Woods Bay Journal
Draft 9-2-13
The first story, in which I tell about becoming
left-handed
The summer is nothing like what I had been planning
for. I had been planning to hike
the Norwegian Fiords in September, and to work in Haiti for a week in October
at a medical clinic staffed by Oregon physicians. Before those trips I had expected to put in a vegetable
garden here in Woods Bay on the shore of Flathead Lake, thin my grandfather’s
ancient apple trees from a high three-legged ladder, try again to outsmart
cutthroat trout in the North Fork and the bigger Mackinaw trout in the lake,
build a shed of storm-delivered dock planks to store wood and garden pots, take
a shovel to burgeoning weeds that in Montana grow to the size of small trees in
just a few months. And I was going
to spend cool mornings working on a memoir started in Tokyo but put aside for
eleven years because I allowed the dense schedules of medical school work to
eat up all but a few hours a week.
None of those summer projects happened.
In May, in a one-in-a-million accident while navigating Argo
the Dog around a monumental pile of dog poop, I tore up an already messy right
shoulder. Two of the four muscles that make up the rotator cuff had torn away
from the humerus and had retracted 4 cm.
I could not elevate my arm more than a few inches. Toward the end of June I submitted to
arthroscopic rotator cuff surgery and eight weeks of an immobilized right
arm. There was really no
choice: physical therapy alone
would not have given me a functional arm.
The surgeon warned me
This surgery is enormously life
disrupting. For two months you
will be in a sling and cannot use your right arm, so that the mending tendon
will not tear off the bone. You
can dangle the arm three times a day.
You’ll have to get along with just a left arm. And for some reason this particular shoulder surgery is
inhumanly painful
Most of my memories of the early weeks with my right arm in
a sling are blurry or simply missing—I spent long days and longer nights trying
to reduce pain (oxycodone and a “GameReady” icing machine), trying to find a
comfortable position (there were none), and trying to maintain a little dignity
in spite of the fact that I couldn’t fasten my own pants or button a shirt.
For a person whose only left hand skill is to pass something
to the right hand, to say that the surgery is “enormously life disrupting” is
enormously understated. I
had never learned to do much with my left hand—just those things that either
required two hands, or that were too awkward to do right handed—certain
under-cabinet supine plumbing repairs, for example, or holding a nail or board
steady, or propping my waltz partner’s right arm at a graceful angle.
Looking at my first attempt at a grocery list, Margaret
broke out laughing. “This is
illegible. A caveman with a rock
could do better.”
Although my left fingers can do half the job of touch typing
at 70 words a minute, that is of little use if the right hand is in no position
to participate.
Chopsticks? My
first (and only) attempt to use chopsticks left-handed resulted in one flying
over to the table next to me, the other to shoot to the ceiling. The waitress was astonished and then
disappeared to the place where waitresses go to laugh or scream. I think I saw
tears running down her face. Did
you know that in some Japanese restaurants you are practically ushered out the
door if you ask for a fork??
Showering, shaving, using dental floss—the simplest, most
humble everyday tasks that I thought I could do blindfolded with one arm pinned
behind my back I found I could not do if the pinned arm was the right arm—even
without a blindfold.
Since I couldn’t garden, couldn’t build things, couldn’t
fish, couldn’t drive, the computer and email should have been my salvation—but
with one finger I type 7 words a minute.
Badly.
A friend suggested dictating—who knew that if I upgraded
Lion to Mountain Lion I would have dictation on my iMac? How cool that a student pointed out
that I could dictate on my iPhone.
This was clearly going to be my solution to responding to twenty-five or
fifty emails a day.
Voice-recognition was a disaster. I have always believed that most upper-Midwesterners have
perfect diction—radio announcer, accentless diction. After all, Chet Huntley and Tom Brokaw came from this part
of the country But
with my clearest, painfully exaggerated enunciation, half the sentences had to
be retyped, painfully, one-fingered. Lacking context the dictation genii cannot
tell “threw” from “through,” “bread” from “bred,” “Gordon” from “Garden” from
“Go Drown.”
Some samples:
About what else are you a total
junkie? à
About what I’ll see you a total chunky.
The
recipient of this said only her mother could get away with calling her “chunky”
Can we Skype tomorrow à
Can and scrape marrow
I am NOT sleeping on two piddles
Nor do I also have a hole in Montana
Near Marlborough, NZ, where the
great sauvignon blancs grow à for the great something old box come
from
Both should do you a lot of good à bullshit do you
a lot of food.
We live just 4 miles south of Bigfork on
woods Bay à we live just for myself before Wednesday (okay, some people might say the dictation program got that one right)
Troubles with names: Katharine is “Catherine,” Margaret is
“Martin,” and Jenny is “Beefalo”. I am now Court, Gorgon, Courtney, and
Gardenia. My orthopedic surgeon,
Dr. Gramstad, is Dr. Grandstanding.
