In addition to folding paper cranes, I’ve also been making fabric ones. These take much more time and concentration and can fill the better part of a day. While my goal for the paper cranes is at least one per day, my goal for these is less definitive. They are easily done when I need something to kick start me. Something for when my brain is saying “Go do something productive” and my body is saying “It’s just easier to sit and watch TV.” I’ve been working on them for about 3 weeks and so far have 16 done. They are a little bit like potato chips; you can’t do just one. They also are typically the lead in to being productive for the rest of the day. (Though there’s not much of the day left when you don’t start crane-sewing until 8 at night). At the end, I will put them together into a quilt. You need 24 cranes for a lap quilt; you need almost 50 for a queen sized quilt. I certainly hope that we don’t get that far. I’m not sure, as of yet, how we will know we are at the end. Is it when all the shops reopen? Is it when I finally get to travel to Colorado to see my grandkids? Is it when we have a vaccine? How big will this quilt be?

For the sewing-geeks among you. The foundation paper pattern is from Flying Parrot. The background fabric is Jinny Beyer’s black eyelash and the cranes themselves are being made from a fat quarter stack of Alison Glass fabrics. I love Alison Glass. Her color sense has forced me out of my more traditional and Williamsburg color palette into something vibrant and alive.

This blog has lain fallow for more than 5 years. The last post was when I began my crazy medical journey. That journey has had too many lows and not enough highs, but I think I am finally on a path to some significant mobility again. I think I’ve resigned myself to never being able to hike any distance but, maybe someday soon, I will be able to maneuver without a walker.

With that said, the blog will have a different purpose. I will be using it to “talk to myself” about things that are going on and to congratulate myself on small things. (My BMI has gone down almost 9 points since last July–I still have a loooong way to go, but Hurrah!)

I’ll also be using this to share the things I make with my hands. I’ve learned about myself that creating things that are concrete are very important to my well-being so you will see sewing, quilting, bookbinding or wherever my fancy takes me.

So…welcome back! It’s good to be here.

I hope you can hear the somewhat somber strains of Mahler’s New World Symphony as you read this.

We visited the back surgeon on Tuesday (and, no, I didn’t take a picture of him in his cowboy boots). The news was good all the way around. The back looks exactly like it should, the incision is sealing cleanly and the good Dr. had this wonderfully smug look on is face as he told us that everything was perfect. When asked when we could go home, his response was “whenever you think you’re ready” My internal answer was “tomorrow”…but I didn’t shout it out loud . I will go home with a waker; a wheel chair, a hospital bed and 6 more weeks of wearing this stupid spine brace 100% of the time.
My left foot is back about 80%; the right only 5% (if that much). But he is still convinced, based on the fact that there has been improvement, that I will eventually regain full functionality in a 6-9 month time frame.
So, we’ve spend the last few days arranging things; my sister in Colorado is going to babysit the car and we will be home Tuesday evening.

If you’re interested….that X-ray is my new bionic back…6 screws and pedicals to stabilize the lower spinde from L3 to S1

As most of you already know Tim & I will be returning to Virginia as soon as possible because I just had emergency back surgery. Tim & I can’t thank you enough for all of the love and support that we have been shown over the past two weeks, and the really cool thing is that it created connections between my East Coast family and my Yellowstone Family. The question, of course, will now be whether we come back to the park next year—since this one was cut so short. I have a visit with Dr. Speth tomorrow (Tuesday) and we will begin to plan next steps. Dr. Speth diagnosed some of my initial back problems 4 years ago) For most of you, that is enough information.  (except that this is a Montana doctor–do he wears cowyboy boots and big belt buckles to work and goes home every night to “rope a few cattle” just for relaxation.

I know my friends and family, though,  and some of you want the gory details—so, here goes-please feel free to skip the rest of this post So…here’s a detailed timeline

• June 13/14 (Thurs/Fri) We came back from our weekend and I had a mild intestinal bug….given that the Noro virus was showing up in the park it made only sense to not go to work even though what I had was clearly not Noro.

• June 15 Basic back pain—I thought it was probably a result of having spent a large part of the previous 48 hours in bed; By that afternoon the pain was such that, if I got out of bed I could barely walk—as long as I stayed in bed there was no pain. We went to the OFI clinic where she gave me Valium and Teradol in hopes of cancelling the pain cycle and relieving the muscles. I managed to walk from the clinic and went straight back to the dorm.

