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

One little Iman jumping on the bed
She fell off and bumped her head!
Momma called the doctor and the doctor said:
Take her to the ER, she might need stitches.

As life imitates art (or vice-versa?) Iman smashed her head against the corner of a dressing table while jumping on Momma’s bed and initiated herself into the world of the Mortal Wound. And what a dramatic initiation it was- twenty minutes of crying and bleeding profusely and refusing to hold still, blood on her clothes and on her face as she tried to make the pain go away by vigorously rubbing at it. (Note: this doesn’t work)

We did eventually get the bleeding to stop, and then packed her into the car and off to the emergency room in Abu Dhabi. We were seen right away, Alhamdulillah, and were asked only once- “So ma’am, what is the prob- oh. Richard, dressing for the baby please!” Iman was in a fairly good mood, the pain having subsided, and we even went through a few rounds of ‘Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,’ to the amusement of the ER staff. Iman bobbed up and down and tapped on her own head for emphasis, and appropriately shook her head and held out a very stern finger at the final line. But then the fun was over because it was time to actually do something about the hole in her forehead.

In case you’ve ever wondered what the Iman:Normal Human ratio of intensity is, I think it’s three to one. That’s how many people it takes to hold her down so that one nurse can push the edges of the wound together while another paints it with glue, fans it dry, paints it again, fans some more, and then lays down steri-strips, and then clear plastic bandage to background shrieking of “No! Wait! All Done! No No No! Mommaa!”

When it was all done and Iman’s hands were finally freed, she made an angry grab at the bandages on her forehead. Ouch! she cried out in genuine surprise. She frowned, sniffled, thought for a moment, and then tried again. Ouch! *pout*. Cindy and I were trying desperately to not laugh out loud, and we waited to see whether she would do it again. She did. Ouch! *pout* We gave her a glass of water and some tic-tacs, and with both hands full, she stopped taking swipes at herself.

She fell asleep in the car on the way home, woke up in the morning happy, and seems to have forgotten about last night’s trauma. Today Cindy and I moved the furniture around in the bedroom, and the new arrangement is awkward, but at least there is nothing forehead puncturing in the vicinity of the bed. Alhamdulillah, we were blessed that Iman did not get the corner of the dresser in her eye, and I’m not going to risk it.

No more monkeys jumping on the bed!

A heart so torn will bleed, and bleeding so congeals
That a darkened outer covering will block the touch that heals
A heart then stripped will bleed, and with bleeding fingers I
Begin to mend again a heart that otherwise would die
Because Allah has set no limit on how often I be broken
And no promise, no oath, has yet to me been spoken
To guarantee that strands of pain, twisted to a filament
Won’t lacerate the tender heart around which they are bent
But this guarantee, this oath, clearly has been made:
My Guardian Lord has promised me gardens in the shade
And promised me no burden greater than I may bear
So with this thread of hope, I make my small repairs
For a heart so torn will bleed, but mended so, no longer
And the wounds that made me bleed, only make me stronger.

Had HF’s family over for dinner. Made chicken kabobs. And gave every last person food poisoning, in varying degrees, with seven requiring the hospital. Myself included.

One of the great things about not updating your blog regularly is that no one really visits it anymore. So you can write whatever you want to. Like this:

Lab Technician: Ah, a BHCG test, expecting a baby?

Me: No, having a miscarriage.

LT: Oh, uh- I’m sorry.

Me: It’s ok.

-Pained silence-

Once upon a time I was in the US for Owlie’s wedding, and two days after arriving, I found out I was pregnant. And then, after four days of baby shopping, and quietly thinking of names, and imagining sweet little faces with HF’s big brown eyes, I found out I was having a miscarriage. And then I was on the next flight home, a week after I had arrived and a week before my original return.

And here I am today. Blogging.

Because it would seem that my blog fulfills many roles, one of which is catharsis. And I’m an extremely logical person, but my own brain is baffled by how deeply you can mourn something that was never yours and was never meant for you to begin with. I can’t say that I’ve lost a baby, because the baby was never mine. If Allah had willed that child for me, the entire world could not have withheld it from me. But He did not, and so the entire world can not grant it to me.

