Falling Off the Trail

Our first campground in New York was at the top of a hill/mountain in Watkins Glen State Park. (The hills in the finger lakes are much much bigger than ours, but I don't actually think it was an official mountain.) On Tuesday I decided to run down into the town, which was on the lake shore, and try to find a way to run by the lake. The lake is something like 50-60 miles around or some such distance I couldn't possibly manage. On my way out of the campground, I found a little semi-hidden trail, so I decided to take it. It took me down (literally) to the entrance to the part of the campground we were staying in. Then I took the road to town which was windy and down down down. I had only gone two miles or so when I reached the town and the bottom, so I tried to find a lake trail (there wasn't one) and explored the town some. After I had run another mile or two, I realized I had better start back up. Up was harder than I thought. I was glad I had done the small hill at Johnson's Mound a few times the week before. Two miles of steep incline is more than I am used to, and I was thoroughly done and very satisfied when I finished. I had that pleasant exhausted muscle buzz the rest of the day.

Because I sincerely intended all along to be extremely cautious to protect my meager running gains, I took Wednesday off. I had found a way that the tiny trail out of my campground area connected with the rim trail of the gorge which we hadn't hiked yet. (We did the more exciting and treacherous and popular gorge trail to see the dozens of waterfalls.) Thursday, I decided to explore the trails. Of course, since my tiny trail went down and down, the rim trail, which went to the top of the area, went up and up. I had my Garmin watch, so I could see that between the incline and my cautious trail running, I was going very slowly. For a moment I contemplated turning around and repeating Tuesday's run, but then I decided that I don't often get to trail run in the woods up a gorge rim and that I could always go easy on the trail and hard on the road the next day. Good plan, I thought. I ran the rim trail, being cautious, and came out at the top in less than two miles. Boo. Not long enough. I started down the road I found at the top, and only a few minutes later, I passed a little sign that labeled a "punchbowl extension" trail. I decided to take it. It took me straight down into a little clearing by a large pool of water, maybe the river just before the falls? I don't know. It was clearly a planned trail but very little used. I hadn't seen a single soul on the rim trail either, but this place seemed even less traveled. From the clearing, I spotted an even smaller trail (perhaps my definition of cautious is a bit stretchy,) and I started down it. I hadn't gone even a quarter mile around the edge of the "punchbowl" when I tripped on a root or a hole or something. It happened so quickly. My left ankle twisted and then slid off the trail towards the pool, and my right side--all the way up to my right cheek--hit the trail. Moments later, when I had time to reflect, I was rather impressed by my body's survival instincts. Although I haven't run on a trail in a couple of years at least, and even then I only had the chance a few times a year on vacation, my body knew what to do. I live in a flat part of the world, so I don't ever practice falling off of a precipice. I didn't think about grabbing hold of the vegetation on the side of the slope or digging my fingers into the trail, but I did those things. When I caught my breath, I pulled myself up on the plants and the roots, hoping I hadn't grabbed a strong vine of poison ivy in the process, and regained the "trail." "Well," I said to myself, "I guess that's the end of that run."

The problem, of course, was that I had a short, steep climb to get up to the main trail, and then a longish trek back to the join with my little campsite trail, and I had clearly sprained my ankle. The steep incline was rough, but I found another trail with roots and things that I could use to pull myself up with my arms, mostly. Then on the main trail I told myself it was not so bad. I could definitely make it. I had been reading Into the Wild, so my head was full of stories of people who have done crazy things and survived against the odds. (Of course, the main character survives for quite a while and then makes a rather small mistake and dies from it, but I chose not to focus on that part of the book.) A less than two mile hike on an obvious trail in a state park didn't seem that extreme, even with a sprained ankle. But it was slow going, to say the least. I felt like I was not moving, and the longer I walked, the worse I felt. I considered sitting down and crying for a while, but I talked myself out of that decision. I could be sitting there for hours. I had at least managed to get myself onto a real trail, but no one had taken the trail yet, that I had seen. I decided that really my only option was to gut it out and get myself back. I confess that I did cry a few times, but I kept going.

