The Further Adventures of Deluzy

I haven't blogged in a few days

so you know that the new semester is officially well under way.  And I have to say that teaching and classes are the least of my concerns at the moment: for once I seem to have them well in hand going into the new term. I won't feel that way for long, once assignments start coming due and I'm facing a deluge of grading, I realize, but I'm feeling pretty caught up on things for the moment -- to the extent that I may be able to spend part of this holiday weekend relaxing a little.  Part, mind you, not all -- but part is better than none.

No, right now it's the onslaught of what I believe is euphemistically known as "service" that's taking up my time (i.e., service to the department, college, and/or university communities with which one is affiliated) -- that, and a surreal few days of melodrama that apparently involved colleagues literally screaming at each other in the hallways in front of students (mercifully I did not witness that first-hand ... it probably would have flashed me back to my childhood days of living with wildly dysfunctional parents). I know full well that in the lead-up to tenure I'm being protected by some of my colleagues from the more onerous administrative duties of senior faculty, but a portion falls to me anyway as part of the nature of my job. As for the shrieking in the hallways, I Will Not Participate. Lalalalala, I'm in the shower and I can't HEAR you! [puts fingers in ears].

Let's see, this week I taught my four classes, went to faculty meetings, advised graduate and undergraduate students, tried to negotiate more money for my woefully underpaid graduate assistant, heard horror tales of the aforementioned departmental melodrama unfolding at the tops of people's lungs, kept my head low, wrote a report full of the most appalling administrative lingo-bingo you've ever read, wrote a proposal for a panel for an upcoming conference as well as for my own paper for that panel, and planned out a weekend of additional writing and administrative upkeep.

I also ate too much under stress and feel unhappily bloated as a result, but my weight was dipping a little low, for me (151 or thereabouts), and I was beginning to get that bony look in my chest which is just Not Very Attractive, so it probably won't wreak havoc on my weight.  I'm chalking up the dip  to That Time of the Month and to stress, and given the last couple of days of poor eating, I think it's corrected itself. However, because my food choices weren't the healthiest, I need to be careful in the next day or to correct that trend. I find that there's a pretty narrow margin for error when it comes to feeling the effects of poor eating after the DS -- not so much in terms of weight but simply in how one feels. Let's just say that I'm a tad backed up which is not an issue that DSers face very often, and certainly it's a post-op rarity for me.  Hence the bloat, of course. It's very warm as we head out of August and into September, and I need to pay extra attention to staying hydrated (I'm still amazed that I didn't realize DS patients malabsorb water along with virtually everything else) and to flushing out my cranky system.

What a lovely thought to leave readers with ...

So instead, let me end with this:  my left shoulder feels distinctly better since my cortisone shot a week ago.  It took a few days to kick in, and I realize it doesn't repair anything, but between the shot and the fairly regular icing I give my shoulder, the situation is significantly more manageable.  Now I just need to make the time to schedule and go to physical therapy.

Avalanche

Of work, that is.

A staggeringly long day today: three university courses to teach, recalcitrant tech equipment to deal with, and a truly unpleasant faculty meeting in the middle of it all. On a good note, despite the mechanical glitches, classes seemed to go well.

Unfortunately, I've discovered that I have a section of another report to write that's due on Labor Day (a university holiday, I might add) -- part of a giant external departmental/program review that's going on this year, and a lot is riding on its outcome.  We all have to provide sections of the report, and mine's only a small piece of it.  Lots of scary data to look at, though, and from which to extract statistical information Gulp. That's not my forte -- but my husband, bless him, said he would help. If I can understand the data, I can write it up fine. I'm just worrying about that first "if" part!

However, tomorrow should be a somewhat easier day:  I'll work at home in the morning, head to campus to hold office hours in the mid-to-late afternoon, and teach an abbreviated first meeting of my fourth class.

I'm still writing.  This is my year for Being Productive and Writing Because I Want to, Not Because I Must.  Last night I had a good talk with my writing coach E, who gave me some good exercises to try later this week.  I'm looking forward to those.

