The Leg and I: The Saga Continues…

Sunday, June 28th — Well, it’s been another month since I posted, and I’m sorry. Two of those weeks I was away in Massachusetts, minus a computer.  But again, I’ll just have to hit the highlights for you — it’s been a mighty full month for me.

Class of 1959 Radcliffe/Harvard Reunion

Attending my 50th reunion was my official reason for making the transcontinental trip at a time when I probably should have stayed home and continued my three-times-weekly visits to the Wound Care Center. But my TRUE reason for going was to spend a couple of weeks with my daughter Sarah, her excellent husband Christopher, and my two small grandsons, Johnston (5.5) and Hayes (turning 3 in July). A year between visits when children are young is way too much!

You may not know that Radcliffe College was a liberal arts college for women, incorporated in 1879, and the “coordinate college” with Harvard University. I say “was” because in 1963, graduates of both colleges began receiving joint Radcliffe/Harvard diplomas; and in 1999, Harvard swallowed up Radcliffe entirely. Both men and women now attend Harvard; Radcliffe is no more, except as the Radcliffe Institute, a specialized post-graduate study program that uses Radcliffe’s buildings.  (The dorms are now part of the Harvard “house” system. They’ve been co-ed for a long time. But not for 50 years.)

When I was at Radcliffe, all my classes but one were held AT Harvard (just a mile’s walk up the brick sidewalks along Garden Street in Cambridge), WITH Harvard professors, and WITH Harvard students in attendance as well.The one class that was actually held at Radcliffe was Physical Education, with such unforgettable offerings as Fencing, Archery, Bowling, and Body Mechanics, as well as the usual Volleyball and various other sporty-type activities.  In all respects, I received the same education as the Harvard students, and was graded on the same scale by the same professors. I loved most of my courses, with the notable exceptions of Physical Education and a Statistics course I stumbled into by mistake.  I worked hard, learned an enormous amount, married one of the Teaching Assistants in the Spanish Department three months before my graduation, and do not now recall EVER having felt “disenfranchised” by being a female student.

That was the buzz word, however, among many of my classmates at our 50th reunion. There was a lot of talk about how we had been given short shrift in one way or another, discriminated against in favor of the young men with whom we attended classes. There was probably even more such chatter than I heard, since I took part in very few of the events (mostly lunches and dinners) and skipped the symposia, which were doubtless very interesting and worthwhile. Truthfully, I felt more “disenfranchised” at the reunion than I ever did as a student. The Harvards who were reuning got lovely crimson tote bags; the Radcliffes got a manila envelope with our name badges, event schedules, list of attendees and their “maiden names” (ugh!), and a bright orange sheet about swine flu and what to do if we thought we were coming down with it. Now, that’s discrimination, I do believe.

That’s enough about the reunion, except to say it’s a weird experience to look at some old geezer or elderly lady in a cardigan and sensible shoes and realize who that person used to be. Even stumping along with my cane, with my ongoing leg problems — I’m not doing so badly, all things considered. It could be a lot worse. I’m glad I attended.

The Grandma Game

Wonderful days with Sarah and her family! I always come away from seeing Sarah full of inspiration: she is incredibly organized (her kitchen junk drawer is tidy and clearly arranged! her spices are alphabetized! her cookbooks have lists on the front covers of favorite recipes and the pages on which they can be found!) — and she is astonishingly creative.  I loved the way they just let me slide into their busy daily life and become part of it for two weeks. The boys are full of energy, sunny most of the time with a few sudden thunderstorms that quickly pass. Sarah and I went to see Star Trek, and loved it.

I got to sit in on some “play dates” that left me feeling like an anthropologist observing a strange new culture, the natives of which fortunately spoke English. On a play date, the mommies sit and drink coffee and eat yummy little things that somebody baked, and talk about the teachers. The kids run madly around the yard, shrieking with glee, swinging and sliding and digging and chasing. Every few minutes an Intervention is called for. One mommy dashes over to her child and says something like, “Tell me what happened before he hit you,” or “What were you doing before she put mud in your mouth?” The crisis is averted, no one is bleeding; somebody has to go indoors to the bathroom; somebody locks the back door from the inside, and somebody else has to be persuaded to unlock it… I was exhausted. How do they do it? How in the world did I do it forty years ago?

Sarah very kindly, expertly, and graciously changed the goopy dressings on my leg each day. I hated having to ask her; but I guess leg goop held no disgust for her, since she just finished toilet-training a two-year-old boy.

Leg Update

You may remember that I received an Apligraf skin graft just before I flew off to Massachusetts. Two days after I returned to San Diego, I went to the Wound Care Center, expecting that when the special covering over the Apligraf was removed for the first time, everything would be coming along nicely.

Yeah, right.

Apparently my body was so enthusiastic about its six weeks with the Wound-Vac, during which it was encouraged to Make New Tissue and Fill In the Pit, that — even with the Wound-Vac removed — part of it continued forming new tissue in the wound area. So when the covering came off, there was a neat little mesa of new flesh about the size of a silver dollar, rising above the surface of the leg. They called it “hypergranulation,” but whatever its name, it meant that the Apligraf had not “taken” properly and had to be removed.

I was rather disheartened by this; and not at all happy that the hypergranulated area (oh, let’s just call it “the mesa”) would have to be reduced by (1) scrubbing hard with gauze pads, and (2) several applications of silver nitrate, to burn it down chemically. But the Good News was that Medicare will cover up to FIVE of these skin grafts. That must mean that it’s not uncommon for it not to work on the first try. The last week has been spent doing everything we could to take the Mesa down to just below skin level. As of Friday, it was looking really good. My little team of experts are planning to put on a new Apligraf on Monday, tomorrow. And then I guess we’re back to a couple of weeks of changing goopy dressings while the collagen part of the graft settles in, and the other part begins to Become Betsy.

I am still excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity to have one of these grafts, and I’m determined that it will work this time. The Leg and I have been having some serious conversations, during which I remind The Leg that if it ever wants to be nice and whole and normal again, this is our best chance. It needs to cooperate by curbing its enthusiasm for growing upward, and channeling it into welcoming the graft as part of itself.

I’ll let you know how we progress, the Leg and I.

Thanks for reading — Betsy