It's Voting Time!

Ok everyone, we've got Very Important Business to attend to. I haven't had much to say for myself over the past few weeks, mainly because I've been sitting around dealing with the soul destroying task that is multiple job applications. Telling people over and over why I'm such a great match for their school, when in fact I often have no idea whether that's true or not, haha. And trying NOT to get my hopes up for anything in particular, since who knows where I'll end up, if anywhere.

In any case, despite all that, I'm also getting ready for the Big Day of knee surgery, but before that I have the minor little detail of becoming a doctor. Of philosophy, but whatever, it still entitles me to the Dr. prefix, even if I'll never use it! So now that the research is done and the diss is written, I need to focus on the hardest question of all: what to wear to the defense!

This is where you all come in. I have, for your consideration, three finalists, which I will present in what is, in my opinion, ascending order of formality. I have a preference among these three choices, but so as not to skew the voting (we are in a democracy, after all), I will keep my mouth shut. Well, actually, we probably won't be in a democracy, as I retain final say, haha. And gay guys' votes will count double, because you should always trust gay guys when it comes to fashion advice.

First up, we have a jumper with a purple shirt. You can't tell from the pic, but the shirt has French cuffs, which does indeed add a touch of class.

Next we have suit #1, with a green satiny shirt:

And finally, we have suit #2, the power suit to beat all power suits (yes, that's a vest you see). This suit has an illustrious history, as I bought it to give a speech to 1900 people in the UN General Assembly, at that main podium where Krushchev banged his shoe (yes, I did the same, but not during my speech) and where Chavez said he smelled the Devil after Bush spoke (that was a few years after my speech).

My assumption, should this outfit prevail, is that I'd wear it without the jacket for the actual defense:

It's hard to tell, but the suit is pinstriped with baby blue pinstripes, and the shirt I'm wearing is a matching baby blue color. I SWEAR I don't look like a caterer in real life!

Ok, so that's all for now. Let the voting begin. That means I want comments!!!

The joys of modern technology

My favorite part of post-op appointments has ALWAYS been to get all the awesome pictures that were taken inside my knee. I have a stack of them, somewhere. Probably lost, at this point, but they're always cool. Yesterday I got to see the doc for the post-op from the first surgery, and sure enough, he came bearing great pics. He had shown them to me at the hospital when I was still loopy, but yesterday he talked me through them again and gave me a copy to take home :-)

So you have fair warning, if you don't like pics of inside the body, you should stop here. Otherwise, check this out:

Here's the cause of all my problems, the hole in the cartilage behind the kneecap. The camera went in below my knee (just above the tibia), so this is looking up my leg. The hole is on the inside area of the kneecap:


That flap he's holding with the probe was most likely the cause of my favorite party trick of having to reposition my knee (with a loud crack) at inopportune moments, like when there was an awkward silence in the room (haha). That "hangnail" would get stuck on something and pull the whole kneecap out of place, so I would routinely have to manipulate it back into place. I don't know why it made so much noise when I did so...in a way I kind of miss it, it was kind of funny, haha. I even pretty much got used to the fact that it also hurt like hell when I snapped it back.

The hole itself is about a centimeter and a half in diameter, and you can get a better image of it in the photo on the right, below. The big problem he discovered is that the cartilage around the hole is compromised as well, it's mushy, which you can see in the photo on the left, below. It totally gives way to the probe:


So all in all, he wants to fix about 2 cm diameter's worth of messed up cartilage. To do that, he took the sample for the lab to clone, from the inner edge of my femur (which is apparently not particularly weight-bearing). Here he is scoring the cartilage with the knife:

Then he took the piece out, and you can see what's left now:

I didn't realize that's where he took the cartilage, but that explains a lot. Like why the interior part of my femur feels like I got hit RIGHT THERE, with one of Roy Halladay's fast balls or something. It's just a bad bruise, he said it would feel better shortly.

