Author: Sara Puotinen

My knee is looking better, according to my physical therapist, and, “in theory,” I should be able to start running in 2 weeks. Definitely not time to prepare for the marathon, which I already knew, but time to run by the river during the fall when the leaves are yellow and orange and flaming red. I’m excited to be inspired by the colors and the smells and the crisp, electric air.

Last week, after reading several poems that talked about changing your life, I decided to make a list.

Things that cause change:

• Moving from Michigan to North Carolina to Southern Virginia to Northern Virginia to Iowa to Minnesota to California to Minnesota to Georgia and then back to Minnesota, for good.
• Getting up from a chair too quickly, twisting your knee wrong, temporarily and partially dislocating your kneecap.
• Being exposed to new ideas
• Moments of clarity, moments of wonder, moments of calm
• the seasons
• the end of something: open swim, the summer, the semester, a book
• the beginning of something: winter running, an online class, a poem
• Giving the cashier a twenty dollar bill when what you’re buying only costs $18.50.
• Breathing deeply.
• Breathing at all.
• Not breathing ever again on September 30, 2009.
• the uncontrolled division of abnormal cells
• Deciding not to cut your hair and seeing how long it can grow.
• Binge-watching Community instead of Parks and Rec
• Going to an animal shelter and adopting a dog
• New presidents
• a faulty gene in chromosome 11 (region 11q12-q13) which is also known as VMD2.
• turning 42, then 43
• new schools
• leaving the house and turning to the right instead of the left when taking the dog for a walk
• slowing down
• accidentally spitting toothpaste on your shirt when brushing your teeth
• erosion as the result of wind, water, freezing temperatures, a clogged gutter, a dangerously incompetent, narcissistic and hate-filled leader
• no longer eating meat
• switching from Avenir to Helvetica
• asking a question: the right one or the wrong one
• wetsuits, better goggles, nose plugs
• changing the water filter in the refrigerator
• choosing to laugh instead of cry
• Memorizing a poem.
• Swimming an extra loop at open swim and experiencing the glow of the sun lower in the sky.
• Paying attention to the trees and their leaves
• Cataloging the sounds and the smells and the landmarks on your run

This week I’ve been biking for 30 minutes every morning with my bike on the stand, in the front room. I’ve also been walking the dog twice a day. My knee is feeling much better. So much better that I was able to email my physical therapist yesterday and tell her I didn’t think I needed a doctor’s appointment or an MRI. Hopefully she’ll agree when she sees me tomorrow. I haven’t been as good at posting on this log, but I’ve continued to write and post on “my running stories” page. Here’s what I finished this morning: Better Words

One month ago today, I stood up too quickly and temporarily displaced my knee. I had temporarily displaced my knee several times before that without knowing it, sometimes causing injury, sometimes not. This was the first time I felt a lot of pain and knew that something had moved out of place.

This month has been very difficult. Not running. Not walking without a brace. Not knowing what was wrong or when it would stop being wrong. My current status is not quite known. I have one more day to decide if my knee is recovering enough to continue physical therapy or to schedule another doctor’s appointment and an MRI. Most of the time, my knee seems better, but then I’ll be walking and my kneecap will unexpectedly slip.

The best way for me to describe how it feels to walk around with a messed up kneecap that might suddenly, without warning, pop or pang or slide or shift, is this: Sometimes in the winter, when the sidewalks are covered with new ice, or covered with old ice that is hidden by freshly fallen snow, or covered with ice that was melted snow that refroze over night in jagged patches, I walk too carefully. My whole body is tense, waiting to fall. I ache in anticipation. My legs are tight. My movement forced, unnatural. Right now, in the first week of September, I am walking like it’s winter and there’s ice on the sidewalk.

A Recap of the Week

• Still not able to run.
• Swam on Monday.
• Biked to the State Fair and walked around it all day, then came home, not-so-smartly walked the dog without my leg brace and felt something pop again on Tuesday.
• Biked to the lake, ripped my wetsuit as I was putting it on, took it off and swam around the buoys by the big beach anyway, then went to physical therapy and was told that my knee was still pissed and that we’d give it one more week and if it wasn’t better, I’d need to see the doctor again and probably get an MRI and maybe have knee surgery on Wednesday.
• Took the dog on 2 walks, mowed the lawn, cleaned the house, went for dinner with my dad and his wife on Thursday.
• Biking to the fair and then walking around it again today.

When the physical therapist mentioned an MRI, my first response was: will I have to be fully enclosed? I’ve never had an MRI and for years it has been on my list of things I never want to do because they will freak me out. Being trapped, unable to move, in a confined space? No thanks. But not being able to run again or to walk without my knee popping out is not an option, so if I need an MRI, I’ll get an MRI. To prepare myself for this possibility, I decided to derange the MRI, to take away some of the power of the letters to haunt and terrify me by rethinking the acronym.

MRI officially stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. But, it might also stand for:

Must Read Incessantly
Magical Realism Included
Musty Rusty Incubators
Mile Runs Impress
Mighty Rosie Inspires
Maybe risk injures?
More restored instruments
Myopic readers irritate
Must resist incumbents
Must resist injury!
Miniature Rhinos Incite
Monster Roosters Incant
Moody Radicals Impinge
Mustard Relish Infusion
Muffin Roll Invasion
Moldy Reed Infirmary
Musk Rat Infatuation
Minneapolis Re-evaluates Infrastructure
Mississippi River Island (Rosie’s suggestion)
Massive Recalls Impending
Mauve = red + indigo (Scott’s suggestion)
miffed redneck implodes
Multiple raisins ingested
Made really irate
Mountain rappelling Idiot
Mutant rats infiltrate

A note about mutant rats: this acronym was inspired by Scott’s story about how warmer weather is allowing rats to have longer breeding seasons and to produce bigger rats that could grow to the size of infants. Rats the size of infants? This will surely haunt my dreams sometime soon.

swim: 1100 yards
bike: 8.5 miles

Swam at the lake in the afternoon while the kids were finishing up their first day of school. I’ll only be able to swim outside a few more times this year. It will start getting colder and, after next Monday (or sooner?), they’ll remove the buoys. Too soon.