• June 16 Extensive back pain that radiates down my right leg and casuses it to collapse Every time I get out of bed the pain goes immediately to a “10” on the pain scale with nausea; crying and using pregnancy breathing to try and control the pain. NPS transports me to the clinic—where they load me up with more pain killers to get to Bozeman. The drive to Bozeman isn’t difficult, but when we get to the hotel the only way I get to the hotel room is because Tim goes and gets a room chair that rolls

• June 17—after trying for 2 hours to contact the orthopedic and make an appoint for that day we just go to the emergency room; there is, of course, immediate admission and an attempt to control the pain. The odd thing, of course, is that because I have no pain when I’m lying on my right side there are some personnel who doubt the severity of the pain—until they see me try to get up.

• June 18—the MRI takes place around 4 or 5; by 7 pm Speth is in my room and looking fairly worried. He says we have 3 options “Surgery, surgery & Surgery ). Based on the MRI at that point, there are several possible causes of the pain, numbness and lack of foot control which range from an infection at the base of my spine to more disks having ruptured. As the numbness and lack of foot control are now spreading to my left foot, he would have preferred to do the surgery that night—but because I had been given a blood thinner that morning he couldn’t do it until the following morning so….the question, at this point, is are the nerves just being compressed or are they being damaged in a way that may permanently damage them. My last reminder to him is that I need 2 working feet to using my spinning wheel.

• June 19—8 hours of surgery and a night in the ICU—just as a precaution. Net results—a 3 vertebrae fusion @ L4/L5/S1. There was no infection but one of the lower disks had literally “exploded” and wrapped itself around the outside of the vertebrae. He is fairly confident that the surgery has gone well—and there’s an 80% chance that I will gain most of the functionality of both feet over the next 6-9 months. There’s an 8” incision in my back, with 39 staples and 2 drainage holes. In addition I have an arterial IV in my jugular vein that feels like a small bat is attached to my throat…

• June 20 OMG—the pain is horrid—and my right foot doesn’t work at all—it just hangs there and I can’t apply pressure with it to anything—but Speth says that at least I have more sensation (even though I can’t tell) than I had on Tuesday. In addition, I’m also given this lovely back brace that almost functions as a bustier that I get to wear night and day for the next 18 weeks….I can only take it off when I’m flat on my back in bed.

• June 21-June 24; PT twice a day—my right foot still can’t control itself but at least I can walk 20 feet in a walker; the depression comes in huge waves and I begin to think about all the things I may not be able to do—but apparently the nurses & PT staff still think nice things of me—and even come from other floors to see how I’m doing. The nurses at Bozemann-Deaconess Hospital are amazing. Then, off course, there’s all of the bodily functions that aren’t working—if I never see another bedpan—it can’t be soon enough.

• June 25—Move to a rehabilitation/nursing center in Livingston, MT—the choices out here are few and far between—and none of them appealing. When we finally arrive, they are clearly not ready for us—I’m in pain and Tim is angry because things are not going as he was promised so…..with my alternating between having a complete hissy fit and crying because I’m in pain and Tim getting angrier every minute—they make some major changes to accommodate our needs.

• June 26– The next morning things are much brighter, however, as we begin to meet the staff that will actually take care of me. They are competent, friendly and it’s a delight for them to have a patient with whom they can communicate in something less than a loud voice (I’m 20 years younger than the next youngest patient.

• The next 3 days are a blur of PT, bed pans, walker, wheel chairs and, what appear to be, slowly improving foot control. For many days I couldn’t even feel the sheet on my feet and I had the weirdest set of tinglings in my feet. My left foot is now somewhere around 60% back—the right foot only about 10%–but at least it’s moving forward….if there had been major spine cord damage there wouldn’t be improvement this early….so

• Where do we go from here? Possibilities include:

o Staying here for another 2-6 weeks

o Flying home to Arlington sometime in the next week or two—either to an in-hospital rehab situation or an outpatient one. If this happens we will need to coordinate with my GP to take over monitoring of my care and get a new Spine guy at home.

