Not Listening to Our Bodies

Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with Daisy's veterinarian, Dr. Dave. A few weeks ago, Daisy injured her knee so that her knee cap repeatedly--and painfully--dislocated. After we did our best to keep her from running and jumping for a week, she was doing much better and hadn't dislocated her knee cap in more than two days. I called Dr. Dave and left a message saying she was doing fine.

The next day, I let her out in the yard, and when I looked out, she was racing at warp speed, a picture of golden enthusiasm and energy. She changed directions suddenly and continued her sprint, ears flapping and fur rippling from the speed in her four furry paws. After staring for a moment in sheer awe of her unrestrained dog joy, I remembered that she should NOT be running. I called her in, and later that evening, she dislocated her knee again.

Shoot.

When I called Dr. Dave yesterday, he told me that dogs...goldens in particular...do not have the cognitive ability to understand that they have to take it easy. As soon as they start feeling better, they go full speed. We humans have to do the thinking for them. He was saying, nicely, that I have to be smarter than my dog, which, clearly, I was not when I let her out unsupervised.

So now Daisy must spend two more weeks on rest and anti-inflammatory medications.

As I was contemplating her stupidity and its consequences, it occurred to me that George, my crazy endurance-athlete husband, understands Daisy's impulse to run perfectly. You see, he has, for many years, repeatedly injured himself, rested for too short a period of time, reinjured himself, and suffered the consequences. In short, he has displayed the same cognitive limitations in this area that Daisy has.

This past weekend, however, he demonstrated a remarkable restraint heretofore unseen in the annals of his triathlon career: he went out for a short run and returned almost immediately because his knee hurt. He had run over 9 miles the day before, and he realized he needed to rest. He limited his activity in response to the thought that pain was trying to tell him something and he ought to listen to it.

He's learning. Daisy, on the other hand, can not.

Since George is, in all other ways, cognitively blessed with a well-developed frontal lobe, I have to assume that his slow learning curve on the matter of injury recovery is a glitch in our evolution. After contemplating George's challenge in this area, I reminded myself of the principle that if you point a finger at someone else there are three fingers pointing back at you. Oh, yes. I'm guilty of this stupidity, too.

I've been living with some pain for a while and have not done anything about it, mainly because I don't want a repeat of six years ago.

You may be asking, "What happened six years ago that would make you stupid, Susan?" Let me tell you.

Six years ago, I had pain and went to the doctor. What followed was a year of medical testing hell, multiple misdiagnoses, and enough test radiation that I had to carry a card explaining that I wasn't making dirty bombs but had been tortured by doctors, in case Homeland Security scanned me with a geiger counter. Good times, man. Good times.

In the end, only two tests proved positive. As a result, I had surgery to remove my gall bladder and started taking prilosec for gastritis. The gastritis was caused by my taking too much ibuprofen for joint pain, which was caused by my insomnia.

Life-long insomniacs, it turns out, have a high incidence of joint pain because the human body repairs daily wear-and-tear in our joints only when we are deeply asleep. We insomniacs don't get enough deep sleep, so our joints don't repair themselves, and we have pain.

I've barely been back to the general practitioner since, though of course I've kept up my annual visits to the stirrups and boob squisher. You know, just for the fun of it. And I've done my level best to get at least six hours of sleep a night, with mixed results.

Lately, I've dismissed some new joint aches and pains as the natural consequence of being a middle-aged insomniac, and when a list of perimenopausal symptoms included joint pain, that seemed like enough reason for my joints to hurt. But the truth is, I don't know. I am not a doctor. And even though doctors practice medicine (wouldn't it be nicer if they did medicine?), they know more about how my body works--and how to fix it--than I do.

I made an appointment yesterday to see my primary care doctor about the pain. Hopefully, she'll simply order me to start doing yoga, which, I've read, is helpful for joint pain and doesn't involve medications that damage your gut or your heart. Because without a doctor ordering me to do yoga, I simply won't do it.

I'm stupid that way.

In what ways are you stupid? How do you ignore what your body tells you it needs? What, if anything, makes you listen?

Getting on Schedule

While I embrace certain aspects of our technological age (computers, the Internet, smart phones), other aspects leave me feeling distinctly annoyed.

Take electronic organizers.

Please. I don't want them in my life anymore.

For years, I happily used a mid-size DayPlanner that worked just great. After I had children, however, it seemed a bit cumbersome and weighed down the diaper bag, so I abandoned it except as an address book.

Mothers of infants and small children do not need DayPlanners. They only serve to remind the mothers of how out-of-control their lives are. Some mornings, it takes three hours just to get yourself and the kids dressed, fed, and out the door, what with the diaper blow-outs, spit-ups, tantrums, and loads of unexpected laundry to be started.