Anyway, so that's one plan, called an autologous chondrocyte implantation. The other thing he's doing is called an osteotomy, which repositions my tibia to lift up the patellar tendon (which runs over the kneecap). That will mean that the tendon puts less pressure on the kneecap, which will make the kneecap sit higher over the femur when I bend my leg. The reason this is necessary is demonstrated below. He was bending my leg, and you can see that there isn't enough space between the kneecap and the femur, which means that if he does the ACI but not the osteotomy, the new cartilage will probably just wear away again and leave me with the same damn problem all over again.

Kathryn, Stay-at-home mom

So I realized, pretty quickly, I might add, that my new status in the house is not as the invalid with the bum knee but rather stay-at-home mom to four VERY high maintenance cats, who see my inability to fully get around as a purely technical detail, irrelevant to them as long as I continue serving them. And because I'm a sucker, of course I do. I'm not kidding when I say my days are structured around the cats' special needs.

This show features four stars. There's Sebastian, the big kitty:


(Yes, he weighs 21 pounds and is only 1 year old. He could get up to about 25. This is why coons are awesome).

Then we have Isabella, the bald kitty:


(Yes, it's called a lion cut. No, we didn't do it to her on purpose...her fur just got all matted, and since she's a persian, there's a lot of it).

And then Chloe, the queen of the roost (and don't you forget it):


And finally, last but not least, Bagheera, the sick kitty, taking a sniffy attitude to my attempt to get a picture of him:


Now, what keeps me on my toes is that each one has his or her own routines. Isabella, for example, generally doesn't let people get super close to her, but as soon as I get up to do something for another cat, she steals the pillow I use to prop up my leg:


Without fail. So then, being the tool that I am, I don't like to bother her. So I move my act somewhere else for a while, which is less convenient on my knee since I have my whole workspace set up. I offer to share the pillow with her, but she will have none of that and runs as soon as I come back. Which ends up being rather frequent, since Sebastian's main hobby involves either going after the flowers Swathi was nice enough to send me:



Or harassing his siblings on the recreation tree:


And the thing is, we actually do have a second tree (you can see it in the background) to reduce tension. It works overall, but we figured out that often Sebastian isn't hassling Chloe for the actual spot but rather because he wants a playmate. Too bad it's totally out of the question to get ANOTHER coon to keep him in line, hahahaha.

Bagheera stays above the fray on all this, instead he likes to go out on the deck and eat the flowers:


We let him do so because he's too decrepit to get away anyway. The problem, however, as I realized, is that he's a little dim when it comes to the weather. There was basically a MONSOON on Monday, and he was crying at the back door to go out. I tried to tell him he didn't want to, but then I decided I'd shut him up by opening the door to give him a more direct understanding of the crappiness of the weather. Well, you can imagine my consternation when the dumbass actually went right outside, into the rain. At which point I realized that I was downstairs with nothing for my feet but my socks, and I wasn't feeling up to going upstairs to get shoes. But I also didn't want to get my one pair of socks soaked either. I stood there for a minute while the idiot wandered around, but finally he decided that the weather did indeed suck, at which point he came in, totally drenched. So I had to clean him up too. Meanwhile, you can guess what Sebastian was doing (eating my flowers) and Isabella (stealing my pillow).

Nothing is more complicated than managing their meals, however. Because Sebastian is a pig, we have to separate the cats. Sometimes, when Sebastian is being particularly greedy, we have to lock him in the bathroom for like 20 minutes to give the other cats time to eat. When this happens, we call the little bathroom "baby jail" (since he's the baby of the family). Sebastian knows baby jail quite well.

Anyway, three of them take their meals in the kitchen, but Isabella gets fed elsewhere (because Sebastian almost always tries to steal her food and she's too freaked to fight back). The funny thing is that at each mealtime, Isabella tells US where she will take her food. We have a whole routine: she waits for us just outside the kitchen, we come with the plate, and she leads us away to The Chosen Spot. Sometimes it's under the secretary:


Other times it's under the rocking chair or under the coffee table in the living room. In any case, she's the decider on mealtimes, which means we spend half the day tracking down old cat plates we've forgotten about, hahaha.

