Miracle, My Ass!

Miracle Girl: Miracle, My Ass!

I have laid out all the reasons why my recovery wasn't a miracle in Coma Chameleon. Yet all the logical and scientific arguments fall on deaf ears with theists. They continue to believe God saved this long-time atheist's life. It's not about logic or evidence; that's why they call it faith.

But I say...miracle, my ass!

Hey kids (okay, maybe not kids), check out my new Patheos Atheist blog Miracle Girl. It's guaranteed lower in calories than Miracle Whip, and it's a lot funnier too! But wait, there's more! You can now follow Miracle Girl on Facebook absolutely free!

Rock and stroll

Tumblrs: Vasquez Rocks

One of the most challenging places we hike is Vasquez Rock. It's also one of the most visually stunning. Indeed, it has been a backdrop to countless TV shows, movies, and commercials. And next time we go, I'll be a bit more sure footed because of the hiking boots Keith bought me for my birthday.

But I still managed pretty well with my athletic shoes--with an occasional small slide in slippery sections--during our hike on April 24. (We skipped the hike this past Sunday to attend a charity event.)

Except for the flights of stairs I climbed (I avoided the elevator for the exercise) and the steep steps to

our stadium seats, the loong event was only a workout for my butt. Still, we more than made up for it on our typically strenuous hike at Vasquez Rocks.

But it was a far cry from the first time I left the rollator behind and tried out my hiking sticks there. The terrain which seemed so difficult for me then feels like an easy stroll now.

Just as I could barely imagine hiking the rough interior of the park, I can scarcely picture what I'll be able to scale next year, after another year of rehab and recovery. Plus, more appropriate footwear for what can now be properly termed a hike.

We'll be back to hiking next Sunday (we're taking our moms out to dinner on Friday to avoid the crowds). And I don't want to miss another hike. I didn't get where I am in my recovery by sitting on my butt.

Well, except when sitting down seemed to be the easiest way down a steep, natural stone step.

Some easier past walks through Vasquez Rocks, though they didn't seem like it at the time.

Walking in view of the monolithic outcropping I've nicknamed Gorn Rock in March of 2014.

Leaving my walker behind amidst the wildflowers in March of 2015. (Yes, I wound up wearing the same dress, but note the smaller rollator in the background,)

SfMCR: An imperfect storm

Eating dinner while still doing the sitting exercise.

My painful experience in a double-wide wheelchair was traumatic, to say the least. When a physical therapist showed up in my room the next day to see if I was ready for my exercises, I insisted they find me a small wheelchair. They dug around trying to find a child-sized one, which they couldn't locate, but I really just wanted to make sure it wasn't a large one.

After the combined physical and occupational therapy session, I was wheeled back into my room  to proceed to the sitting portion of my training. As I explained in my last Scenes from My Coma Recovery, sitting as long as possible was an important part of my rehab. Sitting sounds like simple lounging--prolonged sitting is actually considered harmful for most people--but I had been horizontal for six weeks. Without support my body flopped over like a wet noodle.

I always made sure they put the leg rests back on the wheelchair after my sessions in the "gym" because it quickly became painful to sit without my feet being supported. The supports were removed to allow me to do the exercises, and they didn't always remember to replace them after I was finished.

Once I was back in my room, I realized they had forgotten again and pointed that out to the assistant physical therapist who had wheeled me to my room. He went back to the gym and retrieved them for me. I thanked him and he left.

It wasn't long before I realized that my feet didn't quite reach the footrests. They must've given me the footrests from a larger wheelchair, I reasoned. I pressed the call button. Once the nurse reached Angel, a pudgy, good-humored, physical therapist I liked, he came and adjusted the rests a bit. But my feet still didn't reach.

He tried again, but said, "They're on the shortest setting already."

"But my feet still don't rea," I said, running out of air at the end, as usual. "They fit before."

"I'm sorry," said Angel. "They can't be adjusted anymore."

"They must be the wrong ones."

Sigh. "I'll go look."

When Angel came back, my feet still didn't reach.

"There aren't any others in the gym," he told me.

I noticed a pair of supports in the area of the room where spare equipment was stored. But when he retrieved them, they actually turned out to be extra large.

I was starting to feel worked up, my trauma from the day before still fresh on my mind.  "What am I going to do?" I began crying. "It's going to hurt."

"I'm really sorry, but there's nothing I can do. Why don't I get you a pillow?"