I was watching my Garmin to judge how much longer I'd have to hold it together. I knew I'd be back by mile four, since I had fallen around two and had taken a short-cut up from the bowl. When I had been walking for about a mile, I saw a glint to my right, away from the gorge. A car? A road, then? I thought a road would be much easier to walk on than a trail, but then I wouldn't know where I was and might end up walking even farther. I stopped and stared. I decided that it was not a road, but a campsite! I figured it must be somehow connected to the campground I meant to find--at least part of the same state park. I decided to leave the trail and walk through the woods to the campsite and figure it out from there. Again, I must marvel at a fortuitous turn of events. Not only did I not fall all the way off the trail when I fell, but when I did leave the trail on purpose, I walked into the only campsite with an awake camper. A woman was sitting in her sweats having coffee and doing a crossword. I came up behind her and apologized for startling her by crawling out of the woods and then explained what had happened. She said she had a map of the campgrounds in her car, which she fetched, and we determined that she and I were camping as far from each other as was possible. She said she would drive me back. I generally hate to impose on people that way, but I had to. I thanked her profusely and got in her car.

As she drove, we talked a bit about running. I said that I had, to amuse myself, asked myself if I had been in a trail race, would I have tried to finish? I concluded that I could not have finished. She said her boyfriend had recently sprained an ankle in a trail race and did finish, which she thought was a stupid thing to have done. She, it turned out, was an ER nurse practitioner! My guardian angel maybe dozed off a bit when I was down in the punchbowl, but she worked hard afterwards to make up for it! The nurse reminded me to stay off the ankle as much as possible for at least 48 hours and to take it very slowly after that. She reminded me that a sprain takes much longer to heal than a fracture (grrr) and could bother me for up to six months and that the worst thing I could do is push it before it's ready. As she was talking, the pain, which I must have been keeping at bay with adrenaline or desperation, started to climb. I could barely tolerate the jostling of the car on the rough roads. I felt myself going into that sort of semi-consciousness that happens in labor and other intense pain situations.

When she dropped me off, my family was all still sleeping, so I called out for some help. The nurse asked me if I needed help making it to the picnic bench on the far side of my campsite, and I said no, I had just walked a mile, and someone would come help me in a minute, but then my vision blacked over and the world tilted and I got hot and cold at once. I grabbed for the car and held myself up, and she dashed out of her seat and caught me. By then Doug was out of the camper and the two of them carried me to the picnic bench, where I laid down. The nurse commented that she probably could have just carried me herself, and I should have said I was going to faint. She said to lie down for a while and whenever I felt faint again to lie down with my foot up.

We put ice on my ankle for 20 minutes at a time, and I started to shake. It was a chilly morning, and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. Doug gave me a blanket and some towels to cover up with, but I couldn't stop shaking and shaking. I shook for about two hours. I should have eaten something, but I was too wrapped up in my pain and too light-headed to think of it. Finally my family got up and ate, and I ate too, but I couldn't stop shaking. Was it from cold or pain or fear? I don't know. I kept replaying in my head the moment around the fall and the scenarios of how that all could have ended differently. I decided it was always going to end up OK, one way or another, but it certainly could have been much worse than it was.

Twin Lakes Triathlon

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for Twin Lakes Triathlon because back in January my friend Jen signed up for a women’s tri in June.  She was nervous, but I was excited and maybe a little bit jealous.  To encourage her training, I found us an indoor triathlon to do in February, but when the time approached, my back was too sore, and I didn’t know if it was a return of all of my problems.  She did it alone.  I was sedentary. Then in May, when I was feeling better again, we did a brick workout, and I told her everything important I could remember about the day of a triathlon.  I told her about setting up the transition area and walking through the entrances and exits, about being dizzy after the swim, about the 300 lb woman who was near me in transition at Lake Zurich and wouldn’t let any of us other women help her because she needed to prove to herself and to the world that she could do it.  Oh, lots of things.  As we biked and ran and biked and ran, I put myself back in my triathlon days and gave her whatever seemed valuable. It was her first triathlon so the things I left out were the things about winning, the things about specific pace strategies.  I focused, for her and in my mind, on how fun it is to swim and then bike and then run.  By the time the morning was over, I was thinking, “I just did Jen’s brick workout no problem.  I believe in her.  She is ready. So why would I not believe in me, too?”  I didn’t think Jen was going to win the triathlon, and that didn’t affect my excitement for her in the least. She was going to have a great day. Why was I letting unrealistic expectations hold me back? Didn’t I really and truly believe that it was wonderful that she had signed up, that she would be awesome for finishing, and that a day spent swimming, biking and running is a day well spent?  I thought about it, and I decided that signing up is about being brave, finishing is about celebrating where you’ve been, and all the rest is about joy.  I am brave, I’ve had a long, heart-rending journey where athleticism is concerned, and I am ready for some joy.  