Obsession continues: more lost narratives to be excavated

Link: Amazon.com: Thornfield Hall: Jane Eyre's Hidden Story: Books: Emma Tennant.

How did I miss this book, published earlier this year?  It appears to have gotten poor reviews on Amazon -- as if I'll let a little thing like that stop me from ordering it!

I think I'm ready for my first day of teaching tomorrow.  It will be a madhouse, but I believe that all my preparation will see me through it in good form.

I hope.

Salt mines

Unbelievable amounts of work right now. I should be a hermit living in a cave: I'm not answering my phone, I'm not listening to messages, I'm barely having conversations with my husband. I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to see anyone, I don't want to do anything other than get the work done.

And I'm just talking about what I need to accomplish to be able to walk into three different classes on Monday and present myself and the courses competently.

I'm not even addressing Tuesday, or Wednesday, or the professional deadlines later in the week for proposals and administrative reports. I might scream if I think about those things.  One day at a time.

Let's see, it's just past 9 p.m., and I've been working for 11 hours, minus a couple of hours in the middle of the afternoon. 

For fun I think I'll go ice my shoulder.

Orthopedist

So I saw the orthopedist this morning who reviewed the report from my MRI, and yes, I have a partial tear in the rotator cuff of my left shoulder.  He said, in essence, that it’s middling-fucked: further along in damage than it would have been a year ago, with a significant loss of muscle mass in the area because it hurts so much to use my shoulder that I don’t, much, but hey, I can still move it.

Gee.

He gave me a cortisone shot (man, that hurt -- I'd never had one before:  big needle, sloooooow injection into the muscle) to reduce inflammation and pain so that I could work the shoulder, prescribed physical therapy 2x a week for the next five weeks to build up the muscle so that it doesn’t tear further, told me to ice the fucker every night, and to take OTC anti-inflammatories.

 “If that doesn’t work …” he said -- and I interrupted him. 

“Don’t you DARE use the S word. I don’t WANT surgery!”

I liked him, though: he took his time explaining things, took lots of notes, put me through lots of movement to see what I can and can’t do.  He was nicer than I expected him to be.

(Uh, anytime that the cortisone cares to kick in is fine with me.  Right now I feel as if the needle must have been a drill bit!)

And he says the bone marrow mottling is a function of my having a low red blood cell count -- thank you, duodenal switch -- perhaps in conjunction with the fat malabsorption of the DS.

I'll say it again: the duodenal switch has been a life-saving gift -- but it wreaks havoc on your body chemistry, and you have to be vigilant about all manner of medical follow-up.  If you're not prepared to do that, don't opt for this surgery. Fortunately, I knew this going into the deal, but not everyone takes this to heart beforehand.

Am I glad I had the surgery.  Yes, beyond words.

151.8

Uh, that was today's weight this morning.  I had to stare hard at it because it didn't compute at first.  It's the lowest number I've seen yet, and I pretty much assumed I'd stopped losing.

I average about 155-157 these days which is fine with me.  My surgeon's goal was 180, mine was originally 154 (i.e., the highest weight at which I would register a "normal" BMI), and I revised that at the beginning of the summer to 159.  I figured 159 was readily sustainable for me without misery, and it was within a reasonable margin of the norms of medical charts. When I saw my PCP a few weeks ago and was around 157, she advised against losing more weight.

151.8.

I'm chalking it up to a lot of stress and activity recently (though no formal exercise) and to the fact that I'm about to get my period (share it with the world, babe!), which is when I'm at my lowest monthly weight.

At yesterday's department meeting I saw one of my grad students who's gay, about my age, maybe a little older.  (And his sexuality is relevant because ...?  Because it helps set the tone for the following exchange, which was good-natured and a tad arch. I like him a lot.) He looked me up and down and said, tongue in cheek, "I've been writing a screenplay.  It's a horror film.  It's about a woman who keeps getting thinner and thinner until she disappears altogether."  (Oh fuck you, Stephen King!) However, I have to say that I knew what he meant: for the first time, looking at the scale today, I thought, "Wow ... what if I do drop below a desirable weight?"  It never remotely seemed like a concern before. Or a possibility.

