Khalid fell down and busted his head on the corner of the wall.  Stood him up and said Khalid, did you hit your head?  With blood pouring down his face he answers: No.   No tears, no crying.  Rocking in pain, but outright denial because he refuses to acknowledge things he finds uncomfortable.  He’s an amazing little man, SubhanAllah.

Mashed a kitchen towel against the side of his head and took him to the ER where everybody already knew his name. A two-inch long gash, Alhamdulillah, not too deep.  He played iPhone while getting stitches.  I asked him how his head felt, he said “sick.”

The kids started school last week, and Khalid is finishing this week- his current school does not have a high enough percentage of English speaking children in it for him to be able to use the words we’ve spent the last two and a half years teaching him.  Bad behaviors are being reinforced, and I am running amok this week trying to find another school that will take him.

Incidentally, I am also training the KG department of the current school, because that was an agreement made with the school in exchange for accepting him in the first place.  Wonder how many KG departments I’ll have to train before we can find one that sticks. :s

Alhamdulillah, very very busy.  Hiring a personal assistant this week, InshaAllah. As well as TEN more therapists.  Alhamdulillah.  Alhamdulillah.  AllahuAkbar.

In the culmination of a journey that began in November, I finally have an assessment of my knee from Dr. Extremely Awesome of Harvard and pro-sports patients fame.  OB’s have pictures of babies from happy parents.  Pediatricians have thank-you’s posted on their walls that are drawn in crayon.  This man’s entire clinic is cram-jammed with autographed jerseys, posters (and one basketball  signed by Hakeem Olajuwon) from happy, rehabilitated soccer, football, and basketball players, so if he can fix them, he should be able to fix me, right?

Right?  *earnest nodding*

*more nodding*

Right?

Alhamdulillah ‘ala kulli haal.  Praise be to Allah in all circumstances.  Dr. Awesome and his Head King of Physio collectively concluded:

Surgery Number 1: Unnecessary.  The surgeon says he is fixing a tear, but that’s not a tear.  He melted it back together with laser.  So he melted bits of my knee that never needed poking or melting.

(“You’re saying I have a chop-happy surgeon?”)

(“You said it, not me.  In most hospitals surgeons only get paid when they do a surgery.  In this clinic, they all earn a flat salary.”)

Surgery Number 2: Removal of problem that first surgery caused.  Failed “repair” of meniscus then leads to partial removal of meniscus.

Surgery Number 3: Clean-up of back of knee cap can be warranted following a dashboard injury, though wouldn’t do much to help other problems in knee.  Though it was nice that the crunching and grinding stopped afterwards.

The advice?  If I meet anyone else who says surgery will fix my knee, run (or hobble) the other way.  Apparently I have a combination of flat feet and knock knees that cause my legs to turn in slightly, therefore making my kneecaps rub against my femur lopsidedly.  Instead of the force being distributed evenly between the convex femur and the concave kneecap, I have a 75% destroyed kneecap (grade 3 condramalasia [sp?]) rubbing against a the same side of my knee where the meniscus is no longer present, resulting in 1+1=3.

The solution?  Very specific physio to tighten ligaments and muscles all the way up my leg with the desired outcome of properly re-aligning my kneecap so that the force is evenly distributed, reducing the pin-point wear and tear that is otherwise accumulating between my crooked knee, missing cartilage, and busticated kneecap.

I find this all amazing.  SubhanAllah.  I’m not sure how much of this is medicine and how much of this is physics, and I am even more amazed that it’s taken three surgeries and six years of physio, painkillers, and hyaluron gel injected into my knee to have- not a solution- but for once, an idea of what’s going on inside my knee.   Everything happens for a reason, that much I know for sure, Alhamdulillah.   At the very least, I got to post some cool surgery videos to my blog.  Plus any trial/affliction that a believer faces with sabr and trust in Allah helps expiate sins and increase them in blessings.  That’s a given too.  Alhamdulillah.  I’m still disappointed with the last two surgeons though.  And I can’t help but wonder why they were unable to nail the problem down six years and three surgeries ago.  It’s been six years since I’ve been able to do sajda and I miss it.  I miss my face on the floor, feeling small and vulnerable and at peace, submitting everything that is human ego, “intellect,” and self-serving justification to Rabbi al-’Alaa, my Lord Most High, before whom I am His servant, most low.

