My shrunken world

The process of going into the hospital for surgery is one of removal. And I'm not talking about what the surgeon may have excised. By stages, the medicalization of life removes just about all of your identity.

Monday morning at 6:00 Harry and I arrived at the admitting desk of the Royal Jubilee Hospital. We waited  in a circle of chairs around the glass windows enclosing the two clerks. About a dozen people were there. We all carried small bags with basic toiletries and not much else. I brought along my medical care card and a toothbrush and a hairbrush and some clean underwear--but that was it. No cell phone, no makeup, no book, no credit card. Basically just my physical body was there to be operated on. Once I got to the inner sanctum a nurse took away my plastic bag of belongings and it was just me in my hospital gown.

The surgery went well. All the nurses were very kind and a couple of hours later I woke up in the recovery room. I had a spinal so wasn't really unconscious but I remember nothing beyond the anesthetist injecting a drug into my spine and then telling me I could lie down on the operating table.
I spent another five hours in the recovery room waiting for the lower half of my body to mobilize before they wheeled me onto the ward. I got my bag of belongings back but really the only thing that mattered with my hospital bracelet. Nurses, care aides, and physiotherapists came by but everything was punctuated by the administration of hydromorphone for the pain. For a day and a half my identity was my pain, with a secondary identity of being a "good" patient so I could be released from the hospital.



And so on Tuesday afternoon I came home with Harry to support my healing. We've been kind of on our own here as there is no followup visit by a nurse or a doctor.

This is my shrunken world--featuring the foot of my "surgical" leg elevated to prevent undue swelling. Also featuring two lovely bouquets of flowers from friends who have been stopping by.

My world is regulated by schedules. I ice my leg 4 or 5 times a day, I take my pain medication every four hours, I do my bed exercises two or three times a day, and the same goes for my chair exercises. I also have a schedule for stool softening medication, anti-clotting medication and a medication to protect my stomach from the anti-clotting medication.

I have to plan my exercises around the pain meds and the icing so as to make the best possible progress in the face of swelling and discomfort.  It pretty much consumes my waking hours.

It's now the fifth day since I've come home and I've had my ups and downs. I reduced the pain meds too quickly one day and had to go back to square one. I've spent an anxious night worrying about infection and deciding whether I should change the bandage. I did that last night without incident.

In my shrunken world these things loom very large. And my mind doesn't work the same as it usually does. I find myself unable to read more than a few pages at  time. And most of my reading time goes to scanning the  Knee Replacement Surgery Handbook that I was given at the start of this journey. This book is full of information about what I should and shouldn't do, some of it confusing and at times contradictory. I've been assigned a "navigator" to help answer questions but as usual, my questions seem to arise on the weekends when the office is closed.

My "nurse" Harry has been incredibly attentive and supportive. He feeds me, fetches ice and water, cleans up the house, monitors phone calls and helps me get organized for a shower. I am so grateful that he is still here in my shrunken world.

On Tuesday I have an appointment with the Rebalance Physiotherapist and I'm trying to prepare for this. Over-riding all my concerns is the big one of doing enough of the exercises that my knee will recover full range of motion.  This is the ever-present concern in my shrunken world.

Now I've finished icing, gone to the bathroom and finished this little posting. Time to take my pain pills, wait half an hour and do my chair exercises.  Wish me luck.

Discovering Puebla

Way back in May I promised to post about the cities in Mexico's high plateau we visited earlier this year. We spent the second half of February exploring these historic cities that aren't as often visited.  Our first stop was Puebla, located south and east of of Mexico City, founded in 1531 and features a large Colonial centre. It was founded in 1531 and is now a world heritage site because of its variety of architectural styles ranging from Renaissance to Mexican Baroque.

Many of the buildings are decorated with the Talavera tiles which are produced in workshops all over the city.

These tiles are hand-painted with Spanish and Moorish-inspired designs.  We visited a couple of workshops and drooled over the beautiful ceramic plates and tiles.Tiles are also used to decorate the traditional kitchens with their wood fired stoves that are found in many of the wonderful family-run restaurants in Puebla.

Here's the showroom of one of the best-known Talavera workshops. You can see that they do beautiful work. We didn't bring home any dishes though, just a couple of lovely tiles for gifts.

Puebla also has a several artisan markets with quality work by Indigenous people who live in outlying villages.

Plus it has a huge public market in a very old building.

We stayed for three nights in a lovely B&B within walking distance of the lovely zocalo so we managed to see a lot.

The zocalo was a lovely spot to have coffee and plan a day of sightseeing. It was frequented by lots of locals on bicycles and with dogs and people doing their shopping, as well as tourists.  I would definitely recommend Puebla as a place to visit that is quite different from Mexico City. Puebla has a lot to offer visitors and in spite of being a big industrial city it's easy to get around and has a charming centre.

On our last day there we took a taxi out to Cholula, a small city south of Puebla that is home to what we were told was the largest pyramid in the world.                                                                                                                                                                                                              Here's what Wikipedia says about it: The most important tourist attraction of the city is the Great Pyramid with the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios sanctuary on top. At first glance, the pyramid looks like a hill as most of it is overgrown. The south side of the pyramid has been excavated and there is a network of tunnels inside. The pyramid and church receive about 220,000 visitors each year, and on certain special occasions such as the spring equinox and the feast of the Virgin of the Remedies, there can be up to 20,000 visitors at a time. From the top of the pyramid, in the sanctuary atrium, it is possible to see the Malinche, Popocatepetl, Iztccihuatl and Pico de Orizaba volcanoes in the far eastern horizon.

It seems that for centuries they didn't know that there was a pyramid underneath the hill just outside the town.  The Spanish built a church built on top of the hill (above left), which you can walk up from the town.  On the way up the hill you can look down to see some of the excavations that are still underway.  

We were able to able to take a tour through some of the tunnels within the pyramid beneath the hill, but sadly the museum explaining the pyramid and its history was closed.

The photo above is taken from an arcade on the main plaza beside a pretty church.  Cholula is kind of touristy because there are a lot of day trippers from Puebla but we found it a great place to spend an interesting day.

Now that I've started posting again my plan is to do one on a few of Mexico's other high plateau towns that we visited in February. I may have more time in the next few weeks because I am going in to hospital on Monday for a total knee replacement and it will be a few weeks after that before I'm out and about.