious and you get a lot more for the money.”

One time I had such a long conversation with a woman on line at the deli counter that I found out she’d lost a child and she was raising her grandchild, the state where she was from, the kind of work her husband did, her middle name and why she was named that, what kind of cold cuts she was buying and the theme for the party she was throwing on Saturday. She was wearing a butterfly pendant on a gold necklace. I didn’t tell her about my mother. You know, and how she loved butterflies. I didn’t have to because I felt so good making that lady feel good, that’s what I was busy doing. When she got her order, she reached out and squeezed my arm. “It was so nice talking to you!”

All day long I felt good. I noticed, when I looked in the rearview mirror driving home, that I was smiling. And there in the corner of my eyes were big crow’s feet. And somehow, they didn’t look so bad.