Slowly mending

It is not entirely a play on words to say that we are hard-hit. If a slow moving car can disrupt one’s life so significantly, what must it be like to have a more serious accident? Nancy’s main worry at present is that, although the x-rays taken Saturday showed no broken bones, damage may have been done to the soft tissues, something that can only be spotted with an MRI. She has an appointment to see our GP on Monday morning, by which times she hopes that walking will not be so painful. Unless things have taken a turn for the better, I expect he will refer her to the local hospital for a closer look at her knee.

Nancy wrote to a friend last night: “This morning Jim helped me take off the pressure bandage to take a much anticipated shower. We were startled to see how wretched my poor old knee looks -- all swollen, like a lumpy grapefruit, black and blue up and down the leg with a big nasty patch at the hip. As the pain level is pretty high, I'm switching from paracetamol to Aleve in hopes that this will help. I hate medication, but I also hate pain. It's much worse than the kidney transplant -- that was a piece of cake.”

The Aleve really helped, but only if she took more than the recommended dosage. This morning Nancy contacted our GP to see if he would prescribe something more effective.

As Nancy’s office is currently inaccessible because of the staircase that stands in the way, yesterday she and I set up a laptop computer for her with all the files and programs she needs. She is hoping today to work on a children’s book she is translating into English for a Dutch publisher.

There is truly such a thing as laugh therapy. Nancy has been hugely enjoying an anthology of short essays by S.J. Perelman, most of them originally published in The New Yorker, and also Bill Bryson’s memoir of growing up in the fifties, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

Last night, at Anne's recommendation, we watched an excellent documentary called "The Architect" about the strange life of the American architect Louis Kahn. It was made by his son. Kahn had three parallel families who didn't know each other, and after his death his son decided to find out about his father's life. Very moving.

Spring is hard at work just outside our windows with its own news of healing. Crosuses and snow-drops are plentiful.