Shelby Cass’s Weblog

Here I am, luxuriating (read: flopped and propped) on my chaise lounge, post-op.  It’s like deja-vu, but not really.  This surgery was on a body part well below my neck and not, I believe, a contributer to sleep apnea.  Although, I did hypothesize to my surgeon that the reason none of my previous forays into this particular body part repair in essence failed previously was due to the fact that I did not breathe at night, hence had greatly diminished my healing power, and he agreed there was a high likelihood I was right.  I love being right…or even people suspecting I am right.  It just feels so…RIGHT. But I digress as usual. Please do keep in mind surgery was this morning so I’m still in the “don’t operate heavy machinery” zone - which is why I am using a laptop! (ba-dum-bum)

What was it this time?  (Believe me, I heard that question plenty) Alas, it is my knee.  The left one.  But I’m already doing 50% weight bearing (as in 50% of my body weight) and little knee bends (per doctor’s instructions!  I promise I’m not jumping the recovery gun!).  How did this happen?  Well there’s really no easy answer.  Let’s go back in time a few years, shall we?

December 1983.  Or maybe go back even further to my birth.  This story is already too long.  I’ll put it in timeline fashion.

Birth: I was born “toeing in” and wore a Denis-Browne splint to turn my feet/legs/hips out.

Not sure if it was tibial or femoral, but nonetheless, I got to wear a lovely pair of shoes attached to a big blue bar.  I don’t remember this.  I do remember my brother also got to wear one.  Not my sister, lucky duck.  It is hereditary and my mom actually had casts on her legs to correct hers.  Now I don’t know if this contributed to my knee issues, but I figured I’d mention it.

Age 4: Enter the world of ballet.  It’s possible Mom put me in ballet just to help with the pidgeon toed swayed back pot belly thing, but the main point is that I LOVED ballet and I was evidently pretty good.

Age 6 (I think): I was accepted into the San Francisco School of Ballet on scholarship, and by age 7 I think I was dancing in the professional level.  I got paid (I think it covered bridge toll–this was not the lottery) to perform in various ballets, the primary one being, of course The Nutcracker.

Age 10: One of my parts was as the tail end of the Chinese dragon in Act II.  Imagine 5 girls harnessed together under a big dragon costume with only their legs showing.  It’s a short piece, but the guy playing the Chinese Dragon Tamer found himself in a little bit of a pickle when he vaulted himself up onto his pole (he would do cartwheels using the pole instead of his hands if that makes sense) and found his landing spot was either the dragon or the orchesta pit.  He chose the tail end of the dragon (aka: me) and since I couldn’t see more than the girl in front of me, I had no idea what was coming.  Boom!  Splat.  The costume even came up for a moment and I saw a guy in the front row laughing (not mean laughing but probably surprise that the dude landed on the dragon).  ER visit that night, back to performing almost immediately.  Years of PT and chiropractics.

Age 14: Lots of factors contributed  to my leaving ballet, but a big one was that I was watching more classes than I was taking due to knee pain.

I love this picture of the last full length ballet I was in.  Check out the knee brace AND band-aid.  My mom was so mad that I hadn’t thought to take them off before the shoot!

Age 18: Left knee surgery.  PT rocked me back into recreational ballet shape.  I think I would have been good to go.

Age 19: Car accident.  Woman ran a red light and hit me while I was turning Left across an  intersection with a green arrow.  Hit right knee on steering wheel.  College student = no money so no treatment until knee started locking and I started falling.  It was actually kind of funny except for the horrible sudden pain.  I mean, how many 19 year old girls do you see falling out of cars when they are trying to exit when they are NOT drunk?

Age 22: Right knee surgery.  (Doc found pieces of cartilage hanging out in joint, one was the size of a quarter - it had been growing for 3 years. I believe the limping and falling thing was probably what tore the Left knee up again.  No PT (recent college grad also = no $), which resulted in bad knee tracking which led to shredding the cartilage up.

~Age 26: After trying to take Tai Chi and asking my instructor: Is this walk supposed to hurt?  Right knee surgery.  Doc said it looked like “shredded crab meat” on back of knee.  It’s supposed to be smooth like a cue ball.