Don’t hesitate to call, knowing that some days it’s too tiring to even pick up the phone (or there’s a nurse waiting to do some horrible procedure on me)….the facebook posts are a delight and bring smiles to my face and….please know that I will be happy to provide with any more details that you want (except for gory pictures of incisions)…and a special thank-you for the flowers and stuffed critters…

A good friend posted the information yesterday the our lovely OSSD was administering 19,003 on-line state states yesterday–and this goes on for 2 more weeks!  At what cost, I asked…what is the true total cost of ownership (TCO) of these tests?  has anyone ever calculated the real cost?

Lost teacher time actually proctering the tests; the 40+ hours that TSSpecs (at an average cost , probably of $50/hour including benefits) spend setting up and breaking down; the cost of SBTS; the cost of school test coordinators;  the cost of all the meetings that are set up; the cost of all the project managers involved; the cost of the network engineers;   the cost the curriculum specialists; and, need I mention it again OMG–the cost of the meetings!

Not to mention the lost instructional time; the time spend with the districts on-line pre-testing system (which is nothing more than an SOL predictor, no matter what anyone else claims); the entire department dedicated to the on-line testing system; the number of hours students spend taking practice tests.

And, of course, there is the curriculum that focuses on the test; providing good teachers with only a little more data about where there students are achieving (and, in many cases, flawed data).  Good teachers know what their students know and we can train the small percentage of not-so-good teachers in the same techniques.  It removes teachable moments and confines student learning. (not to mention using ALL OF THE AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY for giving multiple choice tests.

And the biggest cost of all is to the teachers themselves–for many the heart is gone out of teaching.   Teaching is as much art as science and the art is  no longer a respected part of the profession.

Enough rant, Old Faithful just went off outside my dorm room  window—just wanted to let all of my edtech friends that I feel for them these next few weeks–and all through the year.  If you want to do a podcast from Old Faithful–just let me know;  I’d be more than happy to take your classroom someplace in the real world.

I am a bad blogger….I just haven’t felt like it—mostly because of the way things have gone for the past month.  The trip to YNP this year was just, quite simply, flat.  For 5 days we were not able to put the top down on the car; by day 2 Tim had developed a mild case of pneumonia; by day 5 I had the worst sinus infection I’ve had in 15 years; we got here and we couldn’t move in to our rooms because they were laying new carpet  (as if they didn’t know when we were coming) and I couldn’t get out and do all things I wanted to do on my “week off” because I was in no shape to drive.  Doctors to give out good meds were hard to find….Things just were flat…..it was beautiful when we left home and I was finally feeling as if, 4 years after retiring, I was beginning to get things together–and we pull up and leave–and get here and nothing goes together.  If someone had had a magic wand at that point I think I would have gladly gone home.

Things finally picked up the night that TIm & I drove over to Lake and got to see our first bear (this lovely creature)…..and have gone uphill since then.

I feel like I’ve been living in a version of Allan Sherman’s  “hello muddah, hello faddah” ..and it’s finally stopped raining!~

I was working with a few first year teachers this afternoon and you should have heard my mental scream when that line came out of a teacher’s mouth….I wanted to slap him upside the head and say–“Your students need you to make time for higher level questions”–but I didn’t.  I calmly asked him about something that he might be teaching this week and then quickly modeled how he might push things up to just the next level of Blooom’s  (or whatever questioning strategy you might like to apply)…the good thing is that I get to go back in a couple of weeks and I think I’ll give them a quick DSRP overview–provide them with a structure to help their students think,

And, while I’m at it–why do we call them “Smart Board Lessons?”  Aren’t they just lessons–and aren’t the characteristics of a good lesson the same whether or not you use a Smartboard?  (not that I’m a fan of Smartboards–but if you are going to be forced to use them let’s find some decent ways to use them).

Another quote tonight was “I don’t have time to let the students help create the rubric”–and then I couldn’t help but think…WTH(eck) are our schools of education doing?  These are first year teachers who come without the necessary understandings that:
1.  The question IS the answer….
2. The student is the most powerful tool in the learning process

So, how do we end our days?  A family watching of The Daily Show….complete wcome commentary, pauses and web searching.  At times one or the other of ufiends something relevant on an iPad, we use an Apple TV to instantly share and discuss whatever we’ve just seen.

It’s a little frightening that Jon Stewart is probably the best news update around.   Even my most conservative friends, I would recommend that you watch on a regular basis (even though Fox News it’ll take it on the chin).  I used to listen to Limbaugh just to help me understand other points of view .