I miss being able to run, to walk any amount of distance, and it was only last year that I realized I wasn’t pressing for Hajj and Umrah because I felt humiliated by the possibility that I would do tawaaf in a wheelchair before I’m even 31.  It stings even now, thinking about it, but who am I to feel stung by what Allah has decreed?  Obviously there’s good in this for me, otherwise He wouldn’t have given me this challenge to overcome.  And I may not be happy with losing what I feel is my physical capability, but I would be an idiot if I did not try to build my spiritual strength in its place.

I’m still human.  Very much so.  And my own frailty is frustrating.  It always has been, but Alhamdulillah, I know it’s a test.  I can’t climb a mountain.  I can barely climb the stairs.  But I have other abilities and Allah has given me the opportunity to do more than many, many other people. Yeah, so one knee doesn’t work so well.  So the floor is far away and I keep my shoelaces knotted because I can’t tie them myself.  Big whoop.  I have my faith, I have my beautiful children, lovely husband and family, and the cognitive abilities to take my time and turn it into an act of service and a sadqa, InshaAllah.  I can renegotiate my surroundings without being able to physically function in them, because I don’t need to climb over obstacles when I can work around them completely.  I have resources, Alhamdulillah.  And above all, I have Allah’s promise of complete justice, equity, and compensation for patience, faith, trust and hard work.

And at least now, Alhamdulillah, I have some clarity.  There is no ‘fix’ for my knee.  There is exercise and a long road of hard work for trying to physically change how the inside of my leg works.  That’s ok.  You know what else there is?  Jannah.  Where everyone has perfect everything.  Perfect bodies and features- lovingly remade by Allah to exclude illness,tiredness, pain, and the impending doom of mortality.  Nothing but perfect everything- not in the monotonous ‘strumming of harps on puffy white clouds’ version of eternity- but perfection in a capacity beyond the best conceivable spouse with the best, most emotionally, sexually, interpersonally fulfilling relationship you could imagine in the best, most amazing abode, with the best company among humankind, with the best food and having earned the best of rewards- Allah’s pleasure.

I want it all- safe, permanent, gorgeous, spacious home- a palace, in fact- the interior decorating of which is done by God Himself, which includes gardens and pavilions in an estate so vast that you’re suddenly the inheritor of an entire world of gardens beneath which rivers flow, where your next-door neighbors happen to be Prophets, companions, beloved family members- the best of mankind in the best form they could ever be remade in, free of pettiness, dishonesty, cruelty and sin, and retaining the personalities, souls, and memories of the lives that earned them Jannah in the first place.

I want all that’s good from this world, magnified and exponentially increased without any of what’s bad.  I want an all-you-can-ea-buffet from Allah’s-Own-Catering that never causes fullness, obesity, indigestion- I want my husband six feet tall and sculpted like a work of art, I want everything that I cannot have here, the silk, the gold, the brocade, the rich carpets, the enormous estate, the wine without intoxication and the contentment without limit or end.  And if I compare all that to wanting a working knee, well then I say nuts to the knee.  I know that we’re supposed to ask Allah for everything we want or need, even a shoelace, but I’m not asking Him to fix my knee.  I want him to replace it with a better one.  A permanent one that never breaks, bruises, buckled, grinds, creaks, or aches.  And I want everything else replaced too- the flabby body, the dry skin, the filled teeth, the indigestion- and in its place, I want Paradise.

InshaAllah.

Sorry everyone, I know I’ve been AWOL. Both kids are sick, Khalid has been up at night last two nights in a row, and he’s coughing and snotty and fevery in the day. Last night he coughed himself awake around 11 and was awake until Fajr. Iman is getting over her ‘fezer’ and has stopped telling people she’s ‘not good.’ She’s still snotty, but she seems to be over the worst of it.

HF is doing well, his chronic nosebleed has subsided and he went to work today without the risk of redecorating the office walls with red polka dots. (in case he sneezed, God Forbid!)

