Savvy Women

Those of you who are longtime readers of this blog know that in July of 2009 I had knee surgery, a procedure that involved meniscus repair and what is called “patellar shaving.” This past week, four days after returning to Texas for my summer vacation, I had a follow-up visit with Dr. Robert Hayes, the surgeon who performed the arthroscopy. Last August, before I returned to Egypt, he asked me to come see him the next time I was in the vicinity, so that’s what I did. I went to show him the results of his handiwork and my rehabilitation, nearly a year into the process.

On the same day I went to his office, I found this CBS video and decided to blog it this week. The subject, as you’ll see when you view the clip, is knee injuries in girl athletes and some suggestions about rehabilitation. Before I say anything more, I’ll let you take a look.

I found the clip to be quite informative. For one thing, I had no idea that knee injuries, specifically tears of the ACL, were so much more common in girls and women than in boys and men. To find out why this is the case, check out this article.

Coming back from knee surgery is difficult and involves a number of challenges. Having done the whole rehab routine twice (last summer’s procedure was the second time surgeons have gone into my left leg) has given me hard-won insight into some of the things that should be kept in mind when undergoing post-operative orthopedic rehabilitation. I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned this past year.

Insight One: DON’T TRY TO DO IT BY YOURSELF. Even if you are a fitness freak with years of experience in sports and strength training, don’t rely on your own expertise as you make your post-operative return to normalcy. Believe me, it’s absolutely a must to find someone with the proper training who can look at you and your situation objectively. In my case, I worked with a woman with years of experience as a specialist in “corrective exercise.” The first thing she did was assess my body, which involved looking at the way I move and my posture and so on. She then showed me some exercises that would meet my specific rehabilitation needs. I got the specialist’s name by asking around at the gym where I work out. Her input helped me think outside the box and understand things about my condition that I never would have gotten on my own.

Insight Two: DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE REST OF YOUR BODY. Immediately following surgery, it’s quite normal to fixate on the part of the body that went under the knife. In my case, I became a little obsessed with the condition of my knee and thought that I needed to focus all my attention on it if I wanted it to recover. The specialist I mentioned earlier helped me see the problem with this sort of thinking. After her initial examination, she pointed out that my left foot lacked an arch and that this affected the way I stood and walked, thus putting an additional burden on my bad knee. Her first step was to have me do some exercises that would shift my weight to the outside of my left foot. Less than two weeks later, I had reconstructed an arch and had, as a knock-on effect, learned to rotate my knee out and push my hip back. Thus, rather than coming at the problem directly, she took a more indirect approach, which assumed, quite rightly, that all my body parts were connected and working simultaneously toward a single goal. As a result of her help, I started thinking of my whole body and the role that every part played in helping me get well.

Insight Three: DON’T STOP TOO SOON. Some mistakenly think of recovery as something that can be achieved, once and for all, and then the injured body part can be forgotten about because it will have been “fixed.” If rehabilitation is conceived of this way, the injured knee or whatever may actually weaken once the corrective exercises have been terminated, making it susceptible to reinjury. In my case, I have made the determination that my knee rehab will be a project I work on for the remainder of my life. Of course, as the condition of my leg improves, the type of workouts I do might change. One thing is for sure, though. I will have to do some form of knee maintenance for a long time to come.

Insight Four: DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE MIND. Dr. Hayes and I spent a lot of time the other day talking about the psychology of recovery and agreed that it is important to keep everything in perspective and maintain as much optimism as possible during the weeks and months immediately following surgery. The right mental outlook is important because there will certainly be setbacks during the recovery period. Getting down about these regressions may make it harder to stay focused and do the sort of strenuous work required during rehab sessions. Plus, as my surgeon pointed out the other day, my knee will never be totally “normal” again. I will have to learn to adjust my thinking about what it is realistically capable of doing.

I hope these suggestions help. Bottom line: The human body is an amazing thing. Much can be accomplished after surgery if the right sort of approach is taken!

I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to blog this CNN video. I realize it has no direct connection to any sort of topic specifically related to women or the concerns of women, but I think many Savvy readers will nonetheless find it of interest, mostly because it sheds a bit of light on what life in my current home city is like. By the way, the locals often refer to Cairo as “Um al-Dunya,” which is Arabic for “Mother of the World.”

Ah, home sweet home! Actually, the whole of Cairo is not as bad as what’s shown on this clip. There are quieter places (relatively speaking) where one can do a bit of safe (relatively speaking) strolling and escape the city’s “theme song,” as Ben Wedeman puts it. For example, Maadi, the district where I live, is a pretty nice place. It certainly does have its ugly spots, but there are beautiful ones as well. Plus, it’s an incredibly international area which I find very exciting. Just the other day, for example, I was walking along and discovered a small park that appears to be the meeting place for many Chinese stay-at-home moms. I liked the spot so much that I sat down on one of the benches and listened to the women speaking Chinese and watched their young children playing together. It was the sort of scene that made me understand that this city really is Um al-Dunya.

I want to say a word about Selwa, the woman who compares crossing the street to playing a sport. Wedeman is right. She does show “typical” Egyptian humor, and that’s one of the reasons I really like the locals. They have an incredible ability to see beyond the sound and fury and to laugh at things that would make others cry.

I can’t believe it took me this long to get around to blogging about Jane Juska and her two books, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance and Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex, and Real Estate, the latter of which I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) about a year or so ago. Ms. Juska, as it turns out, is one of my all-time favorite memoirists and one truly courageous individual.

I hadn’t seen her do any talks or interviews until I looked online to see what I could turn up. There’s not a lot there. I was able to locate three clips, and I’ve included the longest one available, a talk she gave at something called Idea City 2007, which advertises itself as a gathering of “the smartest people” discussing “the biggest ideas.” By the way, though this video is twenty-two minutes long, Juska’s presentation takes up only the first thirteen. I chose this one because the others involve an interlocutor. This one, however, doesn’t, and it seems our author is at her best when she’s allowed to have complete control over the direction things go, which doesn’t surprise me given that she is such a strong-willed and self-directed woman.

I did notice one thing about all the videos I watched. Juska seems a little uncomfortable in front of the camera. Again, I’m not surprised by this. By all accounts of her life, including her own, she lived very quietly and privately until the publication of her first book, which turned her into an overnight celebrity at the age of seventy-one. I wouldn’t be at all shocked to hear her confess that she’s had a hard time adjusting to all the publicity and that she feels a little ill at ease doing televised events.

One of the things I really like about the video I’ve included is that it shows her discussing her days as an English teacher. During that part of her presentation, she says that “most kids are being taught how to write; they are not being taught to write.” The distinction, Juska explains, is that students learn to write when they see their teachers modeling writing, meaning, of course, that teachers should write with their students. As a fellow writing instructor, that’s one I’m going to need to spend some more time thinking about.