~Age 26 6 weeks later: Left knee surgery.  Doc found the back of this knee fractured from stress.  When I woke up he said “Well, it wasn’t in your head, it was in your knee!  It was broken!”  6+ months of PT and they still couldn’t get me pain free.  This was when I started REALLY slipping downhill health-wise and still had absolutely no idea that I had Obstructive Sleep Apnea.  I think a couple years earlier I’d started getting “treatment” (read: Ambien) for insomnia.  And as we all know, you don’t give people with untreated sleep apnea sleeping pills.  Almost immediate disintegration of knees Rice Krispy syndrome I call it).

2005: Started Adult Ballet Classes for exercise - no center, just barre.  Painful, but no more than stairs so I stuck with it.

2006: MMA/GA (The BIG Sleep Apnea surgery)

2007: WHAT THE–I went RUNNING!  My knees were actually beginning to HEAL!

2008: UPPP (The small yet ever so painful Sleep Apnea surgery)

2009: Started ballet again.  *joy*  Not professional - nowhere near.  Just a little (yes, sometimes painful and definitely crackly when I bent, but happy) barre work in the Adult Class, but by July I was Jumping.  Unfortunately that also led to falling (with style!…and embarrassment) but I recovered and was back in class (sans jumping) the next week.

November 2009: The infamous Ridge Hike on Oahu.  The trail looked like this:

The Trail - uh, what?

I was told it was a 2 hour hike.  Yeah, 2 hours…ONE WAY.  It probably wouldn’t have ended the way it did, except the group I was with was JETTING up the mountain.  Way too fast-paced for someone with problems stepping UP.  And if you know anything about patellar knee pain, then you know that down hill is worse than uphill.  At 1 hour 45 minutes I was in way too much pain and kinda figured out (yeah I’m slow) that this wasn’t ending anytime soon.  I had to turn around and go back (using poor Courtland as my crutch).  From that incident, I never recovered and stairs became a thing of the past.  Also, squatting (which I do frequently when adjusting chairs and evaluating people for my work) became excruciating no matter how much I stuck my bottom out.  It was time to see the doc again.

2010: Stanford. X-Rays.  MRI’s.

Today: Left knee surgery.  I’ll post those pics later (don’t worry, not gross IMO).

Next Tuesday: Post-Op and PT.

I’m hoping my hypothesis holds water!  And I’m also REALLY hoping my right knee doesn’t take a big dump (it didn’t look as bad on the MRI so we’re going to try just PT instead of surgery) and fracture like last time!

Okay that was maybe my longest post ever.  Smac Out.

Dad got a new truck.  This is awesome for so many reasons.  Selfishly I think it is awesome because he could come visit me today (we’ve been visiting him since his last truck went kerpoot since he’s been driving a huge rental moving truck which sucks for gas mileage and parking ANYWHERE).  We got to chatting as we do, and he mentioned his new truck seat was giving him some trouble in the low back area.  He mused out loud that I may be able to do something in the way of help, but then wrote that thought off immediately.  But I heard him…and the brain wheels were a spinnin’.  Okay not spinnin’.  Clicking slowly?  Did I mention he came over so we could go to brunch?  This was pre-food and only one coffee into the day.

We walk down to his truck…new used truck…no bells or whistles which fits Dad just fine, but no seat adjustments either, which made me have to use my brain even more.  I was thinking I’d have fun with levers and knobs, but instead I was left with one 6′4″ body and one truck seat moved all the way back with 6′4″ body knees coming slightly above hips.  Now, if you’ve ever listened to my ergo spout (the thing below my nose), you know that one of the first things you must do when sitting down is to make sure your knees are at or slightly below your hips.  I looked at my poor dad’s lumbar spine which was being pulled forward by his pelvis (which was being pulled forward by his hamstrings) and knew what I had to do.

I quickly walked to my toolbox (aka my car) and pulled 2 seat wedges out of my trunk.  My friend Duncan had purchsed them online and they didn’t do the trick he needed so he’d given them to me guessing I would run into someone in need of them sooner than he would.  Smart Duncan.  I threw one seat wedge on (Dad hesitated and thought maybe it was more hassle than it was worth), but as soon as he sat down, he sighed “OH.  I think this might work.”

