The tour business is in full swing, and I can work as a lecturer (”step-on” jobs) as well as a busdriver.  However, when colleagues call me with last-minute city or wine tours, I realize that I would be taking a very big chance to walk around, even with a crutch, at only 7 weeks post-op, all to get some money.  Every time someone calls - and it’s hot and heavy in August - I feel terrible to say “No”.  But it’s always complicated with this job:  one must get one’s self to a hotel or convention center, usually with public transit, because no one wants to drive me into the hub of San Francisco’s downtown chaos, or all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf.  I am not yet allowed to drive my own car, so that’s no go either.  In the end, I find myself almost going emotionally numb about it all, in order to get through this:  read, read, and read; or write, write and write; there’s always more DVD’s and chores to do.

But what I really want to is to get out and live, not stick around the house all day.  It’s ironic that in my teens and 20’s, I never wanted to be a “housewife” and “mother”, because it looked like the most boring and stifling of all occupations, to be stuck in the house.  So I never did choose it, and I always had work and hobbies involved with lots of people.  Travelling, driving, meeting people:  can’t be done with an ATR very easily.

Many here write about their despair at seeing their muscles deteriorate with enforced passivity, but to me the worst of this (or any other debilitating injury) is simply being cut off from people and life.  Since my mother was religious, she considered “getting stuck at home” a kind of martyrdom, a penance, or a sacrifice, but it was clear she was not happy with it.  Now and also years back, she is riddled with feet trouble, so I get insight into how very, very important mobility is for mental health.

One topic always interested me:  WWII.  I’ve read every book in the library on the subject, and I learned German and then some Russian to get different points of view on it.  But my latest read about a man’s older brother, fighting in Russia with the Waffen SS,  losing his two feet, becoming an invalid, and ultimately dying, hit me hard.   Perhaps my detached view of the war will change with my own temporary handicapp.

Meanwhile, I baby this tendon.  I am still not FWB, but I walk around the house without crutches in sportshoes with heel inserts.  When I go outside, I start getting a bit scared about rerupture, tripping on sidewalks (San Francisco - you gotta love Gavin Newsom’s ineptitude!), or getting jostled - anything inadvertant, a common problem on public transit and imported immigrants’ attitudes.

So it’s stay at home - something I purposely avoided all these years.

Well, no pain!  No pain, big gain:  that’s my motto in the ATR world.