ER visit #3, the admission

pretty miserable at this point

An man's baritone voice yanked me from the enchanted forest filled with half-monkey half-avian creatures where I was deftly planting seeds that were sprouting into dragon eggs right in front of my eyes; back to the Emergency Room of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in a few chemically delayed seconds. I blinked a few times, reached for my glasses and the white coats came into focus. The power of hydromorphone. I remembered now that it was Wednesday sometime, and I was still in the ER although was about to be wheeled to a private room.

the view from my room

When I was released Monday after having Dilaudid numb the pain of my clotting kidney I went home and collapsed on my king-sized dog bed.  I was instructed to take up to 3 of the supplied Percosets if needed, but again I woke up  in debilitating pain at 2 am and the medicine did not seem to be working at all. I lay there immobile for 20 minutes trying to drift off again, hoping that maybe this was a nightmare, but finally had to swallow another Percoset. A half an hour later I ate a morphine pill in desperation.

One pill makes you larger 
And one pill makes you small 
And the ones that [the ER] gave you [sic]
Don't do anything at all 

Yes I was uneasy as to how all of this medicine was going to interact in my sensitive system, but the last thing I wanted to do was have to go back to the ER again. I mean it was getting ridiculous at this point, and as sick as you are of reading about this, let me tell you it pales in comparison to the disgust I was feeling being in this position for a third time when I was supposed to be getting good medical care. I waited as long as I possibly could, then got up and pissed what seemed like a gallon of blood into the toilet bowl. I could barely get out of bed the pain was so intense. This was truly the worse pain I had ever felt in my life. Strange thoughts tormented me, like if there had been a gun in the house I might have thought about using it just to end the absolutely unrelenting pressure on my left side.

I did not want to go back to the hospital. By I knew I could not stay here like this. I had to get more Dilaudid. There was no way I could drive in this state. I could not imagine who would answer the phone if I rang them at 2 am. If I called an ambulance I would be taken to Temple and would have to start all over, and who knows if my medical insurance would even pay for me to have all those tests again, most likely not. As a last resort, I called Chris again, and to my surprise he picked up the phone. I'm sure he regretted it, but there it was.

So that is how I ended up in the ER for the third time in as many days. Only this time the pain was an 11 on a scale from 1 to 10 and I needed Dilaudid immediately. I breezed through security as the guard recognized me at this point, and I told triage the situation, my face grimacing in pain.

"You still have to register over there," the woman said, unmoved by my obvious discomfort.

"I'm not registering," I said with more than a little irritation, "I'm in tremendous pain from a lacerated kidney, and I've been here three times in three days because they keep discharging me without the proper pain meds.....my information is all in the system, my chart is sitting back there, I need to get back there now," I said through gritted teeth.

Well let me explain that when your walk into an inner-city ER you don't get a lot of sympathy when you insist on being expeditied to the hydromorphone drip. I don't think it matters who you know, how many times you've been there, or how high you think your pain tolerance is; suddenly you are one of the weak asking for help; and those who have the power to make you suffer cannot resist the urge to make you grovel.  I had to wait 20 minutes while they logged me in and printed out my bracelet.  I lay across three chairs, moaning loudly.

I finally was summoned from the dimly-lit waiting room which only needed a coat of red paint to be mistaken for Hell. I was whisked through the double doors, blinking my heavily lidded eyes as the brightness of the ER bay came into focus, the beep of monitors as ubiquitous as crickets chirping on a summer day, in yet another scene in this surreal drama that was playing out as a result of a leisurely afternoon mountain bike ride. As my eyes continued to adjust to the light the cast of doctors, nurses and staff whizzed by my chair as I was wheeled into Bay 11, wanting to tear out my hair in agony.    

Then I had to tell the stupid story again to five different people (yup I was pretty irritible by now); and why someone so "youthful" has a pacemaker (second degree heart block);  show them the best vein for the IV (left arm); and all the while suffering through unspeakable pain.  Finally the hydromorphine seared into my arm and I felt my vessels gradually pulling coolness throughout my battered body.  With each pump of my heart the medicine spread its icy web until the numbness had enveloped me, and in a few moments I was passed out on the gurney. I was an insect being spun, spun neatly and tightly by the morphine spider so I could easily be consumed later. But at least in this pseudo death there was an absence of pain.

my nifty bed adjustment

So since this was the third ER visit for the same laceration I was admitted for an extended stay.  As one doc succinctly put it, "Pain control is a stupid reason to be admitted to the hospital," and I nodded appropriately. Of course if I were not on drugs and only half conscious at that moment I would have replied, "yeah, I agree, but thats pretty much your fault, since my diagnoses has not changed and I have not been given the appropriate medications to be able to rest at home and avoid this grotesque hemorrhaging of healthcare dollars."  I suppose sometimes the morphine muzzle is not such a bad thing.

At first I was in the room with another woman but because of my latex allergy, they moved me to a private suite, which was really sweet, because all I wanted to do was rest without having to listen to someone else's visitors or the detested noisebox known as a television.  My mother arrived and stayed for hours God bless her, and between my dreams a constant stream of docs from trauma, urology, emergency medicine, and even the pharmacist stopped by to check in and review test results. Th ER x-ray had showed pleural thickening in my lung, so I got wheeled downstairs to get an ultrasound, and it turns out that I had broken two ribs on my right side in some other fall, so those were healing and there was no pleural thickening to be worried about.

sugar sugar sugar

So one more note, you can imagine that a semi-raw nutritarian like me would be a bit unhappy with the food served in the hospital.  I knew it was going to be bad, but I have to say I found it literally appalling that an institution supposedly dedicated to making people well would serve this swill.   After I refused to eat any of it, I told the irritated staff member who removed my untouched tray not to bother bringing me any more meals.  It turns out that a few of my employees from Liberty Flooring were working on the floors in the very hallway where I was admitted, in fact, they had just finished the room and I was the first patient in it.  So since my guys were working two doors down I was able to get our Foreman Mots to wheel me down to the Cafe, where the offerings were a bit better.  I got some bland oatmeal and some fruit or something like that; it was pretty forgettable but not quite as bad as the crap served on the tray.

the Cafe at HUP

By the following day I was nausous, depressed, and had an incredible migraine from the drugs and I knew I had to get the hell out of there.  They finally discharged me mid-afternoon, and honestly I never even used any of the pain meds after I got out of the hospital. I took some Tylenol that evening and that was the end of the chemical storm, and thankfully the end of the blood clots coming out of my kidney and down my urethra. The florist dropped off a bouquet of flowers that someone had sent; the card only read, "somebody who loves you."  I have no idea who sent them, but they did brighten an otherwise dismal day so if you did send them please step forward and identify yourself so I can thank you.  Unless of course you are someone who I have or should have filed a restraining order against.