It’s 11:30 at night, I’m behind in my work (as usual) and am starting to get a but sniffly myself, but Alhamdulillah should be fine. I’ll try to update properly soon and respond to the comments in the last post too. Gtg, Khalid is fussing in his sleep again.

Alhamdulillah, HF had surgery today to fix the wildly deviated septum and outrageously deviant sinuses in his nose, and everything went according to plan. And lots of this went according to a totally different plan.

HF had planned to check in to the hospital at 6 am. I had planned to accompany him, so at 5:30, we carried Khalid, sleeping, into Iman’s room where it was planned that he should sleep so that if he woke up, he wouldn’t be alone and afraid.

We had not planned for him to wake up when we moved him though, nor had we planned to give Iman a fever the same night, so that when Khalid woke up and panicked in the dark, Iman woke up and started bawling- burning hot and shaking. Cindy hadn’t planned on waking up at 5:30 to give Iman more fever-reducer and soothe her to bed while I tried to calm Khalid down and get him back to sleep, but then, things don’t always go according to plan.

HF hadn’t planned on going to the hospital without me, but with both kids crying by 5:45, he had to.

I had planned on putting Khalid back to sleep, but Khalid had plans involving lemonade and cereal, which he whispered to me in the dark as HF drove off. So there was a change of plans, and Khalid settled for apple juice and some cereal in a tupperware while I quickly dressed him so we could take the second car and join HF.

I had planned to get there and surprise HF in his room. Surprise, HF wasn’t in his room. So Khalid and I waited for HF to come back from Fajr prayer. HF hadn’t planned on being welcomed by a completely awake little boy who was supposedly back home sleeping, but Alhamdulillah, Khalid ran and greeted HF and both grandparents at the door with hugs and much rattling of cereal in its plastic box as he jumped excitedly up and down.

I took Khalid out of the room before HF was prepped or had a canula inserted, so that he wouldn’t freak out. It was bad enough when the male nurse took HF’s blood pressure, Khalid first yelled at him, then pinched him, then attempted to kick him, and when that failed, he tearfully pointed a finger at the nice man (Mark) and yelled “Time Out Mark! Time Out!”

I invited Khalid to come and walk with me, as compared to ‘Hey kid, let’s go home’ so that he would come peacefully and without screaming through the OPD. That went according to plan until we got as far as the car and Khalid realized we were driving home again. “No Mama! No home! No!” *kickkickkickkick* He cried all the way home.

When we reached home and I quietly unlocked the door, I hadn’t planned to see Iman sitting at the dining table, but there she was, still in her pajamas and looking flushed and wilted and definitely miserable. Neither she nor Cindy had been back to sleep. I asked Iman how she was feeling. She said “Not good.” I asked her if she still had a fever.

“Yes, a fezer,” she nodded sadly. “In my head. Iss ow.”

Khalid was passed to Joy for the beginning of his morning ABA program. Iman and I went to wash her face, change her clothes, give her some more medicine, and just generally to try to help her feel better. We selected the red overalls that Khalid out-grew at the age of 18 months which flap loosely around Iman at 2 and 3/4 years. We paired them with a white shirt dotted with tiny red flowers. And by request, Iman’s pink tiara. Then, socks and sneakers and by then the medicine was kicking in, so Iman and Cindy went for their morning walk to the park with Iman’s eyes red and puffy and her Hello Kitty tiara pink and sparkly in the early morning sun.

I had planned to take a power-nap, then wake up and cook some food to take to HF’s hospital room for him as well as his parents, since the City Hospital is nice, but hospital food is still hospital food. However, I had not planned on spending so much time with the kids before they left for the park, so by 9:00, I realized that I would have to change my plans. No nap. Just cooking. I made chicken pilau, some hot-as-heck chutney, a thermos of karak chai, and set it all up with a bottle of water, some disposable glasses, HF’s clothes, his pillow, a box of orange juice, and some packing and logistics help from Cindy, who by 10:30, was back from the park.