Chloe gets a special probiotic because she's stressed and has intestinal issues, so you have to remember to sprinkle that on in the morning.

All of this pales in comparison to Bagheera, however, who should really be known as The Endless Stomach. He's on some form of thyroid meds, and we're pretty sure it's made him hungry ALL THE TIME. He almost never strays from the food bowls, and he demands extra snacks throughout the day. This is how it has come to pass that while the others get two wet meals per day, he gets the two wet meals, supplemented by about 3 snacks of baby food per day. He gets lunch whenever I'm home to give it to him.

Now, all this would be kind of annoying except for one absolutely hilarious detail: Bagheera has developed a strange little tic (we think it's excitement) when he's about to get baby food: he spins in circles. Sometimes he'll do it multiple times in a row, at which point we just laugh hysterically at the poor kitty. But damn is it funny. It's even predictable: he knows the routine when we're preparing it, so he does it at key moments in the process: when we get the food out of the fridge, when it's going into the microwave to be heated up, and when it's coming out, just before he gets it. So, for your viewing pleasure (if anyone has stayed awake to read this far), I present to you a video of the stupid animal trick of the day, Bagheera's baby food circles:

La Grosse Pomme

I got back from NYC today, after a 6-day adventure. It's probably a miracle I made it back in one piece (or, that my knee made it back in one piece), but whatever, I took the attitude I've been known to take in the past, like when I did the May Pole dance (and you know it, the May Hole dance too) at Bryn Mawr, two days before my ACL and lateral release procedures. My philosophy is, for better or for worse, that they're going to go in there on Friday to fix everything that's wrong with it (or begin to fix it all), so if there's a little more wrong with it now than there was a week ago, it's all ending up in the same place, right? The fatal flaw with this logic is that I've already got unfixable damage on the tibia (which they're leaving alone on Friday because they can't reach it), but we're not going to talk about that. Instead we're going to talk about the awesome-ness that was my last hurrah in NYC.

I went up on Thursday to take a French friend to Google. Yes! I had wanted to do something unique in New York during her visit to the States, and so it only took me a minute to come up with the most random thing in the world, namely a guided tour of Google. Doug was nice enough to invite us to lunch too (thanks again, Doug!), so that made the visit particularly complete. We wandered around the offices, complete with the scooters and scooter parking, micro-kitchens all over the place with all sorts of free yummy treats, and the lego toy area with the hardest of hard-core constructions (an entire motorized ferris wheel!). And kitschy 1950s-style ads for Facebook, Skype and Youtube. I also renewed my certificate in Math Nerd Studies by laughing at such jokes written on the white boards in the hallway as "the 1st element of the mod 7 club is the 8th element of the mod 7 club" and the like. hahahaha. I know, it's only funny to a rather restricted group of nerds out there, but I thought it was hilarious that this was their idea of graffiti :-)

Afterwards, since Google is right in the area, I took my friend to Chelsea Market and the High Line, since you can't hit Chelsea without checking out those areas. Particularly since my grandmother used to rock out at Chelsea Market while she was in training during WWII (yes, she's that much of a rock star). This picture's for you, Grandma Brown!


Friday was a big conference on the French thinker Hélène Cixous, which featured all sorts of different types of speakers (including Cixous herself, but I'd already seen her before). One of the more amusing parts was a panel discussion on the influence of Cixous in a few artists' work, which funkified the Maison Française like it has rarely been funkified before. At first I thought this guy was wearing a pirate hat, but it was in fact a big black hat with a ribbon (and he had impressive dangly earrings that were probably heavier than anything my ears would ever tolerate):


The question of the day was, how many hair colors can you find in the Maison Française at once? Friday afternoon likely broke all records, as you can already tell from this one clandestine shot. I told Natalia that my new goal in life is to have hair like the woman standing up in the back. By that I mean the dye job (dark base with bizarre blond highlights), not the updo!!!