I missed the glut of early June triathlons, and I am unavailable for the mid-July triathlons, so I settled on a sprint in Palatine in late June. That didn’t leave me any time to really train, but I had been riding my bike and swimming and running a little, and thanks to Jen, who did great in her triathlon, I knew I could finish. Plus, I’m still recovering and still trying to figure out what that recovery means.  Training, real training, training to win, is probably not a good idea for me at this point.  The soonness of the triathlon made true training impossible.  Perfect. 

Last weekend, I decided it was probably past time to get out my road bike.  I hadn’t been on it in almost two years!  When I bought it, I simultaneously bought the bike shoes that snap into the pedals. The first time I tried to get on, I fell over in the street in front of my house.  I thought I probably shouldn’t repeat that performance in T1. On Saturday, I rode maybe 6-8 miles (my odometer wasn’t working) to practice clipping in and out of my pedals. Last Sunday a friend and I did the 62 mile route of the annual Swedish Days ride. My speedometer still wasn’t working, but for most of the ride, I felt like I was flying.  I was, in fact, moving faster than the birds flying along the side of the road. Oh, it felt good. I didn’t start to feel tired until maybe 50 miles in, and I managed to not fall off my bike, even when in the second turn of the ride a peloton of crazy riders passed me on a turn and the leader wiped out from the fast turn on gravel. I took it as a cautionary tale, not that I needed it. I am always cautious on turns.

For some reason, I didn’t get all keyed up the day before this triathlon, maybe because I didn’t take any days off.  I swam easy on Thursday and rode easy on Saturday.  I spent the day Saturday shopping and having lunch with my sister, and getting together the stuff required for a triathlon seemed like an afterthought after the kids were in bed and the house was quiet. Maybe I didn’t get keyed up because I didn’t have any expectations for myself other than to finish. Maybe it’s because in spite of my beliefs about bravery and celebration and joy, I was a little uncertain how I felt about getting back into the sport and not looking like I was any good at it. Boo to me for those thoughts. Unfortunately for me (or fortunately, since it didn’t allow me much time to freak out?), I didn’t open all of the e-mailed documents about the swim, bike and run courses until Saturday evening.  I had been aware that the swim was going to be 750m rather than the more common 400m for a sprint triathlon.  I somehow had missed, though, that the run was not 5K, as I had been counting on, but 4.5 miles.  That’s 150% of what I thought I’d be running. My heart sank.  If someone had asked me some years ago which of the three sports was going to be my weak link, I never ever would have predicted it would be the run, but Saturday night, I was sure it was the run.  My longest runs now are six miles, and they are a struggle for me.  4.5 is quite close to that.

At 3:30am on Sunday I woke up to torrential downpour. Boo.  I hated the thought of packing up all of my stuff in the pouring rain.  I hated the thought of driving for an hour for no reason.  I also, I admit, didn’t love the idea of doing the triathlon in a downpour, if there was no lightning.  But I ate a bowl of oatmeal and put my bike and my other stuff in the car, along with an extra towel, and started out.  

I had printed out the directions, and I thought I was following them, but something confusing must happen with the exit from I-90 to 53. I thought I took the exit, but when the next road never appeared, I realized I was somehow still on 90. I am thankful for Siri, who told me to keep driving to the next exit, which was, unfortunately, 8 miles away, and turn around. My poor navigation luck struck again when the entrance ramp back onto 90 was closed for construction, so I had to drive ten miles back the other way to another entrance. With those added detours, Siri told me that instead of arriving around 5:15am, when packet-pickup began for those who didn’t pick up in advance, I was going to arrive at 5:52, eight minutes before packet pick-up ended.  Yikes.  Then, when I arrived, the parking lot was full.  The race organizers had warned of limited parking and said that later arrivals would need to park on nearby neighborhood streets and walk into the park through a side entrance.  The problem was that I didn’t even know where the nearby neighborhoods were, and Siri just isn’t that smart.  Luckily, I drove around for a bit and found a road lined with parked cars with bike racks.  The park with the triathlon was probably less than half a mile down the road. The lovely check-in women told me I could calm down: I had made it. Plus, it had stopped raining.

I had my arms and legs marked, set up my transition, put my number on my bike and my race number belt, went to the bathroom, and then it was time to listen to the opening announcements.  The first wave started a few minutes later, just as a brilliant sun emerged from the last of the rain clouds. I started my triathlon ten minutes after that, in wave five. 