I had planned to be there when HF came out of recovery, but I hadn’t planned on fighting a last-minute battle with Iman, who flatly refused to let me take the pink paper balloon with her hand print and a red heart on it that she had made especially for Baba. She made it, so it was hers. Since it was hers, it wasn’t right for me to take it away from her. Naturally. And since it was a balloon (albeit one made out of a paper plate, some yarn, and two sheets of construction paper) she insisted that it go ‘up inna sky,’ and nearly cried from the frustration of having her ‘balloon’ dangle very non-buoyantly from the end of its yarn leash. Joy bribed her with the opportunity to make another pink balloon, and to even wield the much-coveted glue-stick. Iman conceded and I rushed out the door with her balloon as well as Khalid’s- his was personally lettered and signed and it reads love you baba, khalid, in a gorgeous child-like scrawl that only children are really good at.

HF made it to the room before I did, and was laying there with his nose swaddled in bloody gauze and medical tape, too out of it to stay awake for more than a few words at a time. I had planned to bring the kids later, but I messaged Joy and Cindy and let them know there was a change of plans, no kids. I had planned to stay awake until HF woke, but then I was so exhausted that I fell asleep sitting in his wheelchair and leaning against the foot of his bed where he slept and (often) choked, groaned, woke up slightly, and then fell back asleep again. Apparently It’s hard to breath with your nose taped closed and your mouth raw from intubation.

Alhamdulillah, HF finally regained consistent consciousness around one in the afternoon. So we all hung out- his parents, and eventually his sister and niece as well- and ate chicken pilau and cookies and poked gentle fun at his nose job, asked him whether he couldn’t have gotten his chin done, and whether or not next time around he could get a six-pack installed. He was able to eat by around three or four o’clock and Alhamdulillah, the next few hours were just spent sitting in his hospital room and munching and chatting.

I came home after praying Maghrib and found Khalid sobbing on the sofa because Cindy had just closed the front door, which he had just opened for the Nth time waiting for me. Joy had told Khalid that Momma was on the way, so Khalid had planned to stand there with the front door open until I arrived.

Iman was warm, but not burning hot. Both kids had already eaten dinner, and I had a quick bite while the kids watched Meet the Sight Words. By 7:30, Khalid and I were in bed, reading his favorite Eric Carle books and commenting on certain deficiencies in the plot. Khalid does not understand that ‘In the Hungry Little Caterpillar,’ the egg that we see on the first page hatches and -pop!- out comes a very tiny and very hungry caterpillar whose quest for food (as well as meaning in a meaningless world) we then follow for the rest of the book.

The caterpillar makes some poor food choices, which culminate in some binge-eating, which he then repents of and makes absolution for by eating (instead of a smorgasboard) ‘one nice green leaf, and then he felt much better.’ In Khalid’s mind though, that nice green leaf is where the egg was on page one, so when he sees the caterpillar sitting on the leaf, he always asks “Oh, whereza egg? Where izit” And then we go back to the first page and I try to explain that the caterpillar was actually inside of the egg, and when he came out -pop!- then the egg was gone. Khalid has either never fully understood this, or never believed it. So today, when he asked where the egg was, I told him I didn’t know. So he told me. “Iss cook egg. Oh, caterpillar cook iss egg.”

And I hadn’t planned on writing all of that in this same blog, but it was so adorable that I didn’t want to forget about it. It’s been a long, long day, and I had planned to be asleep by now, but I had an unplanned power-nap just before Maghrib on the couch in HF’s hospital room. That might be why my brain is awake even though I’ve been up (apart from two short snoozes) for nearly 18 hours. It’s been a good day though, a busy and unexpected but good day Alhamdulillah. And Allah is the best of planners.

So Joy- Khalid’s full-time caregiver and ABA therapist- is on vacation for a month as of yesterday, which was also Khalid’s first day of school, which was also the day that Iman fell down in the hallway and knocked loose and fractured one of her front teeth.

This morning was our first day without Joy, as well as the first day that I attempted to run Khalid through his ABA program, as well as have a three-hour instructional design meeting for my ‘real’ job and then take Iman for an emergency dental appointment.