And the miscarriage was not my fault, and could not have been caused by anything I did or by any medicine I could have taken. The doctor very kindly said so. Which was nice, because up until that point I had been mentally crucifying myself for taking my daily migraine medication. Never mind that I had no idea I was pregnant until three days before I miscarried. I’m a mom, I blame myself for things. The flip side of taking responsibility for your children is that you blame yourself when something happens to any of them, even an embryo that was never meant to be born.

And you cry, and you cry, and you cry. And when no one is looking, and Abu Dhabi is flying past you at 155 kph with the highway roaring and the nasheed blasting, you cry when you remember what you’ve been trying so desperately to drown out.

A few people know, and they ask about me because they care, not because they’re trying to stick their fingers into the gaping, bleeding, hole in my heart. I have to pull myself together and be polite, and patient, and coherent, and talk about things in terms of BHCG levels and non-viability and natural termination. I have managed to not cry in front of anyone but HF and the speed radars on the Abu Dhabi/Dubai highway, not because I’m being Stoic, but because I don’t want anyone’s pity, especially my own. I’m healthy, I’m ok, I am free from permanent physical effects of what was an early and natural miscarriage that required no medical intervention, chemical or surgical. I have two beautiful, amazing children and no reason to believe that I cannot have more, InshaAllah. I have the most loving, supportive, water-proof husband in the entire world, who not only knows what to do with a wife who is crying so hard she’s incoherent, but also to make her stop, and eventually, even smile.

Allah hasn’t wronged me. He never has. And faith says that He never will. Healing is just a matter of time and patience. And being content with God’s will does not mean that I cannot allow myself to grieve. SubhanAllah, may Allah bless those who preserved the life and sunnah of the Prophet, so that fourteen hundred years after the death of Prophet Muhammad, we know what he said upon the death of Ibrahim, his 18 month old son. “”O Ibrahim, against the judgment of God, we cannot avail you a thing.”

HF is asleep, Khalid is asleep, Iman is asleep- why then am I awake? Because it’s hard to eat chocolate cereal in your dreams, that’s why.

So my bowl of chocolate cereal and I are here to share our continuing adventures in dental destiny. On Wednesday, I dutifully submitted to the dentist- a nice man who does horrible things to my mouth, and let him fight it out with my jaw for ownership of my last two wisdom teeth. It wasn’t a fair fight. He had pliers and some sort of ice-pick. My teeth were unarmed. After about twenty minutes of wrangling, the teeth were out and my unhappy gums were packed with cotton.

That would have ended a painful but mundane day in dental history, were it not for the evil forces of TMJ. TMJ is a long a complicated term that, for me, means that in addition to popping and clicking at embarrassing times, my jaw is also vulnerable to being dislocated and locked open anytime I visit a dentist. So thanks to TMJ, I left the dentist with a misaligned mouth, but thanks to the anethesia, I had no idea until 11pm that night when I realized I couldn’t close my teeth.

I called the dentist and he offered a simple solution-

Is your husband home?

Yes.

Tell him to place his thumbs on your molars and push your jaw open and down, when it clicks, push it back into place.

-blink blink-

Try that and let me know if it works. I’ll be waiting for your call.

I headed for the bedroom, where HF was sitting in the rocking chair reading while Khalid, presumably falling asleep, was waving his feet from under a pile of pillows.

(Hey, have you ever wanted to dislocate my jaw? Now’s your chance!)

HF blinked a few times when I told him the plan. He grinned nervously and said he’d give it a shot. We tried it a few times- HF with both thumbs in my mouth, trying to force my jaw open without hurting me and overall, succeeding in little more than causing my tongue to get dry.

(Don’t worry, the worst you can do is dislocate my jaw, and that’s what we’re trying to do!)

It didn’t work. HF is too nice, too gentle, and maybe even too squeamish. By then it was 11:30. I called the dentist back and arrangements were made to meet me back at his clinic. I made it there just after 1 am, and after much pushing and pulling of my jaw, the dentist succeeded in popping it somewhat back into place.

But not completely back into place- my teeth were set too far to the right, and the ones on the bottom were set exactly in line with the ones on top, when normally they are set just behind. Apparently, my jaw has spasmed, and due possibly to inflammation as well- it’s stuck there. Still- even as I type this, my jaw is set down and to the right. My teeth only align if I manually push things back into place, and that too is painful.

