Steven Harper's Blog, page 21

Shoulder Surgery 24 (Redux)

The surgery pain in my shoulder still won't go away, and I made yet another appointment with the new doctor to talk about it. We came away with this:

1. Apparently, 85% of patients report satisfaction with shoulder surgery. That means 15% have continual problems. I seem to be one of them.

2. Based on my most recent MRI, the doctor still doesn't think that exploratory surgery is necessary (good), and a second shoulder operation (which never goes as well anyway) would be a bad idea.

3. The doctor suspects the main tendon is still inflamed, which is causing the problems, but he isn't sure. He advised taking more anti-inflammatories. If it is indeed inflammation, a third cortisone shot might help, or even solve, the problem, but he didn't want to give me one unless he was sure the tendon was inflamed.

4. He wouldn't prescribe more painkillers. "As surgeons, we only prescribe meds post-surgery, and you're past that phase. You'll need to talk to your GP." (I later did, and he prescribed more Meloxicam, but nothing more powerful.)

5. Because the pain isn't going away, I need to "put a pause" on the physical therapy.

So what do we do?

In the end, I paused the PT and was scheduled for another MRI. I got an appointment only a day later and went in for it, but the first available appointment for follow-up wasn't until the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. 

In the meantime, however, the MRI results showed up in my patient portal. I untangled the medical jargon--here's where it's an advantage growing up in a medical family--and saw that, yep, the tendon is inflamed. 

Next week I see the doctor, then, and he'll probably give me the cortisone shot. I hope that ends it!

 

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Andor: Unpopular Opinion

(Unpopular opinion coming up.)

Andor is a slooooooowwww show. My god, it's slow. Did I mention that it's slow? We should talk about how slow the show is, just like the show endlessly talks about stuff that is slow, in a slow, slow way.

The show also has no fun or funny robots (B2EMO is barely a presence). It has no light saber battles. It has no space ship battles. It has no central antagonist that we love to hate.

So what =does= it have?

A dry study of the economics of the Empire. Speeches at the Empire Senate. Dinner parties. Shopping trips to an expensive boutique. Long, long, LONG discussions about the nature of morality. Long, long, LONG discussions about whether or not to go through with a plan (when we already know full well they're going to go through with the plan). Long, long, LONG examinations of family dynamics in families that aren't all that interesting. And a slow, slow plot. In other words, it has nothing fans expect in a Star Wars show.

I haven't fully understood the high praise the show gets. It's a decent soap opera in a SNnal setting, but everything moves so slowly that I haven't felt compelled to scarf down the next episode. And I can forgive a slow plot if the characters are compelling, but ... they just aren't. I watch the show more out of a sense of duty and a desire to keep up with SW continuity than anything else, but I can only work up enough interest to watch an episode every couple of weeks. Viewers like me are the reason the show's numbers are down.

https://screenrant.com/andor-star-wars-show-fans-not-watching-reason/

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Mastodon

Who's on Mastodon? I'm stevenharper @mastodon.online there. Come find me!

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Game Day Morlocks

After I moved away from the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, I forgot about ... Game Days.

If you aren't a football fan (and I'm not), Game Days in the hometown of the University of Michigan are a strange combination of locking down and scurrying out.

See, the Big House (the local nickname for the UofM stadium) holds up to 114,000 people. Most of those 114,000 people come from out of town. This means most of those 114,000 people flood the local highways and roads. The entire day before the game begins, no one can go anywhere. The highways (and there are three of them--four if you count I-275) become parking lots. Every street within five miles of the Big House is backed up. I'm always amazed that anyone manages to get to the game at all.

And then all 114,000 of these people need a place to park. The lot at the stadium fills up a day beforehand (seriously--people actually CAMP OUT in the parking lot). All the street parking within a mile of the stadium becomes engorged. The people who live near the Big House make a cottage industry of charging people to park on their front lawns. PARK HERE! shout the home-made signs. $100 FOR THE DAY! And people pay it. The high schools rent out their parking lots and shuttle buses ferry people to the game. The local supermarkets don't get in on this action, but their lots are full anyway--fans park for free at Kroger or Meijer, then try to get an Uber or Lyft driver to the stadium. If you work for either company, you want to be out there on Game Day.

Of course, all these people want to be fed. Every restaurant and bar in both towns is packed to the gills on Game Day. The takeout places are stacked with orders. Between demand and clogged streets, a pizza delivery won't arrive for at least three hours.