My friend Tom has been “Thong” and “Dawn” and “Tedium,” and of course
Barbara is “Barbeque” and “Bargain”
And then there was this masterpiece:
Part 1:
You. I am so delighted that your exam was
normal
Management of your [disease] make it a
little easier this year if the stress level around each examination
proceedings, as it often does suck
The unknowns of course our illness, something
going on outside medical school, illness, and your menstrual cycles. I wish I
had a magic Juan… (Don’t we all wish that
we had a Magic Juan?)
Part 2:
My arm duration
(situation) sucks
This time the
limitations of being without a right arm distill down to being unable to get in
the cold Flatlake wise guys please (cold Flathead Lake water when the air
temperature is 90 degrees), inability to type with two hands, inability to
Drive. I have a fairly continuous shoulder pain if I try to do any
Hedegar (I don't know who Hedegar is, but
she sounds enchanting. What I meant was any heavy garden work)
As in most
things in life, the real issue is ambiguity. At the end of all this, I won't
know whether I will have a functional arm for another month. I leave the slang (sling) at the end of August, and
September will tell. (Yes indeed, there is much less slang around
here now!)
We had
good friends who came by on their honeymoon trip. A lot of fog a lot of food a lot of 105.
(fun, food, wine)
Fondly GOF (Apparently GOF hangs out with Hedegar)
In the sling/slang
cinnamon rolls
The second story, In which I explain why total strangers share
intimate information with me
A few months ago one of my medical school friends told me
about a patient who hadn’t been friendly with much of anyone until he spotted
among the students and residents at his bedside a woman who was about seven
months pregnant. He asked if he
could put his hands on her belly, and then he began a chant to bring good luck
to the mother and baby. The
student later told me that having her belly touched was not that unusual.
I asked around among women who had had babies if they also
had had their abdomens possessed.
Did people often ask to touch your
baby when you were pregnant?
All the time. They didn’t always ask.
Friends?
Perfect strangers. Imperfect strangers. It is as though I suddenly became
public property. I would see a
certain look in their eye and know before they did that they were going to pat
or stroke or put their heads on my belly.
Other women have told me the same thing.
Sometimes women said surprisingly
intimate things, I mean things like how I walked or how big I was or how my
hormones must be raging. Even my
mother wouldn’t say those things to me.
Sometimes men were totally
inappropriate, like ‘I wish was I was that baby’s father.’
Perhaps this doesn’t mean what I think it does.
So, what is it
about wearing a black sling with an eight-inch thick abduction pillow strapped
to your torso that provokes a constant stream of strangers to stop and tell
that part of their life story that includes their rotator cuff surgery, and
expect you to listen as though they were delivering a great gift? If I am any place with more than
a few people, I get approached about once every four minutes—brew pubs, the
grocery store check out counter, the furnace service guy, every tenth walker on
the Swan River Trail, men, women.
Oh man, that sucks. I had that a year ago. (big
smile, as in, I am glad it is you and not me)
No matter how painful they have
told you it is going to be to start rehab, they are lying. It will be worse. Much, much worse . . .
Waiting for a plane flight from Kalispell to Seattle a few
weeks ago, a woman about my age looked over at me.
How long you been in that
contraption. Inhuman, ain’t it?
Umm. Kind of.
I had it you know. Went back to work after two weeks. Living by myself, needed to pay the
bills.
Uh huh (can you tell that I am trying not to encourage this conversation)
Did the rehab like crazy. Look at me now.
To illustrate the “look at me” she put her right arm behind
her neck and buried her little finger in her left ear canal. And twirled it 180 degrees
Don’t worry about it. You’ll be able to do that too
Ok, great, you have restored my
hope; putting my finger in my earhole is right at the top of my rehab
priorities.
If I am with Margaret –
What did you do to her that made
her do that to you. (invariably followed by laughter)
At one of the many moments of feeling sorry for myself, I
walked into our local microbrewery to get a pint of their fabulous IPA. An attractive woman of about 40 sitting
in a group gave me a really, really warm smile. I thought, okay, so
maybe having an arm in a huge black sling and three weeks of unshaven beard don’t
make me look pathetic. Maybe I
look hot. I smiled back a
warm, unshaven square jaw Abercrombie model smile, a really, really, really
warm smile. I was pretty sure that
I was radiating handsomeness. She pointed at the massive elastic
bandage wrapping her upper arm—her dazzling smile had blinded me to the
obvious. We had a nice,
ain’t-life-interesting-when-you-have-had-right-shoulder-surgery
conversation. She did not ask for
my email address or Facebook name.
The third story, in which I tell about two magnificent
Nordic Goddesses who carried me on their shoulders.
The Flathead Lake house requires a lot of hard work quickly
at the beginning of the garden and orchard season. In Portland I have a long gentle spring to clear away
last-year’s dead foliage, make an early skirmish against the weeds, prune
shrubs and trees, and put in annuals where there are still open areas in the
perennial beds. In Montana, most
planting cannot be done until after last frost at the end of May. From that point on work that can be
done in two months in Portland had to be done in one month here.
I came out to Montana by myself in early June, several weeks
before surgery, depressed by the prospect of a yard that would be unkept for a
whole year, and with no easy solutions—the high school boys and girls I had
hired to help me in the last few years were now all moved on to more
profitable—and less sweaty—summer jobs.