Worked on turning my injury log into a non-linear story. A collage? I need to review my notes on the different forms to determine its form. I’m tentatively titling it, Subluxation, 16 Emotions. It’s a combination of lines of poetry, taken from the poems I memorized while recovering and fragments from my injury log.

swim: 1450 yards
bike: 8.5 miles

No running at all this week, so I’m biking and swimming instead. What a beautiful morning to be at the lake! Swam in my wetsuit and my knee didn’t bother me. I love swimming in the lake. I will miss it, when it’s over, which is soon.

Here’s something I’m working as part of my recovery through poetry project. It’s a Cento, combining lines from many of the poems I’ve memorized over the past few weeks. I’m using Simone Weil’s essay “Attention and Will” as a way to frame it.

UNMIXED ATTENTION IS NOT WILL


UNMIXED ATTENTION is prayer is belief is faith is love is a million unopened fountains is obedience to a mystery is sweet scented stuff when the breeze draws across it is pausing to attend to the goldfinches who have gathered in a field for a musical battle is touching the face of every blossom, not choosing this blossom or that blossom is heeding the call, harsh and exciting, of the wild geese and the world is swimming one day in August is going down to the sea for the deepening and the quieting of the spirit is walking into words that have been waiting for us to enter is listening at his heart—little, less, nothing is grieving over golden grove unleaving is counting five mountain ranges, one behind the other is thinking of a sheep knitting a sweater is not clenched jaws is not stiffening muscles is not pride is not a miracle just beyond our heavy-headed grasp is not imagining that trees just stand and look like they look when we’re looking when we’re not looking is not walking, on your knees, for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting is not telling one’s name—the livelong June, to an admiring bog is not seeing all spoiled is not praising this but not that, loving this but not that and IS NOT WILL.

And something else I liked, that I read this morning, by Wendell Berry:

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of silences, like prayers
prayed back to the ones who prayed,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

And a few words I wrote down in my journal to describe the wind, which I listened to–did I, as Mary Oliver entreats, “listen convivially”?–yesterday.

Versions of the Wind

• shimmering
• sizzling
• shshshshshshing or shushing
• whooshing
• swirling
• coming in waves, swelling up and down, rolling over the trees
• undulating in the air
• agitating the air, stirring up the dust
• a natural white noise machine
• crackling, electric
• wafting

Physical Therapy

Some things I learned today at my physical therapy appointment:

• I have a high tolerance for pain, according to my therapist.
• I am particularly proud of the fact that I have a high tolerance for pain and I’m not totally sure why or if I should be proud.
• I have an extra bony anatomy which makes me prone to subluxation of the kneecap.
• My kneecap will probably be partially and temporarily dislocated again. And maybe again after that.
• My first injury almost 2 years ago, was probably not the result of a bone spur, but a subluxation.
• I should not run for the rest of the week.
• I should not run through pain, even though my doctor told me I should.
• My doctor and physical therapist have very different approaches.
• My kneecap is pissed off at me right now. Strangely, I am not pissed at my kneecap. I’m not sure what I feel towards my kneecap. Concern? Love? Acceptance?
• It typically takes about a month to recover from a subluxation of the kneecap.
• Right now, I’m at two and a half weeks. If I have to wait a full month to run again, that would be September 4th, just four weeks before the marathon.
• I might still be able to do the marathon. I might not.

Subluxation: partial dislocation
dislocation of the patella/kneecap
sub (nearly, slightly, partly)

dislocation: disruption, disturbance, disengagement, disconnection

A new fear introduced: subluxation. It could come back, you know. It’s possible this episode was not even the first. Perhaps my injury, a year and a half ago, was two injuries, two separate instances of subluxation?

Subluxation.
A sub par performance with no
sub-8 minute miles.
A substitution: speed out, stability in.
Now subject to more delays and derailments.
Submitting to the will of an extra bony anatomy.
Subliminal arguments between my right kneecap and the running path.
Subtraction and Addition: less grip and more gripe.
A subdued soul,
A submerged spirit.

A partial and temporary dislocation.
Out of the groove. The patellofemoral groove.
The fall to leap more groove.
The let a flap or a mole groove.
The poor tall female groove.
The fall poem or tale groove.
The tell a floor map groove.
The late morale flop groove.
The poet, leaf or mall groove.
The located on your femur bone between two bumps (femoral condyles) groove.

Recovery mode.

Day Sixteen

Swim: 2750 yards
Bike: 8.5 miles

I biked to open swim and then swam 2 loops (2400 yards) with a wetsuit and then an extra 350 yards without one. I was even able to kick with my right leg! A week ago, I never would have imagined that I’d be able to swim again this summer. I feel such gratitude.

Sunday open swims are tough because you have the sun in your eyes when you’re swimming out to the little beach, where there aren’t any big landmarks. Today, I swam blind for probably 200-300 yards. By blind, I mean that I couldn’t see anything but water. No big orange buoys. No sandy shore of the little beach. Just blue-gray water and an endless tree line. But I was fine. I didn’t panic or get upset or stop and try to get my bearings. I just swam straight, like I knew that I could, and eventually I saw the orange buoy, 20 feet ahead of me.

Was able to lift my straight leg off of the ground a few times. Very hard.