The morning program was educational, in that I learned that it will take a whole lot more than her whiteboard markers to give me Joy’s superpowers.  The laminator chewed up my flash cards and spat them back out in a smelly, melted mess.  The kids got bored when I took too long to find the next program materials and Khalid knocked a cup of tea into a box of 96 crayons.  Why was the teacher drinking tea in class?  Because the teacher was a sleepy amateur, that’s why.

The subsequent meeting was interesting, in that Iman sat in with the Business Development Manager and I to color and contribute her professional opinion on the course development- which was generally about butterflies, the beach, and where her marker went.  Also, she told the BDM that she was snotty.  And she was.

The dental appointment went well in that there was little dentistry involved- Iman’s mouth needs three weeks to heal so that the tooth is no longer wobbly before they perform a root canal and remove the lower-half that is no longer viable.  (It cracked straight across)

And now, Khalid’s first day of school.

I think he may have had fun, but Joy and I were quite nervous, especially since Khalid is not really enrolled- he’s being observed for an hour a day, two to three times a week in the KG class to determine whether he can be there without causing massive disruption to the ‘normal’ kids.  I don’t remember kindergarten being that tense when I was a kid, but then the principal and school counselor probably weren’t both in the class to observe me.  And the teachers probably didn’t have the wary, anxious look of two women with 28 three and a half year olds who have just been handed the Unknown Special Needs Quantity X.  Khalid is a year older and a head taller than the other children.  His academic scores put him in second grade, but his verbal and social scores place him in nursery, so KG-1  is somewhere in the middle and our goal is to help bring his social and verbal scores up while maintaining his academic scores at home.

He had to be interviewed to be let in.  We had to submit his psychological assessment, sign a legal disclaimer, take official responsibility to protect other students from him and answer questions about how loud, how often, how intensely and for what reasons he could freak out.  We spent three hours on the first day with the school counselor and the principal and the registrar, and while I am grateful, Alhamdulillah, and relieved that he’s being given a chance to go to a ‘normal’ school, my maternal hackles have been raised in indignation for Khalid.

(He pinched Joy, will he pinch other children?)

(The assessment mentions self-injury, can you tell us about that?)

(Why are his academics so far ahead?  Why haven’t you been pushing his social and verbal instead?)

[Gee, maybe he's a classical case of autism?]

(If you even think that he might be about to make noise, just take him out of the class.)

I’m sure Khalid wasn’t offended, at least not by anything the staff said.  Instead, he was upset when he walked into the class and noticed that the letter C was missing from the alphabet lineup on the wall.  He asked where it was, noticed it on the center of the board, and attempted to put it back where it belonged.  We spent a few minutes gently distracting him away from the missing C (and some noise was involved) but then he noticed that the word Sunday was out of place in the days of the week lineup.  It was on another wall because it had a special schedule.  He tried to pull that down too.

Other children were drinking juice, so he asked for one by writing out J- U- I- C- E with his finger in air-letters a foot tall.  You should have seen how fast Joy and I rushed to get him some.  He sat during snack-time eating his apple and drinking, reading every written word and chart on the wall from his seat at the Brown Bears table while other children chatted and fussed with their food and had the kind of conversations that kids in kindergarten do.  One little girl peed in her chair and was taken away crying.  One little boy got scolded by the teacher, and in turn, Khalid scolded the teacher.  I don’t think that went over well.

The principal came in and asked Khalid how he was doing.  He answered ‘Fine!’ and Joy and I gave each other looks of desperate encouragement and relief.  When it was time to go out and play, he did a reasonable job of staying in line with the other kids as long as Joy and I were flanking him on both sides.  Khalid climbed and ran and went down the slides, Joy and I got a chance to relax.  But then it was time to go inside again, and Khalid has a hard time with transitions, so he sprinted down the hall out of protest and I had to chase him.

When I finally caught him, we bumped into one of the staff members from the center that is managing his case, and to be honest, it was a breath of fresh air.  That lady, like other therapists and case managers, looked at Khalid like a miracle, a prodigy, a best-case scenario and the child that every mother is jealous of.  In the world of autism, this may be true- Khalid is making amazing progress, has manageable behavioural issues, and little to no aggression.  The director of the autism center calls him a star and a poster boy for ABA, but here in the world of normal kids, Khalid is a disruption, an anomaly, a little boy who can’t follow simple instructions and screams at adults if they press him for social interaction.   The teachers don’t beam at him and hug him and tickle him and engage with him, they sigh and keep a few feet back.