Saturday I hit up the best falafel in the city with Niamh and Ben, but was an idiot and didn't take a picture of it. But I'll brag about it anyway: harissa falafel. yummmmmmm. After that I trekked all the way out to Forest Hills to see a friend who is a hard-core tennis player. We've argued for years about NYC, as she finds it scary and I say she's a wuss. Unfortunately I don't think my trek out to Forest Hills convinced her that the subway is ok, since the damned E train was running local and it took me forever to get out there. But there was a good old margarita waiting when I finally did get all the way out:


Saturday night was again meeting French friends, this time for the Laurie Anderson show at BAM. I felt a bit like a tool for not actually knowing who she was when I was invited to go along, but I quickly consulted the source of all truth and knowledge (wikipedia!) and discovered that she's a pretty big deal. And Niamh told me she had a Laurie Anderson cassette tape when she was growing up...figures the Brits and the Irish were way ahead of us (or me) on this one. It was a neat show, overall. She has a very fine ear for melody (nontraditional, of course) and some of the visual effects were compelling. She told all sorts of different stories, some more powerful and/or interesting than others, but all in all a definite success. Afterwards we joined some other friends for dinner at a nearby sushi restaurant and rocked the Ft. Greene scene.

Sunday I satisfied a craving I've had ever since like 18 months ago, when Andrew and I first discovered the huevos rancheros at Mojave in Astoria. My life has indeed never been the same since. Thank goodness Mojave has a sister restaurant (Agave) on 7th Ave South, as I didn't feel like dealing with the nightmare of getting to Queens from Brooklyn with no G train running. Junette and Ana were nice enough to oblige and join me there (although they were wussy on the margaritas...you two have some work to do!!!). haha. But here I am with the cheeseless wonder that is huevos rancheros sin queso (con huevo, sin manteca, while we're at it):


After that I hit up Dumbo with the same French friend and a friend of her sister, who knew the whole contemporary art festival scene there. We saw all sorts of interesting local stuff and of course got our pictures with the Manhattan skyline, along with all the tourists and newlyweds (we should have posed, I only just thought of that right now!).


Otherwise, my time was spent catching up with friends and giving a presentation on one of my chapters to a workshop in my program. All in all very cool and fun, and I got some good ideas on where to go from here. I enjoyed it immensely and was told that it was a fun conversation (even if I went on a tirade about my moral opposition to colons in the process of answering a question about the title of my diss). So I sort of feel like maybe by telling me "your presentation was fun," people actually meant "you are batshit insane...thus entertaining for the rest of us." But then again, as Junette and I decided a long time ago when we drunkenly won the orchestra concerto competition on the Bach Double, if you're not going to get by with talent, you've gotta do it with charm.

And when I wasn't DRINKING with friends, I was MAKING drinks with friends, namely Steven, who was working on a few different batches of home brew. The newest batch was actually overzealously yeasty (if that's a word), to the point that it had to have an extra air valve so as not to send the top flying into the ceiling. Which would of course have been kind of amusing, but not so good for the ceiling or the books that might have gotten soaked in the process. I took this picture for the sake of the brewing apparatus but then realized that it's actually Steven in a nutshell: tons of books and hard core beer. Steven, this is your new facebook profile pic, you KNOW it:


Then Monday night it was bottling time for the other batch, on the left in the above pic. It started with a sieve process to mix in a special sugar to get the yeast going again (which apparently is what makes the carbonation when the beer is bottled). The beer itself at this point is rather syrupy and non-carbonated. We tasted it and it did seem pretty good, but Steven said it would be slightly less sweet (and bubbly, of course) once it has had the 2 weeks of bottle time before being ready to drink:


Then I got a demonstration of the capper, I should note that I filled all those bottles!


