The doctor who drew the dubious assignment of removing my stitches was not at all pleased with the flip-flops I showed up in yesterday.
She is actually a very kind and helpful doctor. There is an impressive lineup of residents in the orthopedic department at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and nearly all of them look as though they were cast in a hospital drama. I swear, some doctors walked into the room and Omer and I looked at each other and said, “No way is that a doctor. He looks like a Calvin Klein model from the nineties, at the very least.” Not remotely convincing. They were so handsome and tall that they made both of us feel positively below average in height (a dream of mine). This doctor was no different: beautiful and young, speaking with an almost scripted polish, and very good at her job. She even wrote a lovely letter to the motor vehicle office explaining why my disabled parking permit needed to be extended, and it helped. But unlike most doctors, whose manner is a little ChatGPT-like in its eagerness to please and agree with everything, she walked into the room, immediately fixed a disapproving gaze on my fluorescent orange flip-flops, and pronounced, “Those aren’t supportive shoes. You shouldn’t be walking in them.” I tried to explain that it was two hundred degrees (Celsius!) that day, that I had worn them only because the walk from the car to the clinic was especially short, that putting on socks is hard for me right now, that it wasn’t what she thought, that the floor was uneven, and that it was all our leaders’ fault, because where are they and where is Rabin? None of it helped, so I kept my central argument to myself: neon makes me very happy, and in difficult times I try to surround myself with vivid colors.
She was not persuaded, but to her credit she tried very hard to remain friendly and see the good despite the glow of my flip-flops. Unpicking is part of embroidery, and like a skilled embroiderer she tended to the ends of the black threads protruding from three different places in my leg. That unpicking felt so jarring in my body, and I had been waiting for it to be over. And then it was.
Range of motion, for those who have it, is the easiest thing to take for granted. Like oxygen, like a roof over your head, when these things are simply there, who even notices them? And when it disappears all at once, every little bit that comes back makes such a huge difference to life.
Over the past two weeks, I have felt another millimeter of movement return each day, movement I had not had for a long time. It made me happier than I can describe. Sometimes I almost felt silly about just how happy it made me. It is not as if I am at the Bolshoi and need my pointe work to be perfect. But suddenly I can walk and feel the whole arc of a step, from the heel’s first contact with the ground all the way through to the toes. I can also feel my toes normally again, waking from their long numbness. It was as though I had stepped on a dentist’s syringe and the anesthetic had not worn off until a few days ago. And now the feeling is there. I can feel my foot meeting the ground, and I can begin to trust standing on that leg again. It really is a whole world, and deeply humbling, like this entire period.
Beyond day-to-day functioning, all this helps me prepare for and plan the coming year. Fortunately, I have good partners around me to connect with, and the most helpful thing for my recovery has been meeting with them and planning what comes next. That, too, is far from something to take for granted: finding women in another country who speak a shared language, truly a language of the heart and the hands and of making things, of dreams and plans. There is more, and I will get to that too. For now, the challenge is to lift my head every day and hold on to this elusive feeling over time. It really is very, very difficult for me. And to manage to believe that the feeling of putting my foot down, of the stable floor beneath me, is real and reliable. That I can put the crutches up in the attic, so they will stop looking at me that way, like that doctor. I have enough of that inside myself already.
Thank you for your concern and your good wishes. They help so very much, too.