I did wait the prescribed two weeks before I did any exercise, and it was slow going at first, sort of two steps forward one step back, but I can say a month later now that I am back into the full swing of things.  I even took a spin in Belmont last Thursday on the Yeti and came upon the tiny little log that had been my undoing.  I stopped, gave it a look of respect, and continued on, the dogs prancing about me with their usual enthusiasm.  Which is really what life is all about I suppose.  Certainly this life has been about acknowledging that living is what happens between and through my glorious mishaps, rather than a state that will materialize once I have put them all behind me and reached this milestone or that one.  I'm still hoping for a bit less drama in 2012 though.  Just a bit.

when even morphine lets you down: lacerated kidney and ER visit #2

Manuel Orazi’s illustration for the 1906 novel by Du Saussay

So as I said I was discharged early Saturday night, disheartened about the whole situation, but thinking I could survive 2 weeks off from working out; in fact maybe it would give me a chance to get caught up on my gardening and writing. I took the naproxen before bed but then woke up at 3 am in what I thought at the time was the worst pain ever. I was wrong. The scariest part was the amount of blood I was passing, I mean the toilet looked like someone had been murdered, and there were pieces of something in the bottom of the bowl. Blood clots? Pieces of my kidney? Yeah a little unsettling, even for me. I stumbled down the stairs in the dark, opened the glass grain cabinet that had once housed my sister's stereo in college (remember those days, when you needed a cabinet for all of your audio equipment?) and my trembling hand knocked my stash of orange plastic prescription drug containers off the shelf as I reached for the the morphine that had been prescribed after my shoulder surgery in 2009. I stared at the little blue pill for a second and wondered how badly this thing would tear up my intestines but the pain was absolutely unbearable, so down the hatch it went. Within 15 minutes the pain subsided and I was able to sleep until 8 am. When I got up to empty my bladder it was as I feared: again the water was a deep crimson and there was what looked like delicate little petals on the bottom of my elegant Kohler toilet. At that point the morphine was keeping the pain somewhat under control so I got up, fed the dogs and ate a bit of cereal.

I called up Dr. Mark and he suggested I head back to the ER, but I had no desire to spend a beautiful Sunday at HUP exposing myself to a MRSA infection just to hear that there was nothing they could do for me. On the other hand the Massacre in the Toilet made me wonder if I needed more medical care. I was feeling increasingly crappy. Damn, it was April 1st and I had so many seeds that needed to be planted this weekend; and I had been planning on going to this, but considering I was not supposed to be doing much jostling of my kidney and the Convention Center was the size of a couple of football fields I decided not to attend. Which meant that I would miss a seminar on beekeeping I needed to hear to motivate me to get off my a@@ and get the heck out of Kill-adelphia.

    Salvador Dali, The Bleeding Roses, 1930

So I called the number for the ER on my discharge sheet, and the nurse who spoke to me suggested I return immediately. But in my experience most nurses are not particularly nuanced in the differences between healthy but accident-prone people and the heart-diseased, obese, diabetic folks they see en masse, so I called up the service for the Trauma Surgeon, Patrick Kim, MD, who had seen me on Saturday and who I had immediately liked.  I knew he would give me the straight scoop.

If you are unlucky enough to find yourself a guest in an emergency room you are invariably graced with a string of doctors, residents, RNs and other hospital staff who interview you, treat you, and interpret your test results.  At a teaching hospital like HUP, many are residents, and most are pretty forgettable.

Although Patrick Kim MD is the Trauma Program Director, meaning the Surgeon overseeing the program and thus had the requisite ego, I could tell immediately that he possessed not only the strong intellect required to procure a position at one of the top hospitals in the country, but also a keen sense of intuition which was lacking in many an A-list doctors. I surmised that Dr. Kim had been briefed by the residents who had interviewed me prior to the Head Honcho arriving that I was a knucklehead who was quite skilled at bashing my body into stationary objects; be they trees, random rock formations, wanton wheelbarrows, or in this case, the ground, and I had been no stranger to emergency rooms in my lifetime. He knew he needed to send a message loud and clear that I needed to let my kidney heal properly.

Saturday afternoon he strode into ER Bay 10, flanked by two residents and one other doctor from the trauma team. I had been reading the New York Times on my Ipad when suddenly there were a bunch of white coats looking down at me.

"Ms. Walheim," Dr. Kim said.
"Hello" I managed weakly. His authoritative voice jerked me back to reality.
"You really messed up your kidney," he stated, speaking without a tinge of levity.
"That's what they say," I mused, my smile an olive branch. He was actually pretty cute, I thought.

We had a 15 minute interview, and he went over the tests and prognosis, and as we talked back and forth and he could see I was intelligent, an athlete committed to a healthy lifestyle, and possessed a strong understanding of medical language and concepts he loosened up, smiled and talked a bit about himself and his wife. The brilliant doctors are quite comfortable with the educated patient.

 And that's when he told me I could not do any exercise for two weeks.
"I have to ask this, " I said, "What do you consider exercise?  Because if you don't say otherwise, I will be back in the pool in a few days, " I admitted.
"No exercise means nothing," he said firmly, "Bedrest for 2 weeks. This is a serious injury Ms.Walheim.   If it gets any worse you could get an infection and you could need surgery, so it's up to you."
"No, thank you for clarifying," I hastily said, "I just need to understand the nature of the beast."
"Well you can get caught up on your sleep then, " he said, "because I bet you don't get enough sleep."
I have no idea if that was just a good guess, but I smiled and agreed.
So that was Saturday.