We non-fans keep an eye on Game Day, too. We have calendars and red-ink reminders: GAME DAY! DON'T FORGET! and MY GOD, WATCH OUT FOR GAME DAY! This isn't because we care about the game. We care about getting stuck. Before the game, we non-fans stay home, with the doors locked and the windows barred and the lights off. We huddle in the basement while the fans thunder through our city overhead. We don't make plans. We don't even venture outside. Instead, we wait. This is the lock down portion of Game Day, and it bites football cleats.

But then ... then ... the game begins. And a hush falls over the city. Everyone is in the Big House. The streets and highways are clear. Restaurants and bars and stores are empty. Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti become ghost towns. This is when we non-fans have our time. Like Morlocks at sunset, we creep outside and do anything we want! Eating! Shopping! Entertaining! We have THE WHOLE TOWN TO OURSELVES because everyone else is either at the game or watching it at home.

The cool part, though? All the retails places are fully staffed. They schedule all the workers for Game Day because they get slammed before the game. Then, during the game, the workers repair the damage and await the post-game second rush. So when we non-fans go into such places, we find a lot of staff who are just dying to wait on us. It's lovely! This is the scurry portion of Game Day.

Smart non-fans keep the game running on their cell phone or radio, not because we care about the game--again, we don't--but because we need to know how it's progressing. When the fourth quarter starts, the non-fans scurry back home and hide in the basement again, though now we're nicely fed and fully stocked. For three or four hours after the game, the streets and highways and bars and restaurants are clogged again, and we don't dare go anywhere. But we don't need to because we've already done what we need to do.

I lived in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area for twenty years, and this was the circle of life. Every autumn, the air turns crisp, the leaves change colors, and Game Day looms over you. But then I moved away and was gone for nearly ten years. Now I'm back, but Game Day didn't make a blip on my radar.

As it happens, I eat lunch with a group of male teachers who talk about almost nothing but sports. It's dreadfully dull, and I usually pull out my phone and read when one of the guys says, "So how's that new pitcher for the Puxatawny Groundhogs doing?" I do keep an ear out in case someone brings up a different topic, which turned out to be a good thing. Today, one of them mentioned "The game against MSU," which is Michigan State University, to which another guy said, "Yeah, they might actually beat Michigan this year."

Michigan, of course, means University of Michigan. My old reflexes kicked in, and I came to attention. I interrupted. "Are they playing in Ann Arbor or Lansing?"

They looked at me like I was a space alien. "Ann Arbor," came the answer.

"Ah." I tried to keep it casual. "What time does the game start?"

"Seven."

I blinked. "Seven?"

"Yeah. It's a night game. We won't get home until two in the morning, and that's without the drinking, har har har."

Oh, crap. Usually games start at two or three, which means we non-fans only have to huddle inside until afternoon. A seven o'clock game means we stay inside ALL DAY LONG.

But at least I got warned. On Saturday, we'll be good little Morlocks and hide in our tunnels until it's safe.

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The News and Teachers

The News Media: Why are teachers quitting in record numbers?

Also the News Media: A teacher died trying to save students from a school shooter

Daycare worker charged for allegedly sharing obscene photos with kids at school.

Two dead, four wounded during overnight shooting near North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Shooting at a St. Louis High School Leaves Multiple Black Students Wounded and One Killed

A student filmed a fight at a Central Florida school. Administrators are trying to expel him

4 teens under investigation for allegedly sexually assaulting special needs student

Penn State Hosted The Proud Boys Despite Outcry. Students Were Attacked.





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Dora's Bad Habit

Dora has an enormously bad habit. She tries to leap onto my lap, but because she's so fat, she's sure she can't quite make it, so she lands with all her claws out and digs in. Then she has the temerity to get upset with me when I pluck her from my bleeding lap, toss her away, and squirt her with the water bottle when she tries to come back. She KNOWS she's allowed to jump up beside me, but never, ever ON me. And yet, she still tries.

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Shoulder Surgery 23 (Harp)

So here's what happened:

After an involved discussion with my primary physical therapist, we decided I could start coming in just once a week, though I still need to do daily exercises at home or at the gym. I've noticed I'm about an inch or so away from pre-surgery mobility with my bad arm when I reach behind and up my back, though it still hurts to reach that far. I was taking all this as progress.

Today, the therapist asked me update questions. "How difficult is to do this? Do you feel pain when you do that? How well are you able to perform daily activities?" To the last, I said that most activities--running, biking, computer work--didn't cause me problems, but others did, including playing the harp. I explained that I couldn't play very well because the correct arm position for play causes me pain.