This morning Khalid had a cough, so I texted the school counselor to let her know we would stay home.  She texted back saying let him stay home for the rest of week, and she would see him after the weekend.   I know she meant well.  I know there’s no law saying they have to take Khalid.  I know their teachers don’t get paid extra for having a unpredictable, neurologically challenged little boy in the midst of their crying, peeing, nose-picking kindergarteners.  They have enough to handle without throwing Khalid into the mix.  But they could, at least, smile.  Just a little.  And watch with patient kindness instead of stern observation, clipboards in hand.  And say things like ‘Don’t worry if he makes a little noise, the normal kids make quite a fuss too…’ instead of  ’If you even think he’s going to make noise…’

Even Joy, who’s  been doing school shadowing and ABA therapy for ten years, was put off by the attitude.  Or lack of warmth, rather.  There’s willingness, but not much warmth.  And I feel like saying ‘take your stupid school, Khalid doesn’t need it!’ but the truth is, he does.  And there are only a handful of schools in the entire country that are willing to consider letting him in, and I should be grateful that there’s one so close to our house and already working with his therapy center to help facilitate inclusion.  And plus, when the kids were supposed to be putting their heads down for some quiet time, and Khalid was doing some worksheets on his own to bide the time, one little boy raised his head, peeked over at Khalid’s work (Write the number twelve, then find which groups of pictures have twelve items in them, and circle them) and exclaimed, “How did you do that!?”  And Joy and I beamed with pride, but then it was time for the kids to go to their Arabic class and it was time for us to go home.  Because the management believes that Khalid would not be prepared to learn one Arabic letter and one color in Arabic per week, even though I told them he already knows the alphabet in Arabic.

(And he can count to one hundred)

(And he knows his shapes and colors)

(And he can add numbers from 1 to 10)

(And he can read using phonics)

(And he is computer literate, knows how to type, operate a DVD player, use Google Chrome, YouTube, Starfall.com, and PBSkids.org)

It took me some time to accept Khalid’s autism, so I should cut other people slack too.  I know.  I need to remind myself that they don’t know where he’s been to appreciate how far he’s come.  And there’s nothing amazing about a him defending himself from interacting with the teachers or not yet speaking in full sentences.   And yelling at anyone who raises their voice in his vicinity is rather disruptive to class.  I’ll admit that too.  But he’s my son- my amazing, unusual, awkward, shy, silly, academically brilliant but socially disabled son and I think he’s the most miraculous child in the world- and anyone who thinks poorly of him because of his disability is going to have a very hard time getting out of my bad books.

But I’m a grown up, so I can’t be defensive, I have to be the most outgoing, outspoken, cheerful, useful, special-needs shadow mom that KG has ever seen, and I have to support these two overworked young ladies and help teach them how to manage my ABA poster-boy.

(And if the thumb tacks should go missing and unexpectedly end up on someone’s chair, I’ll try to keep Khalid from reacting to the noise of their satisfyingly shrill surprise.)

By Momma, the end.

Day four of noodle-induced food poisoning. Being brave and having an egg for breakfast. If anyone needs me, I’ll be laying down on this soft, soft keyboard.

*urp*

SubhanAllah.  It’s 2 am again.   It turns out that the reason why Khalid has been cranky, fevery, and screamy all night for the past four nights is because he has a throat infection.

This is the fourth all-nighter that Khalid and I are pulling in the past four days.  And I think I neglected to mention that he got his hand caught in an elevator earlier this week.  An area of skin about the size of a quarter was scraped off from his right hand, and despite our attempts to keep it clean and well-bandaged, it turned gooey and yellow by the next day, and the fever immediately followed.  So that’s when we took him to the ER at 2 in the morning.

Did I mention that we were in the ER earlier this week.  It was at 2 in the morning.  The doctor looked at his finger.  But apparently, not at Khalid’s throat.