Back to Sunday morning, imagine my surprise when I was able to get Dr. Kim himself to call me back as I sat on the couch in pain and misery, with a profusely bleeding kidney.  He said that if I was able to control my pain at home, I did not need to return to the hospital.  This was great news.

In retrospect, I really don't know if I did too much on Sunday, or if the trajectory of this injury had already been predetermined by the biological domino effect of me slamming my left side into the ground a few days before.  I did get through the day and took another morphine before bed, but somehow, by 4:30 am, the 12-hour pill had stopped working.  The pain was so intense I could barely get out of bed.  I had never quite felt anything like this, not even when the tire of that truck was rolling up my leg and I felt my bones and flesh being snapped and crushed with the pressure.  Surely there was something else really wrong with my kidney.

CT Scan number two

I called 9-1-1.  My voice was hardly intelligible when the Operator answered the call.  I was sobbing in pain.  I told her that I had a lacerated kidney and I needed to go back to HUP, so she connected me with the ambulance service.  I stumbled around collecting a few things, trying not to upset Madison and Chloe, and only about 14 minutes later there were two EMTs standing on my front porch.  I made it down the stairs and through the wall of barking dogs and opened the door.  I told them about my kidney, stepped out on the porch, locked the door and gingerly climbed into the back of the ambulance.

The EMT at the wheel said to the other, "Which hospital?"
"Temple," he replied.
"We have to go to HUP" I said, grimacing in pain, "they have all my medical records and they already did the CT Scan and x-ray, I don't want to start over at Temple." Plus I really did not want to go to North Philly.
"We have no choice," the EMT said, "we get in trouble if we pass a hospital."

So I apologized and thanked them, but told them to go.  I then re-entered my house and called Chris, which was my last remaining option before I would attempt to drive my own sorry self to HUP.  He answered the phone to my surprise.

"I need a ride back to the ER now," I cried, "I feel like I'm going to die...and there is even more blood."

"I will be there in twenty minutes."

So that is how I ended up back in the ER.  When I finally got through registration and back to Bay 11 this time, a wonderful nurse named Kim took one look at my face, looked through my records, inserted my IV and pumped Dilaudid into my arm.  A burning....then the horrible pain evaporated within minutes.  Incredible.  Of course I was also immediately nauseated and actually threw up a few times but they added in Zofran for the nausea and I was passed out on the bed a few minutes later, now a character in a opiate-induced Salvadore Daliesque dreamscape.

Salvador Dali's  Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee
around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, 1944   

 Kim was pure magic, she always seemed to be there when I needed more Dilaudid or something to vomit into.  At some point they wheeled me down for another CT scan to make sure nothing horrible had happened, which it hadn't, and of course I threw up again. I was discharged at noon with a script for Percoset and Zofran, and told that the pain would be rough but I had to keep on top of it with medication. Chris drove me to the pharmacy and then I went home and fell into another delaudid induced dreamstate.
He walked the dogs while I slept, then I got up and actually entered the payroll so everyone at Liberty could get paid that week.
I managed to feed the dogs later, then I took my percoset pills and went to bed, thinking the ordeal might be over.  I was wrong.  

why mountain biking can be dangerous: ER visit #1

Gaston Casimir Saint-Pierre, "Diana the Huntress"

So Thursday as I usually do I drove the dogs and the Yeti to Belmont so we could ride for 90 minutes and thus I could consolidate my workout and the dogs'.  It is a tribute to the rigors of raw-feeding that my 10 year old twins can hang with me while I'm riding. Especially Madison, who is two weeks post-op. When I'm riding with the two girls in the woods, Chloe out front scouting out the trail about 40 feet ahead; Madison's whiskers practically brushing my back wheel; I  feel sometimes like I am Diana and we are hunting somewhere on the plains of Europe a thousand years ago.  Then I see a dirty condom wrapper or some other remnant of the urban park that is Belmont Plateau and I'm right back in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the year 2012.  It can still be epic though.

So imagine my surprise when I steer around a tree and over a log I have gone over a hundred times before and I somehow manage not to pull up my front wheel at the split second necessary to clear the obstacle.  My wheel stops suddenly, and as these mistakes often end I am rudely catapulted from the bike; land on my head and left side and feel a crushing pain in my spine. Awful. This was no ordinary fall. I lay there in the middle of the trail on my stomach for probably a full minute. Madison came over and sniffed my mouth, whining with concern. I think she tried to give me snout-to-mouth resuscitation. A minute later Chloe bounded back and nudged me. I was moaning and trying to get up.

I finally picked myself up, and realized that I would not be able to ride back to the car, so I dragged my bike up a hill through the underbrush and managed to get back on the gravel access road, at which I did hop on the cursed piece of bubblegum pink metal and ride the few hundred yards back to the car. The ride had lasted 31 minutes...Ss-weet. Madison whined as we neared the car because she was not ready to end the fun but I was trying to figure out how I was going to drive home. The pain was excruciating now.

We did get home and I ushered the dogs into the house and then leaned against the car, wondering how I was going to lift the Yeti up the 10 steps outside my house to get it in the door. My neighbor was there, smoking, leaning against his porch two houses down but I just could not ask a smoker to help me, call me stupid.  So I picked up the bike, brought it up onto the porch, and then ran into the house and threw up into the kitchen sink.

I moped around for awhile, but I could hardly move, and I thought maybe I should take a pain pill, which I only do in extreme circumstances.  I texted Steve Collina, MD and he called me back after his ride and urged me to take the prescription naproxen I had on hand for a few days. So I waited and then took it before bed, which enabled me to sleep through the night, and I was able to actually walk around and even take the dogs to the Wiss on Friday. I worked from home and even stopped at Whole Foods. But I started noticing I was peeing red, and it was not until Saturday am when the hematuria got much worse that I realized that the red color of my urine was not from my usual beet consumption but from a bleeding left kidney. My pain was localized right over the kidney on the left.

