Week Two, Convalescing at Woodrose

Moving to the Woodrose Club was such a welcoming next chapter in my healing process. Ruth and I were shown into a small yet comfortable room. The twin beds were extraordinarily comfortable, plus we had a balcony that over looked the well cared for grounds. Two Indian men were mowing the grass with an eletric mower. One mowing, the other disignated "keeper of the cord." Behind them a beautifully attired Indian woman squatted behind them sweeping up the clippings with a branch. She was so effective with this method. Can you imagine squatting for hours, actually moving with her feet on the ground, sweeping at the same time? It hurt my knees looking at her and yet her dexterity was remarkable.

This place is a Mecca for the well to do able bodied. It sports a gorgeous swimming pool, tennis, badminton, ping pong, and racket ball courts, with full weight room and aerobic exercise equipment. It’s a beautifully laid out complex, with long walkways of black granite tile, gardens, stairways, and something we were really looking forward to after a week of hospital food, an excellent restaurant.

My appetite had returned. That first breakfast of fresh squeezed grape juice, omelet, toast and jam was gobbled down with gusto. I’ve been an avid coffee drinker for decades but somehow in India, I’d lost my taste for it and shifted to a bonafide tea drinker.

My only responsibity here was to heal. I returned to the hospital daily for PT. I was transported via taxi. It was less than two miles, but what a daily ride this was for me. The traffic in Bangalore is atrocious. The streets are clogged with cars, trucks, busses, rickshaw taxis, scooters, bicycles, cows, and ox drawn carts. It is pure madness. Pedestrians have no right of way. And as Ruth discovered, Bangalore has the worst side walks in India. The only way a pedestrian can cross a street is to find others and as a team, wind your way through the maize of traffic. Individually you’d be road kill but with three or four joined together you have a slightly better chance of reaching the other side in tact. This was not my fate to experience anything so daring. But just riding in a taxi through the throngs was a full day’s entertainment.

The PT at Wockhardt was challenging and just the spurt of energy I needed to recoup some of my waning strength. The ladies who guided me through the daily grind were young, fun loving and serious about the importance of establishing a good routine of strength and flexibility exercises. Everyday they pushed me a little harder. I seemed to be omproving most days, though still painful, but a few days were still excruciating; the pain in my knee was raw and unbearable. On those days they worked me a little easier. This would be a good model for the long haul of future rehab and healing.

Back at Woodrose, the dining was the highlight of the day. Great soups, salads, and spicy Indian cuisine were there