So what now? Well, first we laugh and shake our head, but not too hard, because it’s all stiff and sore. Then, we wait one more day and see if the swelling goes down. We’re taking anti-inflammatory meds, and if that doesn’t work, the dentist will prescribe a muscle relaxant. Me, I just wish I could chew again.

By Abez, the end.

Abez Presents: How to Mortally Wound Yourself with Lunch

Step1: Make Tuna Corn Chowder yesterday(recipe will follow at bottom of post)
Step2: Reheat bowl of Tuna Corn Chowder in microwave, set on one minute.
Step3: After one minute, take the chowder out to stir it, so that it heats evenly.
Step4: Put spoon into chowder
Step5: Be attacked by superheated flying potato from chowder.
Step6: Catch superheated flying potato- in the eye.

Yes, I burned my eye with a potato. This may be a world’s first, and remember, you read it here. Alhamdulillah, I managed to wince in time, and my eyelid caught most of the damage. It hurts though, subhanAllah, and the area around my right eye is quite red.

Facing the pain of betrayal from my own lunch, I decided to take solace in dessert, hence, the second recipe of this post- Conciliatory Icecream Cone.

Mix One scoop Vanilla Icecream with 1 tbs pancake syrup
Add 1 tsp peanutbutter (it rolled away!)
Plop onto an icecream cone.
Nurse your burned eye and enjoy.

Recipe2: Treacherous Tuna Corn Chowder

In roughly two cups water, add:
Can of Mushrooms
Frozen, mixed veggies (greenbeans, peas, carrots, corn)
1 diced potato

And boil until the potatoes are soft and seem broken of their will to retaliate with flying attacks.
Add 3 cups milk, 2 cans of tuna, black pepper, salt, and 4 cloves of garlic that have been finely minced. Or grated. Or mashed into paste. Just destroy them, ok?

Mix 1/3 cup white flour into abt 1/2 cup cold water on the side, add to soup BEFORE it boils. (if you boil milk that has no thickening agent in it, it will split) Allow soup to thicken, add salt and more pepper if you wish.

Allow soup to cool. Reheat a single bowl. Microwave on medium heat. Beware of flying potatoes.

There’s nothing funny about pain, but the look on Bebe’s face (brow wrinkled, lower lip protruding) followed by the offended little ‘meep!’ noise that he made when I accidentally beaned him in the face with Blue- that was funny. That was very, very funny.

I must be a horrible mother, because once when the cell phone I had been trying to hold between my ear and my shoulder slipped and bounced off of Bebe’s forehead, I couldn’t help but notice how his wide-open eyes and perfectly o-shaped mouth made him look like a surprised little coconut- and I laughed.

On a separate note: the moving and packing is about 80% complete, and we are now left with one mattress, a fridge, a washer, a stove, a kitchen and two bathrooms. There will be one last installment of work and then we should be shifted into the new house completely, InshaAllah. So if updates are few and far between these days, it’s because I’m currently busy reigning over the Kingdom of Dustbunnies in Cardboardland.

Is it a sin to be rich?

For now: It has happened. I have given myself the first mortal wound of my married life. I do not wish to horrify those of you with delicate constitutions with the gory details. Nor do I wish to upset those readers who lack intestinal fortitude. (please, not on the computer chair…) So all I will say is this- There was a hot skillet and a cocky, no-good hash brown that refused to accept its rightful place in the circle of life, and when it took off I had to show it what’s what. I had to chase the sucker down and retrieve it, and being a Suggard does come with occupational hazards, and at some point during the high-speed chase, I invented a new recipe for Seared Abez. Tsssss. So now there’s the pink burn on my forearm of all places, almost into the crook of my elbow, and if you think that’s bad, you should see what I did to the hash brown. mwa. ha. ha. chomp.

Oh, and I fought the Shogun and nearly lost the tip of my thumb, but the fruit salad does taste meatier for it. The End.

And here, for the sake of posterity:

Mortal Wound: TROGDOR!

Mortal Wound: Sensei Presents

Mortal Wound: Killing me softly with pineapple

Mortal Wound: Oven-roasted Knuckles

Mortal Wound: GONGGG!

Mortal Wound: ZAP!

Mortal Wound: Waxing your thumbs: pros and cons

Mortal Wound: Carrot upside-down cake

Mortal Wound: Crackers on the rebound

Mortal Wound: Death By Exasperation

Mortal Wound: The Mortal Wound Medley