So of course I googled "blood in urine female" and managed to convince myself that this was actually no cause for concern, that I had bruised my kidney and it would get better on its own. But since the blood was getting more concentrated, I decided to email Brian Shiple, DO from the Center for Sports Medicine, since he knows my history all too well as he has been treating me since 1996, is currently curing my endocrine disorder, and he was not afraid of lawsuits like some of my other doctor friends so he would not make a mountain out of a molehill.

Subject: hematuria from mountain bike fall--your advice?
From: Andrea
To: Brian Shiple, DO

Date: Mar 31 (7 days ago)

Dr. Shiple, I am so sorry to bother you on a Saturday but before I call my PCP answering service I wanted to run this by you because you understand my medical history etc.  I took a bad spill on the bike Thursday, felt my spine compress and there was severe pain on left side lower back (where I always get back pain after gardening, during my period, etc--where you did most of my prolo back in the day).  I actually had to walk out of the woods, I felt terrible.  Pain was intense but my immune system always has a very exaggerated inflammatory response.  Although I hate pain meds because they interfere with healing, Collina convinced me to take Naproxen 500mg 2x per day since I had them here anyway, which was a good idea because without them I'm not able to do much.  They really keep the edge off so I'm able to walk the dogs etc.

Saw Dr. Mathews last night and he put 2 ribs back into place.  He said my muscle was spasming in lower back.  My lower back on that side is swollen.  I think the thing will heal, I don't think it's slipped disk because I only got numbness in the left leg for a couple hours when I went to Whole Foods.  But the blood in my urine has increased since Thursday, this am (first pee-concentrated) was very red and still now it's pretty red.  Do I need to worry about that?

Do you think I should make an appt for some kind of MRI or CT or just wait and see what happens?  I guess I could call the doc on charge at my PCP but they are clueless about athletes.  I have never had blood in my urine before though, with all of the spills I have had.  It's not a UTI, I don't get them. 

I know, I'm an idiot but I do want my kidney to remain functional for the next half a century. A

Subject: hematuria from mountain bike fall--your advice?
From: Brian Shiple, DO
To: Andrea
Date: Mar 31 (7 days ago)


Yea having working kidneys is a good thing Andrea. You need an ER eval with xray and most likely a CT scan for persistent hematuria d/t trauma. You can follow up with Collina or if we can fit you in with me, but either way is fine.

prepared with full medical history/non-phila drinking H20/Ipad/Droid

Brian J. Shiple, D.O.

Board Certified Sports Medicine

The Center for Sports Medicine,

905 West Sproul Rd, Suite 106

Springfield, PA 19064

Office-484-472-8812

Fax-484-472-8878

www.drshiple.com

Subject: hematuria from mountain bike fall--your advice?
From: Andrea
To: Brian Shiple, DO

Date: Mar 31 (7 days ago)

what is ER?


Subject: hematuria from mountain bike fall--your advice?

From: Brian Shiple, DO
To: Andrea
Date: Mar 31 (7 days ago)


Emergency room. Go to the ER today so you can get your helical CT of your kidneys.

Brian J. Shiple, D.O.

Board Certified Sports Medicine

The Center for Sports Medicine,

905 West Sproul Rd, Suite 106

Springfield, PA 19064

Office-484-472-8812

Fax-484-472-8878

www.drshiple.com

Subject: hematuria from mountain bike fall--your advice?
From: Andrea
To: Brian Shiple, DO

Date: Mar 31 (2 days ago)

Really?  Crap. Ok. Thank you and have a good weekend.

So I got asked Chris to drive me to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania because they have a better trauma team there than at Penn Presbyterian Hospital.  I was prepared to languish forever in the waiting room, but after they checked me in they asked me to pee in a cup and as you can see it was quite crimson by now, so they brought me right in to Bed #10.  After the requisite questions and documentation they wheeled me down to have a CT scan.

the CT Scan at HUP

They stuck an IV in my arm for the dye because the CATSCAN ordered needed contrast, and I also received a chest x-ray.  When all was said and done it was determined that I had a laceration of my left kidney, the side I had fallen on, and the laceration was probably accomplished by my own rib, which is best illustrated by the following pictures:

Here is a view from my Real Bodyworks anatomy app on my Ipad.  You can see the left kidney in relation to the last floating rib.  The lower ribs tend to break less often than the ones anchored to the breastbone because of their flexibility, but in my case the rib did not fracture, so we theorized that the kidney was jostled by the fall and actually bounced off the rib.  This is probably better illustrated by the second picture which is rotated towards the left side of the body.  At any rate, without an actual piece of rib left sticking out of the kidney this is all a theory but apparently it is not an uncommon injury.

So since my pain was controlled with the naproxen, they suggested I switch to Tylenol because naproxen has blood thinning properties, and sent me home Saturday night.  As I tucked myself gingerly into bed I found that I did not have any Tylenol, and besides you have to take Tylenol every 4 hours and naproxen would get me through the night.  So I popped one in my mouth and went to bed, thinking about how miserable I was going to be not exercising for 2 weeks.

online dating part 82: why people lie about their age

                                      see more of Stephan Pastis' genius at gocomics.com

So in light of my pretty poor record of online dating I have opted out for the past, well...3 or 4 years.  I had been pondering the idea of putting myself back there of late, after all, its not like I'm suffering from a bruised heart.  I'm about as self-aware and emotionally available as I've ever been.  I'm ready to take my chances, and with all of the medical issues I've oversome in the past 3 years, the risk of a broken heart does not seem like something worth limiting my behavior to prevent.   So what am I waiting for?  I don't know....something always stopped me from pulling the trigger.