*joy*

I’m never one to assume my first pass was the right/only one, so we drove to breakfast (about 15 minutes), and when we took a turn he sighed again.  “Yeah.  This works.”  Evidently, turns were a big aggravator.  So I am so happy.  I helped my dad and he said “Turns out you DO know what you’re talking about (sometimes)”.  Yeah baby.  Yeah.

Geemaneeze!

Boy killed on chair

The world, it ain’t safe.

I just got home from a week in LA…which all happened because the Southern California Animation Guild flew me down to talk at their membership meeting.  What did I talk about you ask?  Ergonomics of course.  Kevin, the head of the guild, had read a couple columns I had written for AnimationMentor.com, had contacted me over a year ago to come give a talk, but I had to cancel my trip last year due to the slightly urgent tonsillectomy and soft palate reconstruction.  I just read the meeting notes and I thought they were pretty good, so I am posting them to you.

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/no-pain-no-pain.html

Oh Dr Quo how I do love thee, despite the pain thou dost inflict upon me. I can’t help it. She’s so sweet! And everyone who works there is an angel, so I LOVE going…but I don’t so much love how I feel for a few days afterwards. Always a trade. Kind of like this kidney infection sucked big time, but since any pressure on my kidney from my stomach caused immediate pain/pukeage I had to eat much less and consequently got down to 151.5 for a moment!!!! That means I’m down 10 pounds!!! Hooray sick diet!

So this is what the good Dr. Quo did to me today:

One full week of this she says, but after 3 days I shouldn’t hurt as much. As much? Well, she explained with a kind of apologetic pained expression that my teeth were going to hurt A LOT…possibly more than they did when I FIRST GOT BRACES. Wow. I knew I should have eaten breakfast. By the time I got to work the throbbing in the head had begun and I couldn’t get pills into my mouth without un-banding (which I didn’t want to do). My boss and co-workers are wonderful and supportive and told me to get the H out of there since my job is talking and that wasn’t working well. I did some work, came home, and got some pain meds down. I’m just going to say this is all for the best and at least it’s all happening in one big fat chunk instead of sporadically. Right?

Ooh, here’s some fun news. Court bought me Guitar Hero the 80’s edition. Rock on sistah! I REALLY didn’t like the music on the first one…too heavy…hurt my head. But my new friend Lisa showed me the song list on the 80’s version (How can you say no to “Turning Japanese” and anything Oingo Boingo?), so I sat my butt down and rocked it. Mochi helped.

On a less pleasant note, I have officially confirmed my suspicions that the smell of leather makes me VERY nauseated, especially in a car, or probably any confined not extremely ventilated space.  Add a the stop start stop start of traffic, and you’ve got me tossing my cookies on the side of the highway.  That’s hot.  NOT!  Friday night it was raining, my friend Lisa picked me up, and the second I got into her car I felt REALLY bad. Leather seats have always been a problem for me, but I think since Dr. Li fixed my deviated septum and gave me ultra super smell power +5, it’s just plain unbearable. I wonder what that is. Allergy? On the one hand, I’m thrilled to be breathing better, but on the other, I had uber sensitive scent picking-uping nose before, and the more air in with each inhale thing makes stinky times EXTRA STINKY. I was hypnotized once by The Amazing Alexander. He told me his breath smelled like a rose and I couldnt’ get close enough. Then he told me his breath was horrible and foul and I gagged and almost uked on him and he had to quickly tell me the smell was gone. Maybe I need to get hypnotized to not be bothered by smells because Court is severely bummed now since the he was hoping his next car would have leather seats.

What to do…what to do… For now I think I’ll just concentrate on healing everywhere. Maybe if I get really in shape I’ll just run alongside the new leather-seated car. hahhaah

http://shelby.idstrom.com

Thankee!

smac

I have started to write a column for animationmentor.com. I thought I would publish it here too. 
 
http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0506/feature_feature.html 
 
http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/1206/feature_ergo.html 
 
Copyright 2006 Shelby Cass. All rights reserved