Five or six years ago, George gave me a Palm Pilot. He had noticed how cumbersome my DayPlanner was as an address book, so he thought a Palm would be handy. I welcomed the chance to get organized again since my baby wasn't a baby anymore. Perhaps my life could move back to its previously organized state.

At first, I thought I merely resisted change from a written planner to an electronic one, since I'm pretty much a Luddite at heart. Like Daisy encountering her first truck parked on the side of the road, I approached my Palm Pilot cautiously and woofed my unease at its tiny alien presence in my purse. Unlike Daisy, who now no longer balks at strange cars parked on our walking route, my Palm never felt natural as a scheduler.

It worked--and still works--great as an address book, though.

Then, I tried Windows' Email Scheduler, thinking I would check it every morning when I turned on my computer. Instead, I got annoyed when it popped up stuff that I had to click to dismiss. Clicking to get the calendar out of my way when I hadn't done the stuff on it seemed pointless and unhelpful. My computer doesn't go with me through the day, and being reminded about something in the morning still gave me ample opportunity to forget it.

And forget it I did. Since I started trying to get organized again, I have become convinced that childbirth sucked all the organization skills out of my brain, and with the start of perimenopause, that lack of organization got worse. The same woman who used to juggle dozens of projects at a time and even finished ahead of schedule on many of them suddenly couldn't remember her weekly volunteer schedule at the school library.

I had to do something to get control, and if a Palm and Windows couldn't help, perhaps a cell phone would. George and I bought smart phones in December, and the phone seemed a more sensible location for an organizer since I carry it with me most of the time and can reference it whenever I feel like it. I approached this organizer with optimism and enthusiasm.

Instead, I once again grew annoyed at having to dismiss stuff that I remembered, and despite the fact that the phone is with me most of the time, I simply couldn't remember to check it regularly throughout the day. Surely there is an app that works better than the one already on the phone--for instance, one that plays the theme from Rocky fifteen minutes before each scheduled appointment.  But it feels like a gigantic waste of time to go looking for such an app when I already resent the phone as an organizer.

Every year, I buy an old-fashioned weekly planner at Barnes and Noble in early January. This planner sits with a pen by my bed, and each night I write down things that I want to remember about that day...funny stuff the boys say, milestone events, things I am grateful for. At the end of the year, I put the planner with all the memorabilia that I have collected for the year to scrapbook. It's a huge asset for scrapbook journaling because I can look up the exact date that we went to the Columbus Zoo or that Jack tasted a pancake without throwing up.

Problem is, I haven't done much scrapbooking in the past three years. In fact, I've done none, which means that I've slacked on filling those planners for the last year. This year's has very little written in it so far...which made me realize that it would be a perfect organizer.

That is, until my husband shared his organizational method with me, which is even better than my weekly planner and allows me to leave the weekly planner by my bed, thus sustaining the illusion that I'll get back to scrapbooking. Eventually.

Let me pause to share how surprised I was by his enthusiasm for helping me organize myself. You see, this is a man who's main organizational method seems to be "cover every flat surface you can find with your stuff so you can see everything and simultaneously drive your spouse insane." Remember this post? 

George saw me putting information in the weekly planner and said, with enthusiasm, "Let me show you what I do!" He pulled out a monthly planner that has nice, big squares for each day of a month, as well as a bunch of blank lined pages following the calendar for notes, lists, and such. It's brilliant. A month at a glance. One place to keep a running to-do list. I embraced the simplicity of his method immediately.

He took me to Office Max yesterday to purchase one. My only complaint is that the only really good monthly planners--the ones without a bunch of superfluous and distracting stuff--are gray and boring. I've already stamped the cover of mine to make it a little less institutional looking. Stamping on plastic is a challenge, but at least George won't mistake his planner for mine.

I'm optimistic that this will work, that I will regain at least a modicum of control and not let so much slip through the cracks of my life. Time will tell if this method of organization will help me feel less scattered-brained and forgetful. I'll keep you posted.

Now it's your turn. What method do you use (if any!) to stay organized and on schedule?

Is It Wrong to Dope Slap the Man in Brown?

Last week, the Big Brown Truck stopped in front of my house. It had two Men in Brown, something we only see in December. I went outside before they had exited the truck because

IT'S THE CHRISTMAS SEASON AND WE'RE GETTING A PACKAGE!!!! WoooHoooo!

One Man in Brown--not our usual--was approaching the house with the handheld tracking computer. The usual Man in Brown was in the truck retrieving a box when he yelled out, "Make sure the signer is over 21!"

My first thought was WoooHoooo!!!! Wine!!!!!

Then, the new Man in Brown yells back, "Yeah, she's definitely over 21!"

Good feeling gone. Definitely gone.