Match.com is one of the largest online dating services in the world with millions of registered users on six continents.  I had stopped using Match 7 years ago because I was embarking on my bike racing "career" and I was tired of meeting Average Guys of slightly different stripes who were not particularly active or concerned about their health.  I wanted to date a cyclist, since I had been fully indoctrinated into the cult at that point and could not imagine dating someone who was constantly whining about all the time I spend on my bicycle and away from him.  So I switched over to fitness-singles and instead met a lot of fit men who measured their success in terms of body fat, personal bests, and how hot their girlfriend is.  Most of the guys that contacted me could not write a single sentence without typos and misspellings.  It was pretty depressing.  PBF is a perfect example.   I did however meet Dr. Mark on FS who certainly was heads and shoulders above the rest but alas I also met X, who turned out to be nightmare in more ways than one. We'll get back to that I promise.

As I said I had not been on Match since about 2004 or so.  A few months ago thinking I might try the online dating thing again, at least for the purposes of *research,* I went back on Match, logged in and Lo and Behold there was my old profile from the tender age of 35 in all of it's youthful ebullience.  Word for word.  Now while I could still agree with sentences I had penned back then such as:

"As you can guess I am liberal but I have no patience for those who are lazy, stupid, or indifferent about their effect on others and the ecosystem we all live in."

          or  

"Fine jewelry is nice, but most of the time I would prefer a power tool."  Which might still be true but these words would be used against me should I actually meet someone who I end up entering a LTR with.  I would be getting Sawzalls and Dremels on every Valentine's Day for the rest of my life.  You get the picture.

 

....at this point the rest needed to be reworked a bit.  I felt the need to more succinctly elucidate the dozen or so dealbreakers I have picked up through the indoctrination of age...and serial dating.... while also injecting some humor as a counterpoint to the verbal barbed wire fence I needed to weave around my little essay.   That is to say I might as well state right off the bat that I no longer date slackers, liars, addicts or narcissists.  Yes, I realize I've just gashed a huge hole in the side of the potential suitor gene pool.  Look at that water streaming out......


Now here's a lesson for you: if Match.com kept my profile on their servers through 7 years of inactivity,   then you can bet they keep anyone's profile.  (and I don't mean my profile was still visible on the site even though I was a non-paying member, I call that leaving a "fishing line in the water" and a ton of folks do it even when they are married or in a relationship, which is über lame.)  If you notice a friend or old flame has changed their username on the site, they are probably doing it for one reason only: to change something about their online dating persona that they cannot change just by editing, and that would be--you guessed it--their birth date.

"Older and Wiser baby", my birthday card
from kid sister

Well a month ago I had not decided yet that I was going to re-enroll as the Older and Wiser Andrea on Match.com, but I did consent to having them send me an email of my "daily matches."  It comes to my inbox each afternoon while I am at work, and I do browse through the profiles just to remind myself why it's OK I have not dated in two years.

So about a month  ago, I was in my kitchen folding the goat cheese, sprouts and avocado into a shiitake spinach onion omelette I had made on the one morning of the week when I sleep past 4:30.  I sat down with the full plate, a steaming hot cup of tea, and my Ipad to read the New York Times.  It was a cold morning, and the pups were at my feet, Madison with her stuffed animal in her mouth and Chloe watching my every move for that moment when I would put down my fork and she would spring to her paws to have a chance to lick up the scraps from my plate.  I decided to check my email first, and there was my daily dispatch from match.com,  "Andrea, here are your new matches!"

So I clicked on it, and saw a very familiar face.  It was not a big shock to see X online dating, but...wait a minute....are you kidding me?

Under his handle it said "40 years old, Philadelphia, PA"  He had suddenly shed 8 years from his age, as in a few weeks he will be 49.   Not only that, but he had the gall to choose a username, like many do, with the year of his birth as part of the handle, only he used someone else's year, not his, someone almost a decade younger.  Pathetic.

I clicked on it, and read through the profile, and there were so many lies in it it made me a little sick to my stomach, mainly that I had once trusted someone who was even more of a liar than even I had figured out he was.  As my therapist remarked when I told her the story, "It kind of makes you wonder about everything he ever told you."

As the weeks have passed, however, the situation actually has had the opposite effect on me, as at one point I had actually considered reuniting with this person, but the older and wiser version of andrea has learned, finally, to trust her instincts and these told me that even though he had stopped the most obvious outward manifestations of his penchant for self-destruction, inside he was still a tortured soul and his abuse of himself and those closest to him would continue, albeit more subtly. In my world, even if a person is fine 95% of the time and a jerk the other 5%, well that's just too much for me.  You still have to live with the fear of when the beast will come out. And I don't like walking on eggshells. So seeing this validation of my instincts definitely made me feel good.


So simply because I know my audience eats this stuff up, not of course due to any desire on my part to expose his duplicity,  I will reveal a few of those lies as a cautionary tale to those of you who are currently fishing in the online dating pool.  I think the one who gets me the most is he states:

 'Fido'* is pure sugar. All he knows is LUV LUV LUV!! And he teaches me every day the Buddhist way... That the key to happiness is to be in the present moment - to never morn the past or worry about the future - but just to be here - now.. (* not the dog's actual name....yes I protect the identities of those I am maligning as well as that of their [former] animals)

The dog who really does show me every day how
awesome she is.  Unconditional love.

Ok, first off, this drives me crazy as a woman who has tenderly cared for three raw-fed dogs in the past decade.  This meant often not attending mid week social events, races, weekends away, whatever, because of not having adequate coverage for my animals.  I take the responsibility of acquiring and caring for a dog as a lifelong (the dog's life that is) commitment.  X no longer has a dog.  He gave Fido away because he could not take care of him, although in his mind he convinced himself that the dog would be better off as a member of a pack owned by a dog trainer friend of his with substance abuse problems who has too many animals to provide them with nutritious food and medical care.  Fido has terrible digestive issues and clearly could not handle his food but X angrily told me to stay out of it when I suggested that he needed to do some experimenting to get his dog on a diet on which the  American Staffordshire Terrier could thrive.  This dog produced massive volumes of room-clearing gas late in the day, was lethargic and always looked miserable, it was really tough to witness for me.   X has custody of Fido one weekend a month, so how the dog could possibly teach him "every day the Buddhist way" is beyond me.   For the way that my dogs, [who I take care of every single day whether they are killing groundhogs in the dog park, throwing up on the carpet, or scheduled for $1200 surgery because a fatty tumor is growing too fast] show me the Buddhist way, click here and scroll down to Part II.