I shook my head violently, remembering how the pillows the day before only made things worse. "It's going to hurt."

By this time, Joella was there on her regular visiting shift. She checked the settings herself. "They're on the shortest settings now," she confirmed.

"They fit before," I repeated. "Please try again."

Angel fiddled with the footrests again. This went around and around, until Joella got so exasperated that she threw her cell phone on the hard tile floor, breaking it.

About this time, you're thinking I was being unreasonable. And you would be right. But you have to remember that I was on a high dose of prednisone, which plays havoc with your emotions. Add that to my trauma the day before and the stress of my recovery.

I eventually relented and agreed to try a pillow. I really didn't want to be making such a fuss. But my legs soon started hurting because my left foot still didn't quite reach. I shifted my position. And shifted again. And yet again. The pillow fell off the rests.

I pressed the call button once more. A CNA eventually appeared. She put a thicker pillow under my feet, but that proved to be too thick. Now the left foot fit, but my right felt jammed. Still, I decided to give it a try. It wasn't long before my legs started to hurt again.

I had the idea stuck in my mind that the original rests were still hiding in the gym somewhere. Another search, another goose egg.

This time, a different physical therapist showed up. I liked him, too, and I was embarrassed to be putting up such a fuss.

"But it fit before."

"You were probably sat too far back in the chair." He adjusted my back pillow, which was a thin pillow brought to me from our home. It was quite comfortable. Indeed, I continued to use it with the wheelchair after I left the nursing home, and I'm sitting against it now. But because it wasn't designed for wheelchairs, it had a tendency to shift.

The new position was a bit better, yet my legs still didn't quite sit flat on the rests. But he helped shift my position in the seat (I was so weak that I could only help slightly).

Ah, problem solved.

The moral of the story? Being in a nursing home is stressful. Compounded with pain, trauma, and helplessness, with a heaping dose of a medicine that is notorious for messing with your emotions, it makes for a volatile situation.

My elbow is resting on the thin pillow from home.

These shoes weren't made for walking

The photo op area outside the Magic Castle.

Yesterday was my birthday. But August 25th is my rebirthday. Of course, I'm certainly no Christian--that was the day I awoke from my coma into a different life.

It's been a wobbly recovery, much the way I felt wearing the dressy pumps, with 1 1/2 inch heels, last Sunday during our birthday celebration at the Magic Castle. Even before the coma, I didn't tend to wear high heels, and those are the highest-heeled shoes I own, but also the dressiest. They have a squarish heel, but I still felt unsteady enough in them to bring my Hurrycane.

I guess you could call it a crutch.

I hadn't worn the shoes since my coma, but the strict dress code at the Magic Castle prohibits sandals, and the only other pair of non-sandal dressy shoes I own have a lower, but wedge-shaped heel which kept making my feet go sideways.

Not good.

Neither were ideal shoes for someone who still wobbles slightly due to lingering vertigo and a slightly weak right leg from stroke damage. Though I've taken to leaving my cane at home because I don't generally need it anymore, I felt it would be wise to take it with me this time.

We were visiting the Magic Castle at the invitation of Norman and Madelyn Gilbreath. Norman has been a member since before it was the Magic Castle. He's a magician who invented his very own magic principle that has its own Wikipedia page.

He gave us a private demonstration that was loads of fun.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of our delightful evening, but suffice it to say that it was the funnest birthday celebration of my adult life. Well, I have to give at least one supercool detail: We ate a private dinner where they hold tongue-in-cheek Victorian-style seances to contact Harry Houdini, in a room lined with priceless Houdini memorabilia. If only they allowed photos inside the Magic Castle!

The shoes are of glittery gold, and Madelyn said they looked like fairy shoes. They're the most expensive shoes I've ever owned--$80!--but they were originally cost much more because I picked them up these Stuart Weitzman pumps on clearance at Nordstrom Rack (probably because they didn't have a lot of takers who wore size 5). I didn't buy them because of their heels, but despite them. As I've always said, wearing high heels would only make me a very short person in high heels, with a bad back and aching feet. But they are lovely.

Still, I'm no Carrie Bradshaw, and this post isn't about shoes. It's about my confidence that my fairy shoes wouldn't launch me into the air as I climbed up and down the stairs repeatedly in the unfortunately not-handicapped-adaptable Magic Castle.