I don't actually think it is, even now, because I'm well within normal range, and in a week or two I know I'll see a bounce up, as I usually do.  Even if it were a concern, there are all manner of steps one can take to correct it.

But today's scale weight was a momentary head-trip all the same.

Update on dexascan, MRI

According to my PCP who spoke to me on the phone this afternoon, my dexascan was "normal."  I was so relieved that I forgot to ask her to fax it to me so that I could double-check the numbers myself, but I'll do that tomorrow.  She said that because of my age (46) and the fact that I malabsorb so significantly (because of the DS), she expects my bone density to fall rapidly (well, hell, at least she takes the malabsorption issue seriously!). She'll retest me in two years, or earlier if I develop indications that retesting is necessary.

And the MRI on my shoulder revealed a tear in some tendon (after doing a little reading, I think we're talking a routine rotator cuff injury here) as well as some "mottling" in the bone marrow in the same area.  Whenever I hear things like "bone marrow," I think "cancer," but she said I should mention it to the orthopedist I'm seeing tomorrow when he looks at the film (which I have to pick up myself at the MRI center and take with me -- thank you, Inefficient Health Care System) and tell him about the malabsorption component of the DS. Apparently the most likely source of the "mottling" is fatty deposits from the lack of absorbing fat.

Clear as mud -- so I'll ask questions tomorrow, get the specifics, take notes, and make the orthopedist write things down for me.

First "duty day" of the semester

What went on today?

An all-hands faculty and staff meeting. Lunch with a colleague. A visit from two campus catering reps who apologized for the mishandling of an order I placed last week. A workshop on a technology licensed by my university to assess whether I want to adopt it for two of my courses (I won't -- too clunky, thanks to what I suspect is inadequate implementation of it before it's ever accessed by the faculty). Lots of fly-by hellos and "we must do lunch"es and requests for appointments.

And that's just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head.

Lots more to do tomorrow, but at least I can do it from home.  First item on the list?  My own writing, immediately, for a couple of hours in the morning.

And then a list of to-do's that's so long I actually have to type it up on letter-sized paper to keep track of everything.

Drafty

No, I'm not talking about wind.

I'm talking about how I continued to work like a maniac today, devoting the first part of the morning to my writing (slow going -- more on that in a moment), but I did manage to draft an introduction to the piece I'm working on. My gal pal E calls such pieces "creative critical inquiry," and I'm trying to keep that in mind as I search for a voice that somehow blends the purely academic with the more poetic.  Okay, so despite that goal, my intro has more to do with the Bush administration and less to do with the theatrical work it's ostensibly about, and I'm not sure where I'm headed with that -- something about the narratives and myths spun by culture -- but there's a kernel of coherent thought in there somewhere, and I simply refuse to worry about its current form.  The point right now is to keep writing, no matter what.

And I also now have more or less complete drafts of the syllabi for my four fall semester courses.  Good thing, too, as classes start on Monday -- but really, these are close to finished, and I just have to tweak a few more details. I think I've greatly improved one course, but the proof will be in the teaching of it.

Now, as to my difficulties in writing today:  again I got up quite early, did some Morning Pages, and then turned to my article, but I confess that I found it difficult to sit there even for two hours and concentrate on nothing but the writing. I'd turned off all distracting software (i.e., email programs, connection to the internet, etc.), but off-topic thoughts kept intruding: things I needed to do, subjects I wanted to look into.  I did keep a pad handy, and every time one of those thoughts flitted into my head, I simply wrote it down.  That way, I promised myself, I could address them -- just not right now. (I'm proud of myself for developing that simple coping strategy, actually.)