The other killer sentence in this work of fiction that struck me was, "Mutual trust and deep respect, I believe, are the keys to a beautiful and powerful relationship", this from a guy who not only was a expert liar by his own omission, but who also had a mean streak a mile wide that was especially fierce with the application of any alcohol.  It was advisable never to criticize him for fear he would unleash his wrath upon you and inflict words you would have a hard time shaking off even years down the road.  Which made it tough to have honest discussions with him about any difficult emotional issue, because he was the classic case of narcissistic personality disorder, and combined with the aforementioned mean streak; well it just was not worth it.  Often he would ask me how I felt about something and I would just stare at him in dumb silence, knowing I could never have a balanced constructive conversation about it like I could with a partner who valued me as an equal.  Can you imagine me staring in dumb silence?  It's a terribly powerless way to feel in a relationship, I will tell you.

He also mentions he is "divorced, " because he and I used to joke that when you get into your 40s it is better to be divorced with no kids than "never married", because women think that men who are 48 and never married must have some serious issues with commitment.  But that does not mean you make up a story about being married, for God's sake!  It's one of the icebreakers on a first date, "so, how long have you been divorced?"  I wonder who the lucky ex-girlfriend will be who will become his wife in the double-life he will be concocting from day one of meeting someone new?

Oh, and he's a smoker.  He only smokes one cigarette a day supposedly, but he states clearly in his profile he will not consider dating one.  In fact, the phrase is, "No Way."  Nice.  Let me give you a hint people.  Even if you only smoke one a day, no matter how many times you brush your teeth, no matter how many mints you pop into your mouth, the non-smokers of the world can still smell it.  I certainly could.

Then there is the Age Question.  Many men, especially fit men, limit their age parameters for the partner to a few years beneath their own age, which always amuses me, as if their buddies will think less of them if they are not dating a younger woman.  Well, it's amusing me less year after year, I'll tell you.  So a cute 40 year old blond will inevitably say she is seeking men from 35-50, lets say, but a typical 40-year old man will say he desires a range of 28-35.  It's pretty gross actually, but men I talk to about it say that the women in their mid-40s and beyond don't keep themselves in shape.  OK, so don't email the women who don't fit your lifestyle.  It does not mean you don't consider that there might be one out there who bucks the trend.  I know plenty of female cyclists in their 40s and 50s who are in incredible shape, as they kick my ass out on the road.

The other option I guess, is just to lie about your age, and hope that the person you snared who would never have considered you if she knew you were 5 years older will forgive you when she finds out, should your meeting blossom until a full-fledged relationship.  I'm not even talking about the people who are just looking to get laid.  I'm talking about people like X who claim they are bored with meaningless sex and want a committed relationship.  I can't imagine a better way to start one off, can you?

Women looking at X's profile might be relieved to see that this open-minded 40-year old is seeking women from 28-45, but sorry girls, he is actually 49, like I said.  Oh well.  My recommendation? Ask to see a drivers license on the first encounter.  You can warn them that this is coming as I did in my latest rewrite with a sentence such as, "If you are lying about your age or anything else in your profile, please pass me by. I have found that it is ALWAYS just the tip of the iceberg, and I’m not interested in dating a man who has not come to terms with what is under his own skin."

Yes, I may be single longer than many of you because of my insistence on weeding out those who lack integrity, but at least I can sleep knowing there is not a snake in the bed next to me.  Just maybe a dog or two.

Be careful out there.  

attention ladies! help me take back valentine's day

downstairs at Jose Garces' Distrito

Valentine's Day has a storied history  with mysterious origins in both Christianity and Paganism, and has actually been celebrated since the Middle Ages, but as far as I am concerned, today's holiday has been mass-marketed via cheap chocolates, red roses and cliches concerning cupids and arrows ad nauseum.  It has become an obligatory test of one's Romantic Quotient:  a holiday that forces us to trumpet the significance of our oh-so significant others.  Ridiculous.  I don't need a holiday to remind my man to show me some love, anymore than I need a man who needs a holiday to remind him to show me the love.

This is mainly because:

1. Valentine's day is my birthday, so if I had a man, he has a pretty big reminder to get off his ass and take me out to dinner and get me a nice gift anyway.
2. Alas, of all of the valentine's day birthdays I have endured since the age of 18, I have only had a boyfriend or husband on, well, let's say 33% of them.  And this year I'm not exactly bucking the trend, since I have not had a significant other (SO) now in, well, 2 years.  And that's probably not going to change anytime soon.  You can't win the lottery if you refuse to buy a ticket.

But what the heck!  It's 2012, a leap year, the beginning of the rest of our lives, and right now, my life is in perfect homeostasis without a SO mucking up the works!  So lets get out there and celebrate my forty-something birthday and inject a little excitement into an otherwise banal tuesday night.

Ladies, you are officially invited to my Anti-V-day B-day Party, part 2.

No present, no drama, no busted expectations:  Just come on out to one of my favorite restaurants, Distrito in West Philly, have a margarita and let's toast to the wide-open possibilities.  Just think, you could be going through a painful messy breakup, suffering through another dinner with a complete bore, or meeting with lawyers to work out the details of your custody arrangement; but no, in fact, you are blissfully single and looking forward to a night out with the girls.

mocha cake from SwissHaus Bakery

If that weren't enough,  I ordered us a decadent chocolate mocha cake from Swiss Haus Bakery on Rittenhouse Square so leave your gluten-free guidelines at home because you need to know what a $40 chocolate cake tastes like.  Will it be better than sex?

going out on tuesday night = bad

THE RULES:


1. Dress cute.  
2. No gifts.  
3. Ladies only.
4. Reservations are at 7pm.  Dessert will be served around 8:30. 
5. RSVP to yours truly  before Feb 10th.