Finally, I'll sign off with one last picture, from last night. I spent the night with Judy, since my presentation ran late and I didn't want to haul all the way out to Brooklyn just to turn right back around this morning to get to the train. That's the official reason. The unofficial reason was of course that I was way overdue for a visit with Harlequin Obama, who was just as charming as ever :-)


He's as big as always but distinctly smaller than Sebastian. We think he got more ragdoll while Sebastian got more coon. That explains why Harley's hair is longer and why he's a bit smaller and floppier. Judy was like, you're the only person I know who picks up Harley and says, "oh, he is definitely smaller!" haha.

On that note, I'm totally collapsing with fatigue, so there's only one thing to do: Glee time! I never saw the season opener, and I REALLY need to see the Britney episode from last night. Ah how the mighty have fallen :-)

More writing

Well, it's been awhile, as always, but that's generally because I haven't had much to say, haha. After all the knee stuff, I made my way up to NYC for 4 days of whirlwind meetings with advisors and parties and the like. And since I was doing a lot of walking, it was decided that I should probably stick to (at least) one crutch, so that I wouldn't wear out the knee. It was also decided (by me) that one crutch really, really sucks. Not as much as two, of course, but way more than none at all. THIS is what my 4 days in NYC looked like:


You will note the rockin' crutch decoration, all thanks to Junette's mad googling skills. I decided that if we're going to be in a long-term relationship (the crutches and I), then I should probably bedazzle them in some way. And that's where "Broken Beauties" comes in. A website (with a lame name) that sells all sorts of fancy decorations for all sorts of orthopedic equipment. Now THERE is a niche market for you. And thank goodness someone has filled it, as my crutches are waaaaaay more fun as a result. No easier to use, alas. But at least I'll look good while doing it.

The main surprise of my trip was that if I have to do the ACI surgery (the one that requires two parts), it makes much more sense for me to defend the diss in October, before that second round. Which is totally true, since I might not be able to get up to NYC in December if I have that big-ass chondrocyte implantation in November. So now I have two possible defense dates: December 16, or October 26. And I won't know until October 1, when the doc finally gets inside my knee and decides which routine is more appropriate. So I could wake up from surgery and find out I'm defending the diss in about three weeks, haha. In order not to panic if that moment should come to pass, I'm now writing like my life depended on it. It's totally doable to have the defense early...but it'll kick my ass in the process.

Otherwise, my only major preparation for the surgery is perhaps the most annoying task of all: retraining myself to be a back sleeper. I learned this lesson the hard way for my first surgery, way back in 2003. I'm a side sleeper in general, but that just doesn't work with a big old incision in the knee. When your knee has been poked and prodded and sliced open, there's no choice but to be a back sleeper for a while. Nothing else works, even sleeping on the other side. Believe me, I tried everything. Because I couldn't fall asleep on my back after the 2003 surgery. So ever since then I've tried to build up to being a back sleeper before surgeries (which I suppose raises the question of why I revert to the side when the knee is not on the radar...but let's face it, it's just more comfortable!). Fortunately the previous two surgeries were so minor that I could get back to being a side sleeper after only like a week. This time around I doubt that will be possible, since I'll have a full incision at some point (now or in November). Either way, that takes time to heal. bah. So in the meantime, I'll have to make it happen, which is why I'm training early!

The Plan

Well, this isn't aiming to be a particularly funny entry, but if nothing else I'm just relieved to have The Plan. It seems like capital letters are appropriate, since I sure have been waiting for it.

I saw the new knee doc last week, who was amazing. Very clear, thorough, and friendly. And quite knowledgeable on the whole problem, of course. Young and cool, and optimistic that I will be able to get about 85-90% of my mojo back. The odds are favorable (but not perfect): 85-90% of people say that they are 85-90% better. So yeah, we need to be going into this with the expectations calibrated to the possible outcomes, but it's good enough for me.