As we ate in the coolest room ever, I describe how in the nursing home, at first, the physical therapists counted as steps every time I moved my feet forward a tiny fraction of an inch. Two physical therapists had to support my weight for that, and even when I could make a few actual steps I still needed them in the beginning.

My first unsupported steps. As you can see, I was barely lifting my feet.

It was a technique John Silva learned at Rancho Los Amigos. Norman said that he had an aunt who

My first outside steps with John Silva.

work there many decades ago, back when the hospital was filled with polio victims from a defective vaccine. The technique involves doing anything you can to get patients to walk as soon as possible. The other physical therapists scoffed, telling me that I wasn't really walking and later warning me that John was pushing me too fast as he led me on walks outside the nursing home.

I went on to recount how I couldn't stand, but eventually found that I could use a special walker with arm braces (see above). I would throw myself at the braces and grab on for dear life.

But if John hadn't pushed me as fast as he did, I wouldn't have been able to go home in time to save my Kaiser health insurance.

The "fairy shoes" that carried me from from that walker to the Magic Castle were not infused with pixie dust, but determination and rehab. I felt unsteady, but I had faith that I was strong enough to wear those somewhat high-heeled pumps, with the slippery leather soles, without falling on my face.

The last thing I needed was to set back my recovery in celebration of the third birthday I wasn't expected to see.

Admittedly, this step in my recovery pales in comparison to the sequential steps I took on the long staircase in the Magic Mountain. Still, this is another advance on the road to normalcy.

The ruby slippers in the classic movie version of The Wizard of Oz were silver in the books, but not gold in either. Yet I was easing on down the yellow brick road to recovery, in impractical designer shoes I took off the moment I got home.

As pretty as they are, I prefer comfortable.

The shoes are next to the mums Keith gave me for my birthday. Any bets on how long it will take me to kill them? (I'm a notorious serial killer of the plant world.) Peeking out on the left are the artificial flowers Keith gave me for our anniversary because the nursing home didn't allow real ones, So far, I haven't managed to kill those.

Your Fate is in Your Hands (except when it isn't)

The Secular Spectrum: Your Fate is in Your Hands (except when it isn't)

Today is my birthday, the third I wasn't supposed to live to celebrate. That is a present all in itself. But after my coma, I was given another gift--a do-over and chance to gain many more years.

That's because my recovery has goosed me into reforming my life and shedding many of my unhealthful and downright harmful habits. Because of that, I will probably live many years longer.

Though I already knew this, my illness(es) impressed on me the fact that you never know what monkeywrench life might throw at you. Though you have no control over that, you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to control what you can.

That's why I wrote my latest SecSpec post today instead of staying up into the wee hours of the morning to write it, just so readers on the East Coast could see it in the morning. When Keith stopped making my breakfast for me, he worried that I might start backsliding into my old bad sleeping habits.

He needn't have worried. Nowaday, I'm frequently the one who starts getting ready for bed first. I'm obsessed with getting enough sleep.

Maybe it was that six-week nap that did it....

And now for something competely dfferent

The enormous jacket wasn't a fashion statement. Keith keeps it in the car, and we were woefully unprepared for a hike at an elevation of 4000 feet.

Tumblrs: McGill Trail, Los Padres National Forest

Just as my recovery taken me on a long, tortuous path, so went the search on Sunday for a trail Keith once hiked.
Before we knew it, we had overshot the mark by at forty-five miles. But also like my recovery, we found our journey took us along a pleasantly unexpected path.

We wound up far from our usual dry chaparral environs to a place that seemed like a different world. Here, we found pines and lichen-encrusted branches instead of sparse live oaks and sagebrush (which we nonetheless love).

But like our parched landscape, fire had touched this mountain forest, as well. Yet--and here's the final recovery analogy--the fire-cleared areas were already healing, with baby pines growing where their parents had been felled.

Since we've never walked in a natural pine forest before, I've dug out some pics from early garden walks. The first was taken on our first visit to the Japanese Garden on 12-8-13, in front of a very non-natural pine--a large bonzai.

The second was taken on at the LA County Arboretum on 1-4-14, also on our first visit.

The third pic, was taken at Descanso Gardens on 12-22-13. Do I even have to mention what visit it was?

Hiking where the Chumash gathered

The steps down into what we think is a recreation of a sweat lodge were steep enough that I needed to give myself a boost by partly pulling myself.

Tumblrs: Oakbrook Regional Park

In May of 2015, all I could do was look on from the outside.