As part of the regimen for the day, the therapist also had me do a different stretch. I stood with my back against a wall and was supposed to reach up with my elbows bent so that the back of my arm and hand were also flat against the wall.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't even come close. Not only did it hurt like hell, my arm simply wouldn't move that way. (My good arm could do it without trouble.)

I became enormously upset. So far, I'd been able to do every stretch or exercise they'd handed me. It was just a matter of degree or intensity. But this I couldn't do. It felt like a gut punch, as if the last ten months (TEN MONTHS) of work meant nothing. I shut down and spent the rest of the session nodding or shaking my head or giving one-word answers to questions. I fled the clinic the moment we were finished.

A bit later at home, I got an email from the therapist. She said that she had discussed my harp playing with the head of the PT team, and that I could play as long as I followed certain instructions, which she attached. They involve stretching before playing, playing short runs, stretching and icing afterward, and keeping track of how long I could play and then slowly increasing my time.

I lost it again. I slumped over the computer, trying not to scream or cry or both.

Why was I so upset? Because something central to my life, something that gave me pleasure and relieved stress and helped me in a thousand other ways, had abruptly been yanked into becoming a tool for the physical therapy I both hate and fear. I can't just sit down and play my harp. No, I have to do extensive stretches and warmups. I have to monitor my playing time. I have to do cooldowns and icings. Playing the harp for ten minutes has turned into a 30-minute chore. There's no joy or pleasure in it.

The email also forced me to face something I'd been ignoring. I haven't played Corey since the surgery. That's ten months. I haven't even tried, or even thought about it. At first it was because I was in a sling and couldn't even go to the bathroom without extensive preparation, let alone play a harp. But once the sling was off, I still avoided Corey. I didn't consciously do it--I just didn't play. The email made me realize that it was because I'm afraid that I can't play anymore. The pain stopped me, and so I stopped trying. Now I've gone ten months without touching a string for fear of pain and failure. The harper's calluses on my fingers are gone. My fingers are stiff. I'm forgetting the music.

My playing has hit both a physical and an emotional wall. I don't know how to break it down--and I hadn't realized until today how thick that wall has become. I could march into the family room right this moment, sit down, and put my hands on the strings, sure. Nothing is physically preventing me. But just thinking about it knots my stomach and makes me feel a little sick.  The combination of fear and the new connection of my harp to PT freezes me.

I feel like I've been robbed. A major part of my life is gone. I don't know how to get past this. I suspect I'll eventually manage to coax myself into sitting down and trying to play, and I might even be able to make recognizable music. But it'll be nothing like I used to do--and it'll be a PT chore. That makes me angry and depressed all over again.

I don't know how to handle this. I do know that I'm not handling it well. It's like abruptly realizing that I've had a bleeding wound for the last ten months, and I don't understand how the hell I didn't see it before, and I don't know how to stop it bleeding and I'm trying not to panic.

Something new to talk about with my counselor, I suppose. But in the meantime, I'm still not playing.

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Resurrection Men: A Short Look

Resurrection Men is a great book for the Halloween season. Autumn, abandoned graveyards, sneaking around in cemeteries, costumes, thrills, and chills! Reviews are coming in, and they're universally awesome!

"Extremely engaging and swiftly paced. Nicely balances macabre history with heartwarming relationships. " --David Nelson

"Arthur and Jesse are compelling characters and the romance feels legit. Lots of fun and a little dark Michigan history trivia to boot. Highly recommend!" --Christian Klaver

"Impeccably researched with engaging characters and a captivating plot, this one’s a must read." --Sarah Zettel

"The pacing of this historical novel is perfectly balanced, from desperate action to the sweet, slowing unfolding of a deep connection between the two men. Historical details create a vivid setting that heightens the stakes, drawing the reader ever deeper into this compelling story." --Deborah J. Ross

How about an excerpt?


CHAPTER ONE [image error]

            A resurrection man watched the funeral, and his expression was hungry. He stood behind the huddle of funeral-goers clustered around the grave and didn't speak with anyone, which was how Jesse spotted him. A dead giveaway, so to say. Jesse stared at him from the corner of one dark eye. The resurrection man wasn't yet twenty. Brown as a dead tree. Straight brown hair under a frayed brown cap, long nose, sharp jaw, long brown coat mended twice, worn brown shoes that were nonetheless carefully polished. Someone who was used to hiding who he was.

            The resurrection man met Jesse's eye for a flick. He had good eyes, that one—clear and blue and strong—and Jesse touched his cap in salute. Jesse had a gravedigger's build, wiry and a little short, able to throw an eight-pound shovelful of dirt six feet toward heaven, and he could hold his own in a fight against two men half again his height. The resurrection man was taller, whipcord, and Jesse bet he wore gloves to keep his hands clean when he robbed night-time graves. No one who saw him by day would know what he did at night.

