Picking back up

 Thursday I give my first exam, and I realized I needed some simpler knitting for invigilating. I thought about starting a new sweater (I have a couple simple patterns I want to do) but hunting very much in my stash is not possible right now (not very accessible given my having to use a cane - it's stacked in tubs in a closet and pulling them out would hurt me)

So I pulled Chalcedony out again, which really - it makes more sense to finish an in-progress sweater. So I started on the upper left front. (That remains, plus the upper right front, then the sleeves, then the front bands)

Other than that, I am just frustrated with my knee. It still hurts. Oh, it hurts less, and it's now more stiff than painful, but I wish it were better and I worry that (a) I will either still need surgery (I don't WANT surgery, I don't want to be laid up and unable to take care of myself for weeks - how do I do that? I have no one to come stay with me, I can't expect my mother to travel this far) or (b) it will never get better and I won't ever be able to hike again, or even do fieldwork or field trips with my classes and maybe I just have to retire.

The frustrating thing is I'll get a couple hours in the middle of the day when the pain really subsides, and I think "oh thank goodness it's finally over, maybe" and then I do something I need to do, and the pain comes right back.

Like today. I went home at lunchtime and sat with my feet up for a while and got up and thought "fantastic, I can prep the lab for Thursday because I feel so much better." This was involved because I had to get stuff from the herbarium, which is on the ground floor, and get it to the lab room, which is on the second floor at the back of the building - one floor up BUT there is no elevator (I do not know how my university got that past ADA, other than that there's a handicapped parking space and accessible doors on each level, so the answer is "just drive to where you need to be" or if you're a little more mobile you can take a ramp outside the building and go across a lawn to get from the back door to the front (I would not want to, not right now - there's a kind of steep section). 

So, I had to park near the herbarium and get the specimens into boxes, and then carry the boxes out (They were heavy and hard to manage with the cane, too, and I got my left foot hung up in it once). Then I had to drive them around, temporarily park and unload them in the lab back door, then go park for real, go back in the building, and set up the specimens. I got out the slides for the students to look at but then I walked to the microscope cabinet and realized there was no safe way for me to carry the heavy compound microscopes to the desk - not with using a cane (you need both hands to carry a scope). At that point I was in a lot of pain, and I thought, well, I COULD take the time and clear out one of the carts we have and load the scopes on the cart, and roll them to where they have to be. But I was tired, and in pain, and it was nearly 4 pm so I gave up.

Also, working in the herbarium I had to twist a bit to put the folders down into the boxes, and I realized that twisting a little on that knee is painful. As is backing up. Walking straight forward is the easiest, especially if I can take my normal stride length. Short steps are harder. 

I did e-mail a student who had offered some help (he is a research student of a colleague) and said if he had time tomorrow, if he could help me get the scopes out, I would appreciate it.

To clean up lab, I can either ask the students to put the scopes away or maybe I'll have the ability to clear off a cart to put them away. Lugging the herbarium sheets back will be another matter but maybe I do them in more trips than I took today.

I think I also slept badly last night - I had some pain and I tried to sleep with not propping my leg up (which is a pain to do, and I don't like sleeping on my back, I'm a side sleeper) and I think I did maybe get a little inflammation over night and I know I was awake several times to check the time on my phone (which I am now using as my alarm clock, because I can slot it between two books on my bedside bookshelf and have it more easily accessible than the old tape/CD/radio I had been using. I think I was also worried about getting the herbarium sheets today

(And dangit, I just realized I forgot to get an example of Taxus for them to look at. Well,, maybe if I stop off to check if my Friday exam came back from the copy shop, and have to drive down there any way)

But I am very weary of being mildly disabled, and very frustrated at the designs of some things (even the accessible stall in the women's room near my office isn't very, thanks to a door that opens IN to the stall, so if you're a bigger woman trying to use a cane it's hard to navigate)

It's been not quite three weeks, so not quite halfway to the minimum estimate I was given for sprain healing, and I suspect I am making things worse and slowing my healing because I can't be as sedentary as I'd like, and I don't have a good chair to sit in over at work (they are all too low, and there's no way to elevate my leg). And I don't want to complain too much or ask for lots of help because we're already stretched thin; another colleague is out doing chemo (the good news is it's early-stage, and a very curable form of cancer) and everyone is working to get his classes covered. And of course we "run lean," like almost every smaller state school these days, where we really don't have enough people. (This is another worry if I'd have to have surgery: no one to cover my classes while I was out. I would probably have to wait until summer and have  a more complicated surgery as things would have healed wrong. I am REALLY hoping the lack of any instability - the fact I just have pain - is an indicator nothing is too badly torn. The x-rays showed no bones out of place....the pain does kind of move around and I think if it were clearly a broken ligament it would just be in one spot.)