Oakbrook Regional Park was occupied by Chumash Indians as long ago as 12,000 years ago. The appeal for the Chumash and us was the hundreds--probably thousands when they were there--of magnificent oaks.We love their sculptural, twisty-turny trunks. The Chumash were undoubtedly drawn by the acorns, a dietary staple for them, as well by the area's seasonal creek.

The Chumash Indian Museum manages the park, and they also built a recreated Chumash village,

which looks like it receives a regular stream of schoolchildren on outings. On our first outing to the park, I brought both my hiking sticks and my Hurrycane. On the way up, I used the cane, and as an experiment, on the way back I used the sticks.

Even though I was already tired, I found I could travel much farther with less energy with the hiking sticks. Thereafter, I began using the hiking sticks exclusively.

Even so, I was so tired that I lunged for the first

bench we found. This time, it was Joella's turn to lust for the chance to rest. I've gotten so strong that I barely noticed the incline that had so exhausted me on the first visit. But it didn't escape Joella's notice

My welcome rest in 2015.

But we knew she would love the park's magnificent oaks, and we were right.

As usual, after the portion of our walk with Joella and a nice picnic, we headed off to a more vigorous hike. There we hiked in an oak forest that looked like it had barely been altered since the Chumash roamed it. Well, besides the road, of course.

You could almost imagine the Chumash gathering the acorns and grinding them into a mash that they would leach of its tannins and turn into a flour.

In fact, don't those flat rocks look like grinding rocks? No, it's probably our imagination running away with us. Perhaps they were caused by erosion instead.

But I couldn't get the rock out of my mind. When we returned to Joella, I slipped into the Chumash Indian Museum to ask an employee about the rocks.

Yes, she told me. Those holes were made by the Chumash.

Wow, very cool!

All told, we hiked 2.74 miles though the former home of the Chumash, who gathering acorns blissfully unaware that they would be one day shunted off their land into reservations.

The Chumash now own a casino, while a small museum pays tribute to their nearly forgotten culture.

On that sad note, here's a bonus pic of a huge, burned-out tree smack dab in the middle of the parking lot. It's hollowed out, yet it still survives, much like the Chumash.

Stopping just long enough to smell the roses

Tumblrs: Orcutt Ranch

One of the first places I wanted to see when my mother and I moved to LA was the La Brea Tar Pits

Seizing the day, in this case, Easter.

(translation the the tar tar pits). Well, the discoverer of the Tar Pits was W.W. Orcutt, the previous owner of one of our favorite nearby places to walk, Orcutt Ranch.

We hadn't been back since May of 2015, however, because it was beginning to become too small for me. The reason we returned last Sunday was that when Keith's sister and his mom were there on a holiday last year, it wasn't crowded. That sounded appealing, since the last time we walked on Easter Sunday, it was a madhouse...a madhouse!

One of the downsides--really the only one--of getting stronger is that some of our favorite walking places have to fall by the wayside. I'm afraid that Orcutt Ranch is going to be one of them. Oh, there's plenty to see there, cool statuary, dozens of vibrant varieties of blooming roses and other fragrant flowers, ancient oaks, and citrus orchards to boot (see Tumblrs).

How could I forget the orchards--I walked through them enough times last Sunday! We eventually managed to rack up 2.40 miles, but the map of our walk looks like silly string.

Not that I'm complaining. Okay, I'm complaining. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but even though we took different routes each time, it got a little tedious after a while. All in all, we took two plus round trips around the ranch. I also climbed every staircase in the ranch, to the point that I climbed one and then walked right back down again.

I can remember when the "hill" felt more like a mountain. This time, I walked up what felt like a mere incline.

Posing with the Three Graces for the first time at Orcutt Ranch, in March, 2014. I'm struck how fat my face had become from prednisone every time I see an old pic.

As we made one more lap around the ranch, our conversation drifted to other favorite walking place that I've grown past. The world-class Japanese Garden in Van Nuys sprang immediately to mind. Next time we go there we'll have to make a couple of loops through it, as well.

It seems strange to feel nostalgic for weakness, and of course I'm proud too. The fact is, I couldn't have walked a fraction of what I did Sunday before my coma.

I literally didn't stop to smell the roses. In fact, I wouldn't have gone out at all just for pleasant walk. Oh, we would walk through the Natural History Museum and afterwards we stroll through the adjacent rose garden on the way to the parking lot. But I would already feel wasted from the museum and I couldn't wander as much as I would like to have.