The swim waves were determined, I believe, by predicted swim time.  In the pool, I can do 100m repeats at around 1:50, so I signed up, feeling I was being optimistic, to finish the swim in 14:00-16:00.  I had agonized over that for a few minutes but finally decided that even if I was fudging down, so would most people. Before we were released into the water, I looked around at my fellow wave fives.  Few were wearing wet suits.  The water was supposed to be 77 degrees, so maybe they had wet suits and decided the time gained with them would be lost in transition, and they weren’t needed for temperature.  There were several women wearing bra tops.  The wave was more women than men, but there were some men too.  One woman standing near me didn’t appear to have goggles.  I thought of my friend Rachel who, two years in a row (!), forgot her goggles at the Batavia triathlon.  “You don’t have goggles?” I asked the woman near me.  She said she didn’t because she didn’t really know how to swim freestyle, so she just does breast stroke with her head above water.  Hmmm.  I do have a friend who did backstroke in a triathlon, but he never would have signed up for under two minute pace on the swim. I asked about that.  “Oh, I’m planning to finish the swim in about half an hour, “she said.  Huh.  So it must not be assigned by predicted finish, I remarked.  She said that she put down a faster time on her registration.  Clearly.  “You’re planning to do 16:00?” she asked.  “Maybe I’ll just try to stay with you,” she said.  I agreed that that would be a good strategy for her, but I didn’t have much confidence that she would pull it off.  It reminded me of the woman I talked to before my first Olympic open swim, gazing out into a largish lake almost to the point of the horizon where there was an orange cone and saying, “Where are we swimming to?  That will take us less than hour, right?”  Both women made me feel like I was at least more prepared than they were, no matter how much I questioned myself.

Even as my wave was called down to the water’s edge, I didn’t feel nervous.  No one put him/herself at the front, so although I meant to be hanging back, I ended up only a few people back from the front and center of the wave. I resigned myself to having to either battle it out in the water or just outswim my wave.  Surprisingly, even as the whistle sounded, I still didn’t feel that nervous.  We plowed into the water for about a meter, and then the bottom abruptly disappeared and we were all swimming.  I don’t remember the swims in previous triathlons being so crowded except maybe in Bangs Lake.  There were people around me constantly: people I had to swim around, a few people I accidentally kicked, and then kicked again and again, people not really swimming, people swimming but slower than I was.  I didn’t feel like I was swimming super quickly.  I was just swimming a nice strong pace. On top of that, I was swimming freestyle for a few strokes and then breast stroke for a few strokes to keep myself oriented and find holes in the crowd to swim through.  I had my obligatory open-water panic, but I had prepared myself (and Jen) for that feeling, so I rode it out and kept swimming.  The swim was a long loop around a little island. Once I turned and was heading back, the swim felt less crowded and less long.  I did more freestyle and less breast stroke.  A lovely hole opened up and I had a couple hundred meters of unimpeded swimming.  It was marvelous.  The sun was blazing a couple of feet into the water, and I could see little green seaweed pieces and the sparkle of bubbles. My freestyle felt effortless and smooth. There was another thick crush of swimmers as I neared the end, most of them wearing caps in the color of the two waves ahead of me, so I figured I must have done OK on the swim.  The ground appeared beneath me only a meter or so before the shore, and I climbed up and crossed the mat into T1. 

I had forgotten to start my watch, so I had no idea how long I had been swimming.  In T1 I asked one of the few people there from my wave how long he had been swimming.  He said 12:45, so I thought I was probably faster than I had planned to be. I found out later that my time was 13:44, a 1:43 pace.  Nice. Even before I knew that, though, I felt good about the swim.  I felt strong.  Plus, almost all of the bikes from my wave were still racked.  I sat down, swiped at my feet with a towel, and put on my socks and bike shoes.  I jogged my bike over to the mount line, clipped in without falling over (yay!) and biked off.

I felt great on the bike too.  I passed a number of people who apparently swam in faster waves, and there were maybe three or four people who I passed multiple times and then they would pass me later. I am conservative on the corners, and there were about 30 turns, some of them more than 90 degrees, in a 14 mile course.  But on the straights and up hills I would zoom past people.  Of course, there was one moment when I looked down at my speedometer, saw that I was at 24 mph, figuratively slapped myself on the back for being awesome, and then was promptly passed by a guy who must have been going close to 30mph.  Oh well. I felt strong and fast and confident.  It was a wonderfully good time.  The course was through beautiful neighborhoods of expensive houses much of the time, and I got to ride down the center of the street as quickly as I wanted.  I ended up averaging 18.8 mph, even with all of those turns. What is more fun on a sunny Sunday morning? As I reentered the park on my bike, I was told to be cautious as there were still some bikes exiting. I surveyed the sparkling lake and smiled at a volunteer who cheered me on.  My eyes filled up with tears, and I choked up a bit. I was beyond joy. I was two-thirds of the way through a triathlon. I hadn’t thought I’d ever get to do such a thing again.

