4.2 Earthquake, July 2007

In Piedmont, 2 blocks from where I live. When the earth shakes, everybody becomes a pagan and looks down to god and not up to heaven. For a few seconds we all pray to be spared. There is such a power behind every little move of the earth that we, as humans, dwarf in the face of the almighty planet.

My first Earthquake happened in Hollywood where I lived in the early seventies. For a Hungarian ex-New Yorker, it was GOD talking. I had never felt like that before - the earth moved underneath my feet. I fell to my knees and kissed the dirt.

Earthquakes make the tires on the road sound like they have a flat. Booboom-Boom. The walls shake as if wrestled by a giant. It’s nothing personal. The earthquake is a “happening” and if you are alive when she is doing it, pray to the planet.

Most the earthquakes I have felt since I lived here in California have been kind, even polite. Nobody dies unless men built things with shabby planning, (like a freeway collapse) or got greedy and didn’t do a good job –slovenly, lazy. Everybody who felt the planet’s power knew the power was below our feet. We are but small bugs on her neck. This earthquake felt more like she snapped her bra straps. Shake!

One good jolt. Bam! Nothing broke, and nobody had to die. She needed this adjustment. May be she is saving us for her amusement. She watches us like we watch warts. What strange thing I grew! She must think.

We are fools. We worry about men attacking each other, making big explosions, blowing up cars and each other, terrorists. Big news. We forget that we are here for a short time only. We are given this heavenly place, this blue planet, and yes, sometimes she needs to adjust her fault lines. But when she moves we are reminded that we don’t count. There is no heaven nor hell, it’s all here on the planet, and we get to imagine which we’d rather like to live in. We exist at her pleasure. If the planet has to really, really shake, we’d be dust. Again.

Granny Rehab and the danger that lurks in her bed

Granny Rehab injured herself in her sleep. She was walking again, really nicely. She didn’t need her canes except to climb up the 24 stairs to her door. Her friend M. bought her a little gadget which measured her steps and calculated them into miles. Granny Rehab proudly wore that around in her pocket, and learned that she walked five to seven miles a day sometimes. All this without pain! She thought the prize was almost hers. She would have her painless life back, with hiking and moving.

A bed is all important for an older woman. Granny Rehab has nice down covers with stars and moons printed on the coverlet. She has her pillows just the right size, she rests her legs on them as she falls asleep.

One night in her hubris she decided may be it would be ok to sleep on her left side again. It’s been a long time, she was feeling better, she could do that. Oh! the wonderful feeling of having this different position from just laying on the back. She hunkered down into the familiar lair, pillows between her knees. She sighed.

She woke next morning find herself in the same position.

Then she tried to move.

A searing pain shot through her knees and up her thighs, the muscles went into spasm, and she couldn’t even get up and go to the bathroom only a few feet away.
This was a month ago. (Hence little blogging.) I cannot share when I am in pain. (So now I get out of the third person if you allow me.)

A mad search for a new doctor ensued. One of my friends gave me her own back up steroids to get me out of spasm, but the surge hardly touched the pain. Massive doses of Tylenol, Vanquish, Ibuprofen, were tried, all worked a little but now I was once again crippled. Vanquish hurt my stomach, Ibuprofen was too weak, Extra Strength Tylenol was the winner. I wanted 21st century meds. I mean everybody I knew had some fancy meds, there just had to be an answer.

I lay down once again, moving very little. Immediately I was rewarded by a warning pain. So I didn’t move for weeks. Made phone calls instead.
Wrote a letter to my “Health Care Provider”, but she didn’t call back because she was on vacation. Another month crawled by. Many women recommended doctors, but my kind of doctor would have to be able to deal with sudden emergencies. I needed a cell phone doctor. Even in my own comfy bed I was not safe.

Aging is a science. A real serious search would have to be conducted for a major change in lifestyle, not just new doctors and meds. I went back of course to Dr J, my bodyworker, right after the “accident”. Dr J put the knee back in place, explained to me that most injuries happen in bed for older people. This was news to me! Dr J estimated about sixty percent of injuries occur while in bed. Bummer.

So there is no safe place for me on this earth at all. I look at my beloved bed now like a battlefield. I talk to my knees like a prayer. Please dear knee, do not twist and turn. Dear muscles please, don’t freeze out on me. Let me walk again tomorrow.
Prayer to my body seems strange but I think the body parts can hear me. My knee actually answered, “Look lady,” she said, “it’s not me, it’s gravity. When you sleep gravity doesn’t. It pulled on us for a long time and we had no choice- we slipped. A simple knee cannot go against the law of nature.”

So now I think of gravity as an invisible enemy.

In the meantime I am getting better. Again.

Went to see the new doctor 14, at the Over 60 Center, she gave me Percocet and lowered the Tylenol Extra Strength dose. I think I may get some rehab program in water and somebody to come by and help me shop and carry up the groceries. Maybe even sweep the floor, which is now growing a thin layer of top soil.

Doctor 14. I liked her.