Today we saw the doctor again, because the finger was getting better but the fever was getting worse.  The doctor took a look at Khalid’s finger as well as Khalid’s throat, and prescribed antibiotics.

Now, I’m pretty sure that even parents with neurotypical children have to battle their kids into taking the antibiotics, otherwise they wouldn’t be camouflaged with strawberry flavor and a pleasant fruity smell.  With our collective powers combined, Joy, HF, and I begged, cajoled, bribed, attempted to coerce, and then eventually forced the antibiotics into Khalid’s mouth for two of his three doses for the day.  You can guess how that went.  By the time we had all had enough, Khalid needed hosing down, the sofas needed wiping off, and HF’s beard had a pleasant fruity smell.   I sincerely hope that of the 10ml we put into Khalid’s mouth, at least 5 made it down.

I hope, InshaAllah, that Khalid is feeling better by tomorrow.  My work productivity is zero, my email response time has shot up to one week , my brain feels like tofu, and I’m sure Khalid’s tired of waking up and screaming in the middle of the night.  Poor thing.  When he woke up two hours ago (midnight) HF and I had just gone to bed, and neither of us had fallen asleep yet.  HF and I calmed him down and lay in bed hoping he would fall back asleep.  HF eventually dozed off, but Khalid’s eyes remained open.  I tried to fall asleep, and Khalid did a commendable job of staying in bed for over an hour, but after that, he’d had enough.

He got into my bed and took the pillow out from under my head.  Then, he threw it.  Then, he unwrapped the blanket from around me and threw that off as well.  Next, he took me by the hand and started to pull.  When that failed to get a response (I was pretending to be asleep) he took my head in both hands and began pulling.  And then he said…

Wemonade.

So here we are.  Khalid is drinking wemonade and watching Super Why.  There’s an hour and half before it’s time for me to wake up (heh) and make suhoor, so I’m attempting to fill it with productivity.  After I’m done typing this mishmash of an update, I’ll answer some work email, attempt to finish a presentation on customer pyramids (BLAH!), and maybe sneak some of the cold pizza in the refrigerator.  Don’t ask me about the cold breadsticks.  They didn’t make it past 2:15.

It’s amazing how little we control our own lives.  I mean this in a good way.  No matter how much I intend, attempt, and fight for going to bed on time so I can wake up and stay up from Fajr, Allah has other plans for me.  This week, we’re on the night shift.  Maybe when Khalid feels better our schedule will return to normal, but for now I can’t be sore about being nocturnal, despite how much it exhausts me and hamstrings my productivity.  There are far worse things in the world.  Alhamdulillah.

Cold pizza, anyone?

Doc: So, how’s your knee feeling?

Me: Alhamdulillah, pretty good!  It’s not yellow anymore, and it’s not creaking or grinding.

Doc: (Throwing his hands in the air) Thank God!  Now stop getting into car accidents!  Or we’ll have to install a bubble around you or something.

Me: InshaAllah.

So the surgery went well, Alhamdulillah.  It’s only been two days since the operation, but already the knee is free of the crunchy, audible grinding that was the result of damaged cartilage rubbing against damaged cartilage every time I flexed or extended my knee.  Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah.  I am happy and hopeful and optimistic about getting some of my mobility back.  I may never be able to run a marathon, but climbing stairs without creaking and being able to play in the park with the kids would be really amazing, InshaAllah.

I was given spinal anasthesia for the knee arthroscopy, so I was totally awake for the surgery.  It was interesting, being paralyzed from the waist-down you feel like half of a person, and as I watched the surgeon, I was sure that the iodine-painted foot planted on his chest and the carrot-colored leg he was wrapping up must have been someone else’s.  They were miles away and felt like no part of my own body.   When I got back to the room, I was laughing.  HF and I had a good time trying to move my toes, and although I was vaguely aware of sensation, I couldn’t tell how or what was touching any part of me.  It was so bizarre.  It didn’t last too long though.  The surgery was at ten, and by around 12:30, I started to regain feeling in my legs.  And then the pain level started to climb the stairs by twos, and even though I hadn’t wanted to, I had to ask for some pain relief.