I dismounted without falling down and jogged back to my transition area.  I was one of the only bikes back from my wave.  Awesome again. I hadn’t bothered to buy speed laces for this tri, so I sat down again to change shoes and tie laces. Then I started to run. 

I remember from past triathlons that it’s extremely hard to judge pace at the beginning of the run.  I felt like I was not moving at all.  I felt, again, like running has become my weak link, and maybe it has. Of course, I told myself, it’s possible that I just felt so slow running because I had spent the better part of the last 45 minutes at 20+ mph, so even my best run was bound to feel slow in comparison. I also became very aware that I had been breathing hard for about an hour.  I hadn’t wanted to let up on the swim when it seemed like I was getting ahead of the pack.  I hadn’t wanted to slow down my breathing on the bike because I wanted to keep riding hard and speeding through the course.  I was having too much fun to prioritize something like breathing. On the run, though, I wished I could slow down, but my background, in spite of appearances, is running, and it just feels wrong not to be pushing a running race.  So I kept at it.  

The run was hot and steamy, as the morning’s rain was evaporating off the hot pavement.  I never could tell how fast I was running, even after the weird bike-to-run feeling wore off.  I wanted to stop many, many times, but I didn’t.  I told myself over and over, “I will just keep running.”  I decided that victory, for me, was not about pace but about not stopping. I never stopped.  The last mile was rough, but I ran it. I don’t know how the splits worked out, but I averaged an 8:23 pace.  That’s about as good as I could expect given the distance and my paltry training.  I’ve been running that distance (or often less) at between 8:30 and 9:10 pace, so an 8:23 meant I was trying.  With a bit of surprise and sadness, I will admit that the run was the least fun part of the race for me, but even so, I am nothing but grateful that I could do it.  I have a lot of blessings that I got to put to use. It was a morning wonderful beyond my expectations, both my recent short-term expectations and my long-term expectations as I’ve been down for so long with bad injuries. 

When the results were posted, I saw that I was 18^th woman.  I scanned for others in my age group and saw that I was fourth in the 35-39 category, but the overall winner was also 39.  Just in case she was therefore subtracted from the age group awards, I stuck around to see if I would get third.  I did. I am nothing but happy.

What's Bugging Me: Health Care

I wrote this one for a scaffolding assignment leading into my English 102 Proposal Research Paper.  It needs to start with a difficult problem that affects the writer's life or the life of someone they know.  They do not need to already know the solution.  I certainly don't know what the solution to this problem might be.  I don't know that the Affordable Healthcare Act is going to be any better.  I just know that the way things work right now is very far from perfect.  

 

What’s Bugging Me About Health Care

Something that really bugs me is how hard it is to get well after a major illness or injury.  One of the arguments I’ve heard against socialized healthcare is that it will take weeks or months for people to get appointments with the specialists they really need.  People are also nervous that medical decisions will be made by people other than doctors.  Apparently, people are of the opinion that when health care is capitalist in nature, healthcare is easy and quick.  Apparently these people do not have insurance companies that are already deciding what care they can have and are afraid of something not called an insurance company doing that very thing without the goal of saving themselves money.  Supposedly, under our current system, anyone can see whomever they need to see whenever they need to be seen.  This has not been my experience.

I know people who have to stop receiving the care they need because insurance companies have decided it is too expensive.  For example, my sister is a kidney transplant patient, so she depends on a number of drugs to keep her body functioning in a way that will not kill her borrowed kidney.  One of the drugs prescribed to her was a patented compound drug that included two drugs specially formulated to work together.  A few months ago, her insurance company decided that this drug is too expensive, so they dictated that instead of taking the two drugs in one pill, she would have to take two separate generic drugs not likely to work as well in combination.  She is now, by the way, forced to pay double co-pay, and the insurance company can pay less, which was a good solution for them, even though the drug was potentially going to be less effective for her.  This was a decision made by someone paid to cut costs rather than by someone with any sort of medical or pharmacological background.  To save money, the insurance company was willing to jeopardize my sister’s health. The same insurance company illegally looked up the insurance number of my sister’s kidney donor so that the donation surgery would not fall under my sister’s 100% coverage plan and would instead be classified an “elective” surgery by the donor and therefore not covered at all.  I also know people who have been denied healthcare insurance, and therefore access to much-needed healthcare because they had health conditions when they got their new job, or when they retired, or when their husband took a new job.  Seriously, we are proud of this situation? 