I wrote to several of them and heard back from Bailey Hughes, just
returned from her freshman year at Carroll College in Helena. She thought that twins she knew might
be able to help; one had spent the past few summers helping to care for some
large gardens in Bigfork.
In a quick exchange of emails, Jenna and Jesse said they
would come by in a few days, on a Saturday morning. It was not much above 50 that morning, but in Montana 50
counts as summer and they came in tank tops and shorts and boots and
serious-looking gloves. Both were
tall—six feet or more--and slender and muscular. Did I say they were
radiant? And powerful! Together we managed to weed almost all
of the three perennial beds and the rock garden behind the house in four hours. And then they cleaned out last summer’s
30 X 20 foot vegetable garden, hoed out the weeds, created shallow troughs for
seed, and planted corn and beans and peas and tomatoes.
Correction: it
turns out that Jesse, who is not a seasoned gardener, could not distinguish
between pea seeds and beans seeds.
She planted six 20 foot rows of beans. We have had quite a crop and neighbors are beginning to drop
their shades and bolt their doors when they see one of us coming with a
pillowcase full of green beans.
For the entire summer, Jenna and Jesse have cared for the
yard—and during the long weeks after surgery, they gave me the most beautiful
flower gardens and vegetables that, without their help, would have been infested
with weeds and dead flower heads.
I often dabbled in light one-handed weeding while they chatted constantly
with each other. They often broke
into song (Jenna is close to a professional singer). One day Jenna cleaned grass and weeds out 70 feet of
raspberries in about six hours, a job that would have taken me days and a lot
of complaining.
Each already worked a fulltime job, and the squeezed in the
gardening in the evenings between 5:30 and 8:00, or in the early morning. I doubt that either of them needed the
money as their motivation—they simply were responding to someone who needed a
hand—literally.
The rock garden after
Jenna and Jesse weeded it
The rock garden after
Jenna and Jesse weeded it
Jenna in the raspberries
vegetable garden
The fourth story, In which I reflect on writing at Woods
Bay at the end of summer.
My plan had been to write every day this summer. In the spring I finally figured out a
way to organize a memoir that might be 7% less boring than my first attempts
eleven years ago. I have been
thinking about exhuming the memoir since then, but I could not imagine that the
stories of my particular life would be of interest to more than 12 people (I
counted). But now I have
grandchildren who might enjoy knowing something about their grandfather’s
growing up in Montana in the years following the depression and the Second
World War. And I find myself
telling stories from different parts of my life often in conversations with
students and residents when we are musing about one or another of the timeless
problems of becoming a physician or inhabiting a full life.
But the sustained writing I have done in the past has always
been when I am alone. Not alone in
a room at a desk, but isolated from daily conversations and friendships—the six
months in Tokyo when for all but five minutes a day, from the time I left home
until I returned in the evening, I
heard only Japanese. During that
time I worked on the first draft of the memoir every Thursday, and on Saturday
mornings I wrote a weekly “Tokyo Journal”—26 of them.
I didn’t write that steadily again until I went to Cambodia
in April of 2012 and again in January this year. My weekdays at Sihanouk Hospital were full with rounding and
preparing talks; in the evenings at my guest house I kept working on what I
would teach the next day. There is not a lot of sight seeing to do in Phnom
Penh and weekends were empty.
In Tokyo I wrote in my closed-door office at the University of Tokyo,
but in Phnom Penh I wrote in
Brown’s Coffehouse. Full as
it was of expats and NGO workers and trendy Cambodians, writing was
surprisingly easy. I never saw a
soul I knew.
Even before the accident and surgery I had suspected it
would be hard to write from the lovely study I have at the Woods Bay
house. Too many distractions, too
hard to go off the grid, to close the door and ignore all the work I seem to
endlessly—and happily—find in the orchard and gardens and waterfront.
Writing in a coffee shop seemed to be worth a try. Brookies is a beloved summer bakery
that is trying hard for a genre change (7AM cinnamon rolls and coffee to late-night country bar). It has worked out fine—perhaps
something of a pilgrimage and no other distractions are what I have needed to
get me started writing again.
There are few customers at Brookies, now. The summer rush is
now two weeks past—kids have gone back to school or college, the big families
with young children now returned to whatever town or city they spend most of
the year in.
Today—a Sunday--the road from Woods Bay to Bigfork was
mostly empty except for an occasional deer trying to decide whether to commit
suicide on my car’s hood. It is still hot during the days—I have been told that
this is the third hottest August in Montana history. But the evenings now cool down rapidly, and for the past few
days the temperature at dawn has been flirting with the mid-forties. I noticed yesterday that in just the
past week the poplars and many of the native shrubs have become golden from
their summer deep green.
Yesterday I saw the first flight of ducks heading down from
Canada. The number of hummingbirds
in the garden is falling off.
The latest perennials appeared yesterday, purple asters
sprinkled through the fading snapdragons and helianthus and phlox. The plums have just come in. There are already a few apples on the ground
under grandpa’s ancient trees.
We have slept
under blankets for the past few nights.
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