When you can't walk, you read. And drink!

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!  The past two weeks I have been struggling with this terrible pain in my leg.  Last week my doc diagnosed it as a relatively rare leg bursitis (inflammation of the bursa near my knee) and gave me an incredibly painful Injection of Fire right into the terribly painful area, which engendered some really nasty swear words from me for the five seconds it took for the Fire to be injected.  

That was a week ago.  The inflammation is less and the pain is incrementally getting better but until today I could walk only two blocks before I had to turn around and hobble painfully back.  Today I was able to hobble three blocks (!) before turning back, sitting with ice on my elevated leg and taking another Tylenol.  But three blocks is progress.  Five days ago my leg was so painful to the touch that I couldn't bear to put lotion on it.  Now I can, so there's a bit more progress as well.

Since I can't walk, I have been reading.  A lot of junk, Harlan Coben and John Grisham to name two. But I read "Careers for Women" by Joanna Scott, a novel I enjoyed for several reasons:  good characters developed over decades, some fine historical notes about Manhattan from 1958 - 2001 including a fictionalized look at the workings of the Port Authority, the same look at an aluminum plant that was modeled on several plants that dumped hazardous waste into rivers and lakes in the Midwest. The title is a sarcastic spin on just that: careers for women, which include secretary, prostitute, blackmailer, babysitter, mother, administrative manager, housewife and so many more. The prose is clear and clean, the timeline meanders a bit but that, to me, was part of its charm.  

This is not a great book but it is certainly a very enjoyable read. Two thumbs up.

And I have had my belief in the restorative and medicinal properties of alcohol strengthened in the past several weeks.  What pain Tylenol doesn't mitigate, a nice shot of whiskey definitely assists in the pain relieving task.  

More on the trip to Oregon later.  I promise.