These issues I have described so far can be side-stepped by paying for health care out of pocket.  However, hospitals and healthcare systems charge individual patients at least three times as much for a service as they would charge an insurance company.  So while paying out-of-pocket seems like a reasonable solution in theory, it is only possible for the obscenely rich.  The people I know who claim that our system is the best are not obscenely rich, as far as I know.  One can only assume they have not tried to receive any sort of specialized care. 

Leaving aside matters of insurance, another thing that bugs me about trying to get healthy is how nearly impossible it can be to see the specialist one needs to see, even in our capitalist system.  My sister had another near-fatal health issue which her hospital refused to treat.  They referred her to Mayo Clinic, but Mayo Clinic said they did not have time to see her.  She managed to get a life-saving appointment only when her well-connected grandfather-in-law pulled some strings to work underneath the red tape of the system.  This had nothing to do with insurance or an inability to pay.  There simply was no above-board way to get an appointment with the specialist she needed in the time frame necessary.  People level such accusations at the health care system in Canada, but everyone I know who has lived in a country with socialized healthcare opted to stay there, some staying because of the ease of obtaining healthcare. 

I am infuriated by these events on behalf of my family members, but I am also bugged on my own behalf. 

In the spring of 2012, I did something to my back.  It went from feeling not good on a Thursday to feeling like I could not find a way to move it enough to get out of bed on Saturday.  I went to see the nurse practitioner on Monday, and she diagnosed me with a sprained back.  I mentioned to her that MRIs I had had taken a few years before had shown that I had some herniated disks.  “Is that perhaps the problem?” I asked her.  She claimed the disks were not the problem and the prescription for dealing with my back was physical therapy.  Unfortunately, the physical therapist could not see me for a month.  By the time I did see the physical therapist, I was feeling a little better, although clearly something was still wrong.  I was still in some pain.  I saw the physical therapist three times a week for twelve weeks, but even when she discharged me, my back was still sore.  She was just out of ideas for how to help me. 

By fall of 2012 I was in ever-increasing pain.  My back was too stiff and sore for me to exercise.  Then it was too stiff and sore for me to load and unload the dishwasher.  It was too sore for me to sit down for more than a few minutes.  By early December it was too sore for me to walk a mile even though I had been running sixty miles a week a year before.  I made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor who, when I finally saw her three weeks later, said she did not treat backs.  She was pretty sure, though, that the problem was not with my discs.  She sent me to a physical therapist and a doctor of osteopathy.  By the time I saw either one, I was unable to do anything other than lie on the couch until it was time to lie in bed.  I was trying to still take care of my family, so I would stand up for ten minutes at a time cooking, after which the pain would make me feel nauseated and faint, so I would rest.  Thus, it took me all day to make dinner, and by the time it was cooked, I couldn’t stand up to eat it.  I could never sit.  The only silver lining in the fog created by the combination of kill-me-now pain and the peace artificially induced by strong narcotics was that I finally read Pillars of the Earth along with about six other books I’d been meaning to get to eventually. Even so, the wait was excruciating. The doctor of osteopathy said he thought the problem was the discs in my spinal column.  An MRI was ordered.  When the results of that became available, I was told to stop therapy and make an appointment with a neurosurgeon as soon as possible. 

I called a neurosurgeon recommended by a friend.  His office was in Glen Ellyn, a half hour from my house. I could not sit for half an hour, but I needed the help.  It turned out that whether or not I was willing to sit through the half hour ride, alternating between nausea and fainting from the pain, the doctor could not see me for over six weeks.  So I called another doctor who was able to see me in four weeks, but only if I could, in that intervening time, acquire large prints of every MRI I had ever had of my back.  My dad, bless his heart, agreed to drive all over the Chicago area picking up large packets of prints in case I could get an earlier appointment.  I could not.

When I finally saw the neurosurgeon in February of 2013, he was impressed by the severity of my injury. I have always been something of an over-achiever. More than half of the space in my spinal column at the L5-S1 vertebra level was taken up with extruded disc material.  It was the worse herniation the doctor had ever seen.   “I think we should operate on this as soon as possible,” he said.  “The longer we wait, the more likely there will be permanent nerve damage.”  Too bad I had been struggling with this back problem for almost a year at that point. He arranged to operate on me the following Tuesday. For this I am thankful.  Even so, the nerve to the outside of my right leg and foot had been severely damaged. I still cannot feel the outside of my right foot.

After the surgery, I went back to physical therapy.  I did not progress as quickly as one would expect, given that I am generally a very fit and healthy person, but I was devoted to getting well.  I was finally discharged from that round of physical therapy in August of 2013 with some residual numbness and tingling in my foot and some nerve pain and muscle knots in my leg.  My back was not perfect either, but I was again told it would work itself out.  It didn’t.