Anyway, The Plan has officially designated October 1 as D-Day. The thing is, the surgeon doesn't know which of two procedures will be the most appropriate. The "easier" option (I use this word lightly, as neither choice is going to be very easy) is called the Osteoarticular Transfer System, or OATS, info here: http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/arthritis/g/oats.htm

The main reason this surgery is easier is because it's only one surgery. The other option, called an Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (http://orthopedics.about.com/od/hipknee/a/aci.htm) is two procedures: one initial arthroscopy, then The Big One a few weeks later.

The hassle, then, is that I don't know if I'm going in on Oct. 1 for The Big One (if I have the OATS) or the small, preliminary arthroscopy (if I have the ACI). So, point being, I could be walking again by October 5 (with the big one still on the way), or I could be flat on my back in bed, high as a kite on percoset. OATS sure would be nice, since it would get the healing underway sooner. But I haven't decided which one seems preferable to me, if it turns out to be a toss-up. Depends on the size of the hole in the cartilage, it's apparently right on the border. OATS can only work if the hole is small enough.

So there we have it. The countdown to Kathryn's Bionic knee has officially begun!

Sylvain l'Américain

So, first off, a GOLD STAR to everyone who commented on my blog. And that includes my Aunt Glad, who is a loyal commenter by email. It's good to have readers :-) Now I just need regular shout-outs to make sure I'm not in a void, because rambling in a void is no fun. I'll assume no one is interested anymore (and wouldn't blame anyone if that's the case!) and get bored.

Anyway, this week has been Sylvain's introduction to American living. And Sylvain's owner's reacclimatization to American-style biking. I think Sylvain is adapting better than I, hahahaha.

First off, Sylvain had his first car ride, to Valley Forge:


That's when my father and I realized that he has some heft to him...not as light as some bikes, but what can you say? It takes material to be that awesome.

So we got to the bike path near Valley Forge, and I realized that Sylvain is indeed a city slicker. Note the basket:


I was all set to put my water bottle in the basket, which turned out to be a rather ill-conceived idea, as I had no way to secure it. My usual bungee cord was too big to fit through the loop of the bottle. So I just took the risk and rode with the bottle rolling around, as I was passed by all sorts of hard-core mountain bikers in their fancy attire with backpack water canteens and under armor gear and the like. Felt like a total tool with all that outdoorsy snaziness going on around me, although it was a very nice ride. The basket is genius for my Sunday trip to the market since I can strap everything in...not so practical for one little water bottle, however.

All in all I was sitting there like, "I should be biking down the Boulevard Saint Michel in my miniskirt, on my way to happy hour, thank you very much." It was already a concession just to put gym clothes on, and of course I picked my shorts to match the bike. And if you look closely, you'll see my sports watch is even pink. What can I say? An awesome bike needs an awesome accessory, and it takes effort to rock that.

That's also when I realized just how uncomfortable Sylvain's seat is, since I don't usually spend extended periods of time on it at once. The longest I ever traveled routinely in Paris was about 25-30 minutes. Granted, I did feel it when I made those trips a few times in one day, but that wasn't all that often.

Moral of the story: I'm not a mountain biker (or a national park biker, for that matter). I'm a city biker. I need cars, motorcycles, and stoplights. Otherwise I get bored and my butt starts to hurt.

That was this weekend. Then yesterday I was stuck at home without a car, so I decided it was time for Sylvain's coming out in Collegeville. haha. The biggest problem, not surprisingly, is the lack of parking. I went to our local café and had to tie him up to a pole off to the side, right off the road:


Then at the post office, there's a whole special lane for drive-in mail drop-off, but no facilities for the lowly biker. So I left him attached to the handicapped parking pole:


As you can guess this picture was taken on the fly, since I figured I already looked toolish enough arriving on a bike, I didn't need to augment the toolish factor by then ostentatiously standing in the parking lot taking pictures of the bike. ha. So I did it quickly and clearly got my finger in the way. And didn't notice until I uploaded the pic.

Anyway, no biking for me today, as I'm in town sans Sylvain. But perhaps he needs to be introduced to Philadelphia. He would feel much more at home. But he might also lose his seat or basket or something, if I don't have the proper locks for everything (haha).