Expanding my world slowly

It's now been more than a month since my knee surgery and there have been definite hills and valleys in my recovery. What I know now is that it is a long road and the progress cannot be rushed. In the first three weeks I gradually left the narcotic drugs behind--with a sigh of relief. I'm now just taking Tylenol for pain and most of the time it works just fine. But when I push too hard with the exercises or spend too much time on my feet the pain comes back to remind me that this is a long process.

Last weekend I was so happy that Harry drove me out to Sidney to have lunch and then go to see an art show by a friend of mine, Anita Boyd, who is a very cool abstract painter.

On the left is one of her paintings from the show called Portal that was shared with another abstract artist, Marilyn Chapman.  One of her recent works is on the right. You can see how these two women's work would sing together in an exhibition.

It was great to be able to walk around with just my cane and feel somewhat like a normal person again.

We had a lovely outing but on Monday morning when it was time for my physiotherapy appointment I could not walk without pain.  My physio confirmed that I had overdone it and recommended cutting back on the exercises and and upright activities.  By Wednesday I was feeling well enough to set up my art studio (actually the bay window in the living room that can tuck away under a table covered by a tablecloth when I'm not working there).  What a joy to pull some paints out and start messing around after more than a month of inactivity.










But alas, time slipped by and before I knew it, I'd been standing for well over an hour. Way too much for my knee.  So once again I'm back to sitting or lying in bed or on the couch icing my knee and working on range of motion exercises. It's a fine balance between pushing hard enough to have an effect and pushing too hard. I am still learning this balance.



Meanwhile I have a companion to snuggle with me. Little Pippa is here staying with us while stepson Ben and his partner Kande head off to Barcelona along with Ben's mom Heather. I know they'll have a fabulous trip. But equally, Harry and will be enjoying the company of this darling 7 pound Havanese bundle of cuddles.

I am hoping that by Sunday I'll feel well enough to attend some of the opening reception for the most recent group show at the Gage Gallery. The show is called Freefall and features the work of ten of the gallery artists. My submission is a triptych. I'm quite pleased with the way it looks in the gallery.

Stop by to see it on Sunday and meet some of the artists. Or else Tuesday through Saturday 11 to 5.

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. 

Looking back on Mexico City

We spent two weeks in Mexico City in February and just now I'm getting around to posting some details of what we did there.  We were lucky enough to have a home exchange in the central part of the city, down by the Zocalo where all the high end hotels and restaurants are, as well as many incredible museums--all within easy walking distance.







The apartment we were staying in was on the sixth floor with a terrace that looked out over the sunset. We enjoyed a couple of  dinners there with our friends Liz and Ritchie...when we weren't sampling the amazing restaurants in CDMX.

It was great to have this place to rest after days of exploring museums,  markets, parks and places to eat.






The only problem was that the elevator was broken the entire two weeks we were there so we had to hoof it up six flights of stairs every time we came in.  Let me tell you, at an altitude of over 7,000 feet you really are breathing hard by the time you get to the top.

Mexico City is huge as you can see from this photo taken from the top of the Latin American Trade Tower. But it's easy to get around with the metro, buses, and taxis, which are all really cheap.




This is the Palacio des Bellas Artes with its gorgeous tiled domes. This place is world famous and hosts art exhibits (sadly we missed the Matisse exhibit)... and theatrical performances. We went to see the Ballet Folklorico there, a very professional performance of dances from regions all over Mexico.

Here's the famous Tiffany glass curtain on the stage.

















One of the most famous and foodie markets in the city is the Mercado San Juan, just a short walk from our apartment. here you can buy just about anything you can think of to eat, including a variety of insects, which are apparently very popular in Mexico.  We chose not to indulge, rather we selected some meats and cheeses on delicious bread.

We ran into insects later though when I ordered a salad at the patio restaurant of the Museum of Anthropology. The salad sounded delicious but it featured something called  chapulines, which I couldn't translate. It turns out these are dried crickets and it wasn't until my forkful of salad was almost to my mouth that I recognized what I was eating--just in time to fling the thing to the ground and shriek. The waiter found it pretty funny that I couldn't eat the salad, but he humoured me by bringing a new salad without bugs. t seems that Mexico has the world's highest number of edible insects and they serve them everywhere. Maybe I can work up to actually trying one--but it's something that is definitely not on my bucket list.


Something I have wanted to try was Chiles Nogales, a classic Mexican dish of poblano peppers stuffed with ground turkey in a creamy walnut sauce garnished with pomegranate seeds. It was absolutely delicious. Mexico City has some incredibly good restaurants that serve elegant, classic Mexican food at very reasonable prices. Our friends Liz and Ritchie were really impressed with the cuisine they enjoyed there.

They also enjoyed the handicraft markets, the craft museum, the parks and the statuary, and the variety of artistic benches--well we all did. A highlight once again was seeing the larger than life murals by Diego Rivera.

A couple of time we left the centro and want to Roma Norte and Condessa to walk around. These are upscale neighbourhoods, as evidenced by the dog walkers on the boulevards--and the well-stocked wine stores.

We didn't see any stray dogs in Mexico City. They were either hanging out with their owners or being taken for walks by professional dog walkers. 

Once again we were entranced by this city of 25 million plus people. There's still more we would like to see there.