I gave it time.  I really did.  But around Christmas of 2013, my back went bad again for about a week.  Again in February I was getting to the point where I could once again not bend enough to tie my own shoes.  My leg was a ball of nervy knots.  So in mid-February, I called the neurosurgeon’s office for a prescription to go back to physical therapy again.  His nurse said he would want to see me first and said the first available appointment would be April 10^th.  “Is that really the first appointment?” I asked.  It was.  “The first appointment is more than seven weeks away?” I asked again, incredulous.  I was told it was.  I asked to be put on a waiting list in case there was a cancelation, and I went to get another MRI, as ordered. 

After several weeks of reduced activity, my back was feeling better, although still stiff and sore, particularly in the mornings.  I was eager to get back to exercising, but, “I can make it to April,” I told myself.  In mid-March, however, I received a phone call that the doctor was going to have to change around his appointments.  My new appointment was on April 24^th.  I consoled myself that this was not a big deal, since I was feeling much better.  Not well, exactly, but not in the kind of terrible pain I was in before my surgery.  Then I realized that when the doctor’s office called and moved my appointment, they did not ask me if I was feeling better.  For all they knew, my pain could have been progressing, as it did in 2012, as I was worried in February that it might.  It is likely that waiting for so long to see the appropriate doctor in 2012 is the reason the nerve to my foot is still damaged, the reason I am missing the reflex in my ankle and cannot feel the outside of my foot.  Am I traveling down that same road again? I was still stewing about this issue when, last week, the neurosurgeon’s office called yet again to tell me my new appointment date is May 5^th.  A few days later, the same woman called to tell my new appointment is May 12. Yes, I called mid-February, and without asking me how I am feeling, the neurosurgery practice has now moved my appointment to mid-May.  That is a twelve week wait to see a doctor for a possible spinal injury.  Something about that doesn’t seem like the sort of high-quality care that I’ve heard lauded as the best system in the world.  That bugs me.

I Believe--Teaching Edition

I haven't posted in a very long time, a fact I realized recently with some surprise given that I feel like my writing has picked up.  I've been applying to jobs, some of which want me to write two essays, some three, some seven.  One job wanted me to write a statement of teaching philosophy.  I found out about that job after they had already decided which candidates to screen, so it was always going to be a long shot, but I wrote the statement of teaching philosophy in one adrenaline-inspired evening.  Yes, that was mildly stressful, but it was also exhilirating.  Last week, I wrote a sample essay for my students because I couldn't find one that fit the assignment.  I wrote that in one longish night as well, since I wanted my students to have it the next morning for the lesson plan I was simultaneously writing.

These writing experiences have perhaps deprived me of some sleep, which is maybe why I'm battling my second cold in the last three weeks, but both times I found myself less tired than energized.  I looked up after what felt like a few minutes writing and revising to find that two hours had passed.  Writing takes me outside of time.  It always has.

Why, then, pursue teaching?  Why not just write?  Although teaching eats up all of my time (and then some I don't have--as fellow English teachers know), it inspires me.  When I spend my days being angry at the house I have to clean yet again, I have nothing but anger to write.  When I am out pouring myself out for people I care about, doing something I love and believe matters, I find myself with much more to say and more reason to write it down.  I wouldn't have written either my Statement of Teaching Philosophy or my What's Bugging Me essay if it weren't for teaching. 

Enough preamble.  Here's my Statement of Teaching Philosophy.  This is who I want to be.

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

I believe in revision.

At the beginning of the semester, I tell my students that I should display this credo as a bumper sticker, or—to show the depth of my belief—a tattoo.  At first, my students believe that I am referring to revision as a writing practice, and I am.  I believe that there is great value in teaching students that the first thing that comes out onto the paper needn’t (usually shouldn’t) be the finished product.  I force revision upon my writing students by checking off their progress in the writing process, by scheduling writing workshops and conferences, and by offering revision projects with worthwhile incentives.  What I hope my student come to understand, though, is that I believe in revision not just because it produces better writing but because the courage to experiment, the wisdom to evaluate one’s work and thoughts, and the patience to change and change again produces better students.  Revision is a lifestyle I believe in.