            When their eyes met, blue on brown, it created something interesting and indefinable, like that boundary moment when water touches a burning coal, or warm ocean air brushes a chilly shore. The resurrection man looked away. Jesse clicked his tongue in mischief—and the chance to make some money.

            The coffin rested on a pair of beams set across the grave Jesse had dug only that morning. Jesse always put a scattering of sawdust and a few pine branches in the bottom of his graves so the coffin wouldn't rest on dirt. It made no difference to the deceased, mind you, but it made the family feel better. Two solemn boys pulled the beams away, and the pallbearers lowered the coffin with ropes braced around their necks like pulleys while the preacher said his final bit. While all this was going on, the resurrection man slipped away, confirming Jesse's suspicions that the man was a grave robber who knew the best time to leave was when the family was occupied.

            As the family drifted off, Jesse barely overheard a man and a woman in conversation. The woman murmured, "He won't get up and come after us, do you? He's stubborn enough to try."

            "Jesus, I hope not," the man muttered back. "That copper-plated sumbitch was bad enough when he was alive. I can't think what he'd be like, lurching around, dead."

            Death brought out the truth among the living. Jesse looked in the direction the resurrection man had taken and gave himself a private nod. It was going to be an interesting evening.

            Jesse finished filling the grave of Mr. Elmer Pitt (b. 1803, d. 1889), then went home to the little shack he occupied at the edge of Highland Cemetery, made himself a pot of strong coffee on his bachelor stove, dropped a slug of Irish in it, and waited until sunset. When the early autumn night slid in cozy among the gravestones, Jesse put his shovel back over his shoulder and strolled toward the grave of Elmer Pitt. There was time to enjoy the walk and think about how to spend the money he would shake out of the resurrection man. It had been a while since he'd passed a good night's drinking and fighting at a pool hall. Or maybe he'd buy a new pair of boots.

            The trek was easy. Didn't matter that it was dark. Jesse had dug plenty of graves in Highland Cemetery and knew the place like the end of his shovel. He even had a map of the place tacked to the wall of his shack, with every grave picked out in careful precision. People thought that graveyards laid out the dead in neat, cornfield rows, but Highland's graves made a swirling mosaic that twisted around the hills and trees, creating stars and flowers and teardrops that only God and Jesse's map could see. Jesse had taken over as the main gravedigger in Ypsilanti from Mr. Suggs two years ago. Mr. Suggs himself currently rested in a grave well back from the road that Jesse himself had dug with extra care. Jesse didn't run the cemetery—that job belonged to the great and gloomy Frederick Huff, who issued daily orders from the caretaker's house and only emerged to complain at Billy Cake and the other fellows who worked the cemetery. But it was Jesse who dug the graves.

            Highland Cemetery had opened twenty-some years ago, a bit before Jesse was born, and it had stolen away all the business from Prospect Cemetery. Didn't seem to matter that Prospect was half a mile closer to downtown Ypsilanti, with its growing Normal School and expanding railroad system. Prospect still failed to prosper.

            Problem was, Prospect had both proven too small, so the city had bought a big chunk of loamy hillside outside Ypsilanti and named it Highland Cemetery. The local Catholic community had been scandalized at the idea of sharing eternity with Protestants and even Lutherans, so they had bought a bit of land right across the road for their own dead, keeping Mr. Suggs, and now Jesse, busy digging graves for both. Meanwhile, the townsfolk stopped using Prospect Cemetery entirely, and no one seemed interested in paying Jesse Fair or Billy Cake to even trim its trees, so these days the verge ran wild. The inhabitants didn't complain.

            It was a serpent night, with the chill breeze hissing in the leaves. Jesse wound through the stones until he came to the new grave of Elmer Pitt. The thin glow of a little lantern on the ground illuminated the markers from the bottom up, and the familiar quiet sound of a wooden shovel biting earth came to Jesse's ears. Resurrection men always used wooden shovels. They made less noise. Jesse crept closer.

            The resurrection man had already made good headway and was knee-deep in the ground at the head of the grave. Two canvas drop cloths lay beside him, one to catch the dirt and the other to receive Elmer Pitt. Jesse noted the well-worn leather gloves covering the resurrection man's hands. The man also had a crowbar and a length of rope.

            "So you're from the University Medical School," Jesse said in the dark.

            To his credit, the resurrection man didn't drop his shovel or even shout. Instead, he turned and focused sky eyes on Jesse. Mud stained his trousers.