If you would like to stop by and skip dinner (although why you would want to miss dinner at one of Jose Garce's delicious establishments I don't know) just text me and let me know to expect you.  Looking foward to a night out with the girls!

andrea

demolition and renewal

recognizing and accepting when a friendship has run its course


So I finally it the bullet and hired a contractor to demolish the porch on 3434 and add in a bunch of smaller projects that have been nagging at me.  Two weeks ago when they started they pulled up all of the old decking and ripped out the rotted beams in the hopes that they could save as much of the original woodwork as possible before the peeling paint allows the elements to gain an entryway and rot to set in.  So it's been pretty hectic around here.  The contractor needed money and wanted to start the job right away; and I acquiesced, which meant scrambling around making hasty decisions about paint color and fixtures.  Big mistake I won't make again.

When I got myself into this mess I had not intended to act as the Project Manager on the jobsite known as Home when I thought I had hired a professional to perform this service.  All this on top of my already overbooked schedule and with the holidays looming it's no wonder there are a dozen half-written blogposts languishing in the hopper.

So last week at "work" I ordered a new light fixture,  a handsome copper rain chain to replace my beat up downspout aka ladder to the "starling turned squirrel nest".  I was snapping pictures of other East Falls homes on dog walks in an effort to pick my porch floor color (french clay); figuring out the correct grout with which to apply broken pottery mosaics to my outdoor dog shower he was fixing; inspecting the jobsite daily and texting and emailing him to fix all of his mistakes.  I also called the Schuylkill Center for Wildlife Rehabilitation to inquire as to the most humane method of squirrel "rehoming," and this was all just in the first day.

So they had been on the job for four of days when around 8 pm Sunday night I was cooking my food for the week in my fleece PJs when the dogs sound the alarm that there is a large man on the front porch.  I make it to the door and sure enough there is a very tall policeman and behind him are 2 squad cars and a fire truck with lights flashing.  At least the siren was not going.  What the....?

"Ma'am is this your truck?"

He pointed to the ancient red pick-up owned by my contractor, listing to its side in front of my house.  It looked quite pathetic  piled twenty feet high with the remains of my front porch along with some other trash and a couple of wood pallets; its rusty and dented bumpers barely fastened on. Yikes, I did not even notice that he had left it there, but I suppose it could have been worse.  He could have parked a dumpster in front of my house for a week. 

"No, but it belongs to my contractor."  That was the kind of vehicle you never wanted to admit you owned even if you did.  It made the Cherokee I drove for 10 years look like a Mercedes.

"Well it's leaking gasoline."  I looked, and sure enough, there was a puddle of gasoline under the truck snaking silently down the street, just waiting for some smoker to carelessly flick a cigarette butt and initiate an unwitting act of self-immolation.  One less smoker.  3434 is in the middle of the block on a pretty steep hill.  I mean not San Francisco grade steep but I was once told by PBF that is was the perfect hill for running hill repeats.  (And God knows he was the expert since he did nothing all day but workout.)  I swallowed and stepped out to get a better look. Oh boy.  

I told them I would call Caleb, the contractor, and of course he did not pick up the phone.  At any rate he eventually called me back, but by that time Philly's Finest had made use of my next door neighbor's dirty kitty litter left out for trash day and had soaked up the spill and split.  Caleb sheepishly told me he would have AAA tow the thing the next morning, and sure enough, as Madison, Chloe and I went out for our morning walk after I got back from the Kroc Center Monday am, there goes the truck propped up on a flatbed: piled so very high with the remains of 3434 and then of course being up on the tow truck, it became the proverbial ship out of water, silently glilding down the empty post-rush hour asphalt river called Henry Avenue towards God-knows-where.  It was quite a spectacle, and I watched these old pieces of my home slowly fade into the distance and felt a sigh of relief lighten up my wry smile.

As I watched I realized that that construction debris floating  away was the perfect metaphor for the dead wood that I had been clearing out of my life in the past 6 weeks.  There have been many changes I've initiated as I mobilize for The Big Move, but more specifically since Thanksgiving I have said goodbye to a couple of friends who had been close to me but who I finally came to realize were causing me more harm than good, and it was time to cut them out of my life before they caused anymore damage, just as I removed those rotted beams on my front porch before the weather could touch the intact boards behind them.  Both of these ex-friends were narcissists, which in my experience seem universally to be men whose fathers left gaping holes in their souls by abandoning them, literally or emotionally, when they were youngsters.  

And you know what?  I don't care anymore.  I'm finished being a pro bono therapist for people who won't take responsibility for bettering their damn selves, who, as Susan Gregory Thomas describes in her memoir, In Spite of Everything, can't treat women as equals because they grew up without a regular, involved Dad and thus need to divorce themselves from all of the female authority in their lives by engaging in "overcompensatory masculine behaviors" and "a relatively exploitative attitude towards females." Many were assholes growing up and grew out of it, but the narcissist, with his lack of a sense of purpose and weak self-esteem, often never completely can escape this immaturity.  I've long since rejected this pattern in my romantic relationships and now I'm at the point where that ban has to extend to my friendships a well.

I'm sick of being taken for granted for one thing.  Not that I mind helping out a friend, God knows my good friends turn to me when they want to get an honest opinion about something, but that's just the thing, if honest and directness is a gift I have to offer,  but I can't actually speak the truth to them even though that is exactly what they need to hear, I start to feel stressed and disingenuous.  If I can't help a friend initiate change in his life because I have to coddle the male ego less he erupts in anger or completely disengages, well then, what's the point?  What can my role become to this friend if I can't help him with my wisdom?  Unfortunately I become an enabler too; not quite as blatantly as the sycophants he chooses to date who will allow this behavior to go unchallenged, but close enough that it makes me uncomfortable.  

More importantly the time I was spending with them, I realized, I should be spending with someone, whether friend, family, or lover, who appreciates my compassion and concern.  It's not my job to teach them how to treat others: they are old enough to figure that out on their own. Enough said.

As for me, I feel as if I great weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.  Even Janel noticed that I was more relaxed and at ease when we met for dinner and the Queen of the Sun screening last week.  There has been even more solitude than usual, but I can't seem to get enough of it these days. I will spend time with family and friends here and there but I want to keep the momentum I have in the personal growth arena going, and getting pulled in a million different directions this time of year can leave you with plenty of updates to your Facebook photos but not a lot of substance with which to feed your soul when the dearth of engagements in January and February take their toll on those who need others to validate their existence.  Fortunately that has never been my lot.  Happy Holidays.