I believe in revision not just as a writer, and not just for my students, but also for myself as a teacher. Just as the first idea that comes to a student’s mind is not always the best or the most refined, I trust that as an educator I can be constantly improving.  Although I could just reuse the syllabus and lesson plans and assignments from the last time I taught English 102, I find that every semester I teach I have improved and rethought how I teach, and so I end up revising—often to the point of completely rewriting—how and what I teach.  I ask my students to help me in this.  I have them fill out weekly feedback forms to let me know what they applied to their own reading and writing and what I need to teach in a different way. When I turn in midterm grades, I ask my students to turn in a mid-term evaluation of my teaching.  I also seek to improve my teaching by being a student of other teachers.  I read books, attend conferences, search the internet, and sit at the feet of my colleagues, all in the hope that every time I teach, I can reach one more student or make all of my students a little more confident or brilliant.  Last semester is always my rough draft.

Although I expect to see my students grow and improve, sometimes in ways that they find astounding over the course of a semester, I never expect that a student will walk out of English 101 or 102 already a perfect writer.  Likewise, I don’t expect that every lesson I teach cannot be improved upon.  I hope, though, that through practice and by observing each other as examples, my students and I will embrace the fact that we are never done learning, growing, and revising.

 

I believe that relationships are the most important teaching tool.

I love my students.  I wish it was professionally appropriate for me to use this section of my statement of teaching philosophy to tell you the stories of who they are and where they come from and what they write about and how they make me laugh or think in new ways.  I cannot imagine a more difficult job than teaching English, but I also cannot imagine a more touching and awe-inspiring thing to do with my life.  Although I have been privileged with some personal strengths and a great education, I believe that what makes me effective as a teacher is my devotion to knowing and caring for my students as people.  I want my students to believe that their unique ideas and experiences are interesting and important and worthy of the effort it takes to express them in the best possible manner.

On one level, caring about my students is the easiest part of being a teacher.  How could I not?  I believe that students sense that I see them each as individuals through mannerisms like eye contact and facial expressions, through conversations we have before and after class, and through respectful interactions inside the classroom.  On another level, though, I think relationships a vital enough factor in the learning environment that they are worth a good deal of intentional cultivation.  I am, therefore, intentional about knowing as much as possible about my students’ struggles, strengths, and interests.  I make a point of asking them to tell me these things in questionnaires, particularly at the beginning of the semester, but I also encourage them to make these personal qualities part of their responses to literature and part of their writing.  I like to incorporate a mixture of reader response and personal connections alongside more historically, socially, or linguistically based literary theories.  I want my students to feel valued even as I challenge them to push their understanding in new directions. 

I also believe that the classroom functions best when it is a small community with a common interest in exploring new ideas and skills, and so I am intentional about cultivating relationships between students as well.  One of the great pleasures of teaching is seeing an argument circle or workshop group challenging, encouraging, and teaching each other, all while I am standing back, a benevolent observer.  I want my classroom to be a safe place for such interactions to happen, for everyone to feel confident that he/she can and ought to contribute something vital to the conversation.

 

I believe in using English to help students enter into the conversations going on around them.

In a time when a great deal of media and public policy attention is focused on STEM subjects, I continue to think that a good English education prepares a student for academic, professional, and social success.  I say this not to belittle the importance of an excellent STEM education in any way—I won’t quote Professor Keating from Dead Poets Society about the value of art and poetry, although I do believe we can incorporate beauty and passion into the classroom as he suggests—but to point out that excellent reading and communication skills are how we can integrate all of our other ideas and knowledge into society.  I believe in the value of English class.

That said, as a person who also believes in revision, I believe that English classes should look different now than they did twenty years ago.  Some may argue that what makes literature excellent does not change, and while I concede the truth of that statement to some extent (you’ll have to tear To Kill a Mockingbird and Cry, the Beloved Country out of my cold, dead hands,) the idea of one set canon for high school literature classes has rightly been replaced with the idea that literature is one method for exposing students to a variety of ideas, cultures, genres, and ways of making sense of the world.  More importantly, we educators must consider that the texts available to and surrounding today’s students are radically different than they were before the age of blogs, tweets, on-line magazines, wikis, and search engines.  I believe an English classroom should teach students not only how to read and think about all of these types of media but also how to produce and publish appropriately in them.

Finally, I believe that English class presents educators a unique opportunity to help students learn new ways of thinking.  How does the same idea subtly change when it is expressed through different media, by different authors, in different genres, in other rhetorical situations? Students can learn to consider the elements of rhetoric in order to best communicate their innovations, understandings, or ideals to colleagues.  They can and should learn the mental habit of looking ever deeper into an issue, evaluating sources and evidence, revising previous opinions or methods, and considering a claim from a variety of angles.

Anything we learn, invent, question, or believe impacts the world around us very little if we lack the tools to effectively share it. It is in all of our best interests if our students become voices in the conversations occurring in science, politics, popular culture, and our community.