It was a strange list. Without explanation or editing, here it is, in the order that the thoughts occurred to me:

• Audre Lord on Amazon
• Email DP
• Look up conference forms and guides for participants
• Cottages at Hedgebrook
• Call M
• Clean up desktop on computer
• Pretty folders online

My brain is kind of a tricky beast.  When it saw that I refused to be effectively distracted from writing, it covered me with an overwhelming wave of sleepiness -- to the extent that I had to lean back in my chair and close my eyes for a few minutes.  Still, I didn't leave my desk, and I waited it out, then turned my attention back to my monitor screen.

I wrote about 1.5 pages in two hours.  I'm a slow writer at the best of times, and I wasn't happy with how little I wrote yesterday, but really, I need to reframe that:  I wrote today -- period. 

That's a good thing.

Slow and steady wins the race?

That's what they say.  If it's true, fast, furious, and steady might yield even better results. 

That was my thought today, anyway. 

• 5:00 - 6:00 a.m.:  Scanned news, blogs, and email as I drank morning coffee

• 6:00 - 9:00 a.m.:  Worked with no distractions on my own writing:  Morning Pages and an article I've discussed with my writing coach (that felt really, really good)


• 9:00 - 10:00 a.m.:  Addressed dental insurance issues for my husband who has an infection (er, eventually he realized that perhaps it was more appropriate [not to mention more thoughtful] for him to work on these matters rather than I, as it was he who was having the problem, he's retired and has the time, and I'm not and haven't)

• 10:00 - 1:00 p.m.: Turned my attention to one of my courses that I've taught before but that requires a lot of tweaking; ordered a textbook late (why did I procrastinate doing this??? I was pretty sure I was going to use it, despite the fact that I don't care for it much), mocked up a syllabus, and nailed down a graduate student assistant for the semester to assist me with grading in another course

• 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.: Devoted my by-now-rather-scattered attention to miscellaneous school-related tasks -- and realized somewhere during that two-hour period that I need to structure in 15 to 30-minute breaks after, say, a 3-4 hour work period.  Hell, if it applies to basic jobs in retail and service industries, it certainly applies to academics, too:  my brain needs brief breaks to function well -- especially if I'm in Major Work Mode.

Having had that realization I called it a day in terms of formal work and headed out to buy groceries and pick up assorted pharmaceuticals for my husband (who was, indeed, seen by a dentist today and given prescriptions for both penicillin and Tylenol with codeine) and me. Neither of us was up for cooking, so I swung by Baja Fresh and brought home a relatively healthy dinner. By the time I got home, the day was -- gone!

I'm planning another equally productive day tomorrow which I'll begin in much the same way I did today.  My own writing gets priority when I'm freshest -- that's non-negotiable right now, and it feels like the Right Thing to Do, no matter how many competing demands there are on my time at the moment.  After I finish posting here, I'm going to sketch out a schedule for the day -- but this time I'm literally going to insert breaks for myself: 15 minutes after 3 hours, or if I want to push through a 4-hour work block, then I'll give myself a half-hour break.  And I have to take real breaks, too -- i.e., time away from the computer.  Emailing and surfing doesn't count; standing up, getting out of my study, and petting the kitties does (do?).

I also have to remember to eat early and often when I'm in this mode. Today I did well at the start by drinking a protein shake in the early morning, but then I didn't eat again until 12:30, and that doesn't cut it -- especially when I'm swilling down  coffee.  A little nutritious something every couple of hours works best for me, and I forgot that today.  All in all, my food's still been pretty clean, but that was just dumb luck.

Finally, I have to remember to breathe and to sit up straight.  That sounds utterly ridiculous, I know, but 1) deep, regular, conscious breathing really does help me relieve stress when I'm under the gun, and 2) my PCP commented on my rotten posture at our last visit, and it's true, especially when I'm sitting down and working at my computer: I tend to hunch over and peer at the screen, and no amount of ergonomically correct equipment (which I've got in spades, by the way -- chair, desk, keyboard, mouse-pad) can correct that.

Time to write up my schedule for tomorrow and then ...? Go spend what remains of the evening with my husband, our kitties, and a good novel!