The following video from two Decembers ago reveals what my steps looked like before they were refinished in slate, what my porch looked like before it was ripped out and redone (and Rocky's old home demolished), and what my old Cherokee looked like before it was retired for the rocket.  Out with the old! Onward!

cyclists overtake the Kroc Center

So I lay unconscious and tangled in my flannel sheets a bit later than usual Monday morning and did not get to the gym until 6 am.  In the past month I've been showing up with the other Type-As I find waiting in the dark, their car engines running, impatient for the doors to be unlocked at 5:30.  I love my gym.  The Salvation Army Kroc Center, now that I've settled into my winter training program, is my home away from home that I visit three mornings a week.

In an effort to improve my dismal metabolic efficiency, I now go to the gym on an empty stomach and sit on the stationary bike for half and hour to 40 minutes spinning over 90rpm in my endurance zone.  Then I eat a homemade snack like these raw pumpkin cookies made with *fresh pumpkin* Colin threw together the last time he showed up on my doorstep because Jessica was having a girls night in and she suggested he did not possess the requisite estrogen stores. I highly doubt that, but I acquiesced and allowed him to derail my exciting Friday night plans anyway.  I thought asking my guest to make these cookies, which required he wrestle the skin off an honest to goodness sugar pumpkin when most folks would have reached for a can of puree, was a fair exchange for the nice *cooked dinner* he devoured.  I'm doing the raw food thing now, so I have to walk the walk. And I have discovered raw squash is fabulous.

Anyway back to the gym. The  grainless cookies were yummy, especially after riding for 40 minutes on an empty stomach.  So I had just polished off two of these babies and was sitting in front of the smith machine on a physio ball about to do another set of pull-ups when who should walk in but none other than ex-coach Colin himself with Dana Hanchin, founder of Sturdy Girl Cycling and neighbor on Bowman street. How fun! I was shocked to see the likes of him at 6:40 in the morning, that was for damn sure.  They both flashed big grins at my open-mouthed look of astonishment.  My peeps at my gym!

"I dragged him in here to show me the ropes," Dana explained.  She had a cute striped wool hat on as she strolled over to the dumbbells like she owned the place.

"Colin?  Show you how to use a gym?"  Now I was bewildered and Colin laughed as he stood over me, eyeing up the pumpkin coconut cookies peeking out at him from their little tupperware jewelcase in my gym bag. When he left 3434 the other night they were still in the dehydrator.

Dana and Colin both did a set of unilateral dumbbell rows on adjoining benches and I resisted the urge to walk up to both of them and pull their backs into extension a bit more.  Everyone does that exercise wrong, and I had already showed Colin how to do it perfectly at our old gym.  By the time I had finished my superset of pull-ups/triceps overhead extensions and decline sit-ups they were over on the other side of the place anyway.

 By the time I was done training my back, triceps and core and was ready to spend 10 minutes doing upperbody plyometrics drills in the aerobics room, I had lost them and figured they had split, but no, there they were, on the mats doing their core work, which is when I snapped the picture above.   I noticed Colin had the ubiquitous iphone on the mat with him, so a few minutes later instead of walking back over and bothering them again I sent Colin a text inviting them down to the pool with me so we could  play on the waterslide after doing some laps.  Yes, I said waterslide.  My gym has an indoor water park ostensibly for kids but sometimes we adults have to fling ourselves over the edge just to remind us that we are still a bit reckless.  It's a pretty low-risk way of feeling like you are not quite as old and boring as the folks working next to you in the office, anyway.  I, for one, know that neither Boss #1 nor Boss #2 would have gotten dizzy on a corkscrew-shaped waterslide before  work even began.  Actually they would probably be over the weight limit anyway and not allowed to climb the ladder.

So there I was in the aerobics room.  I had executed a few overhead medicine ball tosses toward the opposite wall when in walks Colin.

"Who is Louis?" he asked.
"huh?"

It turns out that the auto-complete feature on my Droid did not understand the word, "plyos" so it created a little confusion:

I'm doing louis in aerobics room then swimming.  Come ride the slide!  I did it twice Friday!  So fun!

So much for stopping in to say goodbye.

I sprained my ankle badly two weeks ago: first by rolling it while running in the Wiss with Madison and Chloe, and then the next weekend I left the dogs at home and took the Yeti out to Belmont and was awkwardly attempting a new off-camber log over,  got my wheel over the top and got stuck from lack of momentum. What other reason is there to get stuck on a mountain bike?  I unclipped my left leg and put my foot down towards the ground but the weakened left ankle crumpled under me and I was pinned under the bike; I heard my ligaments tear a bit around the ankle and the pain was excruciating.  I figure I have a grade two partial tear of my extensor digitorum brevis.   So my new self-designed winter training program was supposed to start last Monday with great fanfare, and it did, but I had to make some adjustments due to this injury.  Namely, no lower body plyometrics at all, no kicking in the water, and I stayed off the mountain bike for 10 days.

it's turned into a cankle

The new program seems to be going well so far, although I have had a bit less energy than usual.  I'm not sure if that's from skipping some meals, running out of my swanky $3 a day vitamins from Andrew Lessman, the fact that my ankle is badly sprained and my body is healing, or the fact that so many things have happened in the past 6 weeks that I have not even had time to write about that, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and fatigued.

Anyway, I did get back on the mountain bike to ride with 46 men (!) on Thanksgiving day in French Creek, which was fun because I was demoing a Yeti ASR5 carbon that Brian Wester the Yeti rep then allowed me to take home so I could dial it in a bit more and give it a whirl in the Wiss and Belmont.  Tomorrow morning I will take it out to Belmont where at 11 am I can also demo whatever bikes they have there from Scott as Breakway is doing a demo of Scott road and mountain bikes there.

Perhaps a Contessa Spark RC?  I'm so over pink though.