Now, about morphine.  Whoever has been doing the PR for morphine should get a bonus.  When you think of morphine, you think of drowsy, blissed-out addicts sleeping their way into a happy oblivion.  Morphine is, after all, named for Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.  If there was a Greek god for vomiting every time you adjust position and losing consciousness all day, then it should have been named for him instead.  Morphine was awful.  When they were injecting me, HF asked the nurse “So, how long before this takes effect?”

The nurse said, “The full effect will take half an hour, but you should start feeling it right away.” That was when my head started spinning.  Right then and there, with the ceiling going down and the floors going up, I told HF that I needed to get out of bed, do wudu, and pray before I wasn’t able to.  And he looked at me skeptically, but he helped me out of bed, walked me to the sink, held me up while I staggered through wudu, washed my feet for me, and then led us in jamaat (I prayed in bed) where I briefly lost consciousness during the third of four rakats.  At some point, we had visitors who brought doritos and cookies and nuts.  HF said I giggled too much, I don’t remember.  My head felt like it was full of cotton, and I couldn’t hear very well.  I had some doritos and passed out  sitting up in bed.  Some of my sleep wasn’t sleep, it just felt like being deactivated.  My eyes were closed, but I could still hear everything going on around me.  And then some of my sleep felt like dreaming awake, which was scary and vivid and I woke up disoriented and not sure whether the dreams had been real or not.

Then there was a shift change, HF left and Owlie came in, and then the vomitting began.  I was mentally fuzzy and twitchy and remarkably pain-free, but every time I changed position in bed, I threw up.  I would doze off, wake up, vomit, fall asleep again, wake up, vomit, fall asleep… the cycle lasted until 9:30 pm, when I was alert enough to complain to the nurse, who then gave me another injection to control the nausea.  Then the vomitting stopped, Alhamdulillah, and Owlie and I went to sleep by around 11pm, and the next morning, SubhanAllah I woke up feeling like myself again.

I have to say, the morphine was worse than the surgery.  I cannot imagine why on earth people take it voluntarily.  This wasn’t the first time I’ve had morphine, but it was the first time that it was given to me when I was conscious enough to be able to determine what it did to me.  The last arthroscopy I had, I was partially sedated and given morphine before I even woke up, so coming out of surgery was hot, cold, itchy, shaky, nauseating, confusing, and mentally fuzzy for nearly eight hours afterwards.  I didn’t know what caused what, it was all too much to deal with at once.  With this surgery, once the spinal wore off, I was back to normal, and at no point was I nauseated, uncontrollably drowsy, or mentally fuzzy until I was given morphine.  Which I would NOT ever take again voluntarily, thank you very much!

But right, the knee.  Alhamdulillah, my surgeon (Hooray for Dr. Ali Al Belooshi!) cleaned up and trimmed down the damaged cartilage so that it no longer gets pulled and mashed and ground against when I move my knee.  Yes, there’s less cartilage in my knee than there was before, but at least my knee no longer hurts to move, Alhamdulillah.  I haven’t taken any pain killers since Friday morning (when the morphine finally wore off) and I am trying to stay that way.  My knee doesn’t feel post-surgical painful, it just feels like a really, really bad day for my knee, which I have had plenty of in the past six months.  So this pain isn’t out of the ordinary and is well within tolerability, Alhamdulillah.

JazakAllahuKheiran for the duas, I don’t know if I can post the surgery video yet, because my own laptop has died and this borrowed office laptop doesn’t have a video encoder, but as usual, the inside of my knee looks like a the inside of a cloud with frayed lining, which is then eaten by a small robot with revolving teeth.  A typical arthroscopy.  :)

Alhamdulillah

InshaAllah, I will be heading into the hospital this Thursday morning for another surgery on my right knee, the one I keep banging up in car accidents, plural. SubhanAllah

Female visitors with shawarma welcome.

Some people, when they imagine Jannah, hope for the exquisite foods, breath-taking architecture, perfected mates, and The Countenance and Pleasure of Allah. In addition to all of these things, I’m really looking forward to perfect knees. InshaAllah.

Please remember us in your duas.