The weather in Seattle has finally cooled down, and you can smell fall in the air. And some of the leaves are starting to fall and provide a crisp, crunchiness under your feet when you walk. This has put me in the mood for apple cider and.
So let’s talk about running. And knees. And specifically knees and running together. I went out for a brisk 12-mile run on Saturday. I ran around Lake Union, I ran out by the Ballard Locks and back, and I ran up to Green Lake, ran part of the way down, and started back towards home. I was at mile 11 out of 12, I was feeling pretty good, and it was a beautiful day. I was approaching a crosswalk, and saw that a car was coming so I attempted to make eye contact with the driver to see whether they were planning to go or let me cross first. And in that moment of attention on the car, I ceased to pay attention to the ground and tripped over some uneven concrete. I went down, skidded on the concrete (on my knee). And there I was. On the sidewalk about a mile from home with a bloody knee a little ripped up from the concrete. Ouch! My first thought was that I would call Mike, and he could come and pick me up. Unfortunately, Mike’s phone must have still been in silent mode from work on Friday, because Mike didn’t answer my repeated phone calls. Ok. Did I have an ORCA card so that I could ride the bus home? No. And there really wasn’t a bus line near me without walking half a mile anyway. I could just sit by the side of the road and wait for Mike to wake up, check his phone, and call me back, but it was Saturday morning. It was unlikely he’d be up soon. I tentatively tried standing up. Painful, but doable. I decided I could hobble a mile home. I could even take the back roads so I wasn’t quite so conspicuous. I had walked about a block before I looked down at my knee again. Hmm… now it was bleeding all the way down to my shoe. Fortunately I was wearing old shoes. Also fortunately, I was wearing one of my least favorite running shirts. I stripped it off (Don’t worry! I had a sports bra underneath!) and used it to wipe up as much of the blood as I could and then limped my way home.
I cleaned it up as best I could, looked doubtfully at the small gouge in my knee, shrugged, poured hydrogen pyroxide on it five times (that was fun), and then bandaged it up.
When Mike woke up, he insisted on re-bandaging my knee better. “Hmm…” he said when I took my homemade bandage off and he looked at it. “That’s not a knee scrape. That’s a gouge. For a knee scrape, we should put a bandage on it. For a gouge, we should go to the doctor.”
Bummer. I argued a little, but I kind of agreed that it was more than a scrape, so the next thing we knew we were at the doctor’s office waiting to see a PA. She agreed it was more than a scrape and did all kinds of fancy irrigation stuff on the wound to flush out any debris, then she superglued the flaps of skin on my knee closed (sorry, probably too much information here… it’s a little gross. I just thought it was fascinating. I didn’t know they had medical super glue for these kinds of situations.). She thought about stitches but ultimately ended up with some tape-like sutures that she put over the wound. The superglue and the sutures will dissolve on their own in 5-7 days. The real key here was that until they dissolved, I was not supposed to bend my knee. At all. If I bent it, it would break the super glue and the sutures loose… and then I would have to go back and get all that re-done. So I’ve got the area all wrapped up, and the ACE bandage pretty much prevents the knee from bending. As it is, though, I’m on day 5 of the 5-7 day plan, so I should be bending my knee again very soon, and I haven’t had any real pain yesterday or today. 🙂
In other health-related news, poor Piper has another UTI. So she’s on another round of antiobiotics plus the vet is recommending that we try some different food for her.
Apart from health-related news, things have been fairly busy. Saturday evening Mike and I got together with a friend of Mike’s from work and his wife and we went out to dinner and then hung out at their house for awhile. His wife lent me the new Hercule Poirot book… apparently there’s a new author who has been blessed by Agatha Christie’s surviving family to take up the Hercule Poirot books. Interesting! I’m enjoying it so far. As is typical with the Hercule Poirot shows, I can’t figure out what’s even going on in the story, much less who is responsible for the murders. Very fun!
Because of my knee Mike has been dropping me off at work and picking me up from work. I could walk to and from the bus stop myself, but I’m walking slowly since I’ve got the bandage on my knee, so it’s nice to be dropped off and picked up. That means that I’ve been at work longer hours, because Mike has to drop me off before 7:30am and doesn’t get back down to South Lake Union until 6ish, but that’s ok. There’s lots to do at work these days.
I already have picked up 16 loads of my 20 CSA loads this season! I’ve been doing surprisingly well using things up, although I had an off week last week somehow and had to throw some stuff out. Mostly just because I forgot I had it buried in the fridge. I made up some chicken veggie soup for Mike over the weekend. He has been wanting lighter foods these days since he’s been eating healthier and working out more. I also made some eggplant curry for me. Yum! I also baked some corn on the cob, steamed a whole head of Napa cabbage (which I eat cold with salt on it… like a proper Irishman!). 🙂 I also steamed up some sugar snap peas and green beans. The green beans are always a hit with Mike, and it’s great to have veggies around that he enjoys!
In other news, I’ve been drinking beet smoothies these days. I can honestly say beets are one vegetable that I hate. I can’t even think of any other vegetable that I remotely dislike as much as I dislike beets. But if I get them from the CSA, I’ll use them one way or another, and a smoothie is one of the better ways to hide them as long as you don’t use too much beet in each smoothie. Also, beets are very anti-inflammatory and de-toxing, and given that I want my knee to heal quickly, they seem like a good addition to my diet. They just don’t taste good though. I wrinkle my nose every time I have to eat them. I have found that they work best mixed with carrots and greens. The carrots and greens both have pretty compelling flavors that mask the beets pretty successfully.
Mike and I went to UVillage over the weekend to do some window shopping. Somehow it always takes us forever to get a parking spot in the parking ramp, because the cars in front of us go so slowly and then will stop if they see a car about to leave so that they can take that car’s spot. When you couple these slow parkers with the fact that Mike likes to park at the very top of the parking ramp and thus it takes us several minutes just to drive all the way around up to the top anyway, we usually budget about fifteen minutes just for parking. This weekend’s trip was no exception. Mike was behind a Subaru that was driving at 5mph and put on his brakes anytime he thought he might see a spot opening up. Mike threw his head back against the headrest. “C’mon Subaru!” he said reading from the sign that happened to be right in front of us. “There’s 750 stalls… CONTINUE UP!” Once we finally parked we had a fun time wandering around the stores, and Mike got a chia berry smoothie from Evolution, an amazing organic smoothie place. He is loving that chia berry smoothie.
I can’t believe it’s already Thursday… the week is just flying by! I will put some pictures in my next post… I have some lovely ones of South Lake Union in the fall!
rainydayrunner 