            "You knew I'd be here," he said simply.

            "Haven't seen your kind in a while," Jesse said. "They passed that law a few years back that says paupers and prisoners go to the anatomy lab, which means the dead poor and the poor dead get a free train ride to your dissecting table. Last I knew, there was no end of dead paupers, so what brings you down here to my cemetery?"

            "We still run short of bodies now and again." The resurrection man went back to work. He was digging at the head, which was why he'd attended the service—he needed to know which way Mr. Pitt was pointed. "I saw the funeral notice in the paper and came on down."

            "What's your name, friend?"

            The resurrection man stopped his shovel again and sighed. "Are you going to call the constable, sir, or just empty my pockets?"

            Jesse had been about to name a figure, one that would give him a delightful evening's entertainment and leave him with a fine morning's hangover, but something stopped his tongue. Something in the other man's posture, his face, his eyes. Jesse cocked his head, and a coyote grin crept across his face.

            "Depends." Jesse stuck out a hand for the resurrection man to shake. "I'm Jesse Fair."

            "Uh ... Arthur. Arthur Tor."

            The coyote grin widened. "Does it bother you to dig up bodies for that fancy medical school over in Ann Arbor, Mr. Tor?"

            "It does." Arthur's shovel bit the ground again. "I had to kill a dog to dissect during my first term, and I don't mind telling you, my hands were shaking for an hour afterward. Still, I did it. Now I'm doing this."

            Jesse cocked his head. "Why?"

            "We have to learn anatomy somehow." Arthur's voice was weary, the sound of someone who had explained this a hundred times. "We cut up the body of one person who died, and hundred other people get to live. And I have rent to pay. Why do you care, if you intend to turn me in?"

            "Just wanted to see what you would say." Jesse stepped into the head of the grave with Arthur, close enough to smell cemetery sweat. "Move over, Mr. Tor, and I'll show you how a gravedigger digs."

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WSFA Award Winner: Me!

I'm amazed and thrilled to announce that my story "Eight Mile and the City" from When Worlds Collide has won the WSFA small press award for short fiction.

Check it!

This year, the committee got more than 260 stories for initial consideration. They whittled it down to ten finalists, including my story. The finalist list has some heavy-hitters in the SF writing community on it, and there were so many stories anyway, so I wasn't expecting to win. I had a "It would be great, but no need to get your hopes up" frame of mind. I was in the audience at the award ceremony in Washington DC, and when they announced my story had won, I was floored. I was so surprised, I couldn't do anything for a moment but stare at the announcer. Joshua Palmatier, one of the editors for the anthology, was sitting next to me, and I could see he was thrilled. In a fit of exuberance, I hugged him, then went up to the podium to get the award. I also gave a short speech. This is what I said:

Thank you, everyone! This is amazing!

This story means a lot to me. Not just because I wrote it, but because of what it means. The main character in "Eight Mile and the City" from When Worlds Collide is gay, but that's not what the story is about. The story is about a hardboiled detective trying to solve a kidnapping and uncovering his own past as well.

Not that long ago, this story would only have appeared in an anthology of gay fiction and "only"
gotten the attention of the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. This story appears in a fantastic anthology
of wonderful stories that are geared toward all SF readers. It's not a specialty. It's not an odd outlier. Instead, it's one of the family.

Coincidentally, this weekend marks the opening of Bros, the first R-Rated gay rom-com put out
by a major studio. It's gotten smash reviews and is expected to be a box office success. At last, we get to have a happy ending. We've come a long way since the doom and gloom of Brokeback Mountain.

We still have further to go, of course, but every step forward gets us one step closer to full inclusion and acceptance. I'm thrilled that my story has become one of those steps.

I do want to thank the committee members for choosing "Eight Mile and the City." It means so very much! I also need to thank the members of the Untitled Writers Group of Ann Arbor, Michigan--Sarah, MaryBeth, Jonathan, Christian, Diana, Cindy, Ted, Christine P-K, and Christine D--for commentary that improved every line of this story. I want to thank S.C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier for editing When Worlds Collide and buying my story. And I want to thank my husband Darwin McClary for the inspiration I needed to write this piece.



I'm back home now and coasting on euphoria!



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Release Day!

It's release day! Resurrection Men is officially on sale. Have a look!
Amazon: [image error]https://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Men.../dp/B0B8TSG8T6Kobo: [image error]https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/resurrection-men-10Smashwords: [image error]https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1159285Apple Books: [image error]https://books.apple.com/.../resurrection-men/id6443259554Google Books: [image error]https://play.google.com/store/books/details...

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