Throwback Thursday, taken in May of 2010 in front of the Rose Garden.

Indeed, my entire attitude about exertion has changed. Now, I actively seek out opportunities for exercise instead of avoiding them like the plague. I push myself through the exhaustion instead of quitting when I'm starting to feel tired.

So so long, Orcutt Ranch, with its roses, magnificent oaks, statuary, and swastikas. Yes, you read that right. W.W. Orcutt fetishized Native American culture. As the signs carefully point out, the swastikas festooned throughout the grounds were Native American sun symbols installed in the twenties, long before the Nazis came to power. But I regret not posting for one last pic next to the pylon with the huge swastika. How could any Jew with a sense of dark humor resist?

The last time I posed with the swastika, in May, 2015.

Goodbye to all that

At least someone will be sorry to see the wheelchair go. Notice the caked mud on the wheels.

I should've done it ages ago...at least since 2015, and perhaps as early as 2014. The wheelchair was
simply taking up space in Keith's trunk. The only thing that kept me from making the call to have the wheelchair picked up was the motivation to get around to finding the phone number.

I finally did that yesterday. And today, FedEx came by to carry the wheelchair away for good.

Good riddance to my earlier dependance!

A photo taken on our first rehab walk. Keith wheeled me between the viewing stations so I could walk the few yards to the outlets using the walker hooked onto the handles of the wheelchair.

A rocky recovery at a stony park

This time, I was strong enough for Keith not to spot me before I reached the steeper and slipperier section of the path to the wind cave.

Tumblrs: Rocky Peak Park

On our second visit to the stunning and strenuous Rocky Peak Park, we made like our Cro-Magnon ancestors by dining in a rock shelter. Just as they would've eaten their bagels. The rainstorm we were trying to avoid by hiking on Saturday

caught us unprepared on Saturday.

Typical Mother Nature, raining on our recovery parade.

Rocky Peak is extremely steep and the path is sometimes treacherous. It's so difficult that it's even hard on Keith's knees.

Still, I found that I was able to ascend the park's heights more easily than I could just a month prior. It was gratifying to note that my hard work at rehabbing was paying off.

After I had basked in the freedom of having the wind cave to ourselves by exploring the depths I could reach safely (see gif below), we stopped for a picnic. As it turned out, we had lucked upon an open rock shelter just before it began to rain.

It was a good thing we had left the cave because the path out of it would've become a Slip'N Slide. Dry, if not warm, we waited out the rain in our open-plan cave.

Descending on our first trip in February.

Unfortunately, to avoid the slippery slope of descended the path in the mud, we were forced to head back after our picnic, instead of heading deeper into to park, as we had planned. After all, last time, I got cocky and fell down on the descent, skinning my knee. And the ground was mostly dry.

But I'm sure the wildflowers already peppering the park appreciated the precipitation (say that ten times fast.)

See Tumblrs for more pics, including the wildflowers.

Admiring one of the natural rock sculptures at the park last time.

And here I was struggling to my feet inside the wind cave on this trip. It's a measure of how difficult my recovery has been--from the strokes, coma, and the previous dermatomyositis muscle damage--that even the ability to stand up from the ground using only a low rock as leverage is still something to celebrate.

Walking with Joella's dog where coyotes pupped

Tumblrs: Conejo Valley Botanic Garden

The last time we went to the Conejo Valley Botanic Garden, in with Joella and her Australian terrier Sadie, in June, 2015, they were barred from the garden because coyotes had been spotted in the garden with their pups.

Luckily, there's a nice community park right outside the botanic garden. We eventually left them to rest while we walked through the botanic garden. Still, the highlight of the day was our picnic together, when we watched a family of juvenile squirrel frolicking and poking in and out of passageways under the concrete of a drainage ditch like Whack-a-Moles.

That was our second visit. The first was only the second time I had used my hiking sticks to climb stairs without rails--and these were much longer flights than those had been. Stairs have gotten so old hat for us now that Keith often doesn't even bother to take pictures of me climbing them. Sunday, while Joella walked up the ramp to the garden, I took the stairs.

That visit was also the first time that we left my wheelchair behind at a new garden while I was using the hiking sticks. I guess you could call it a leap of faith that I could do without it.

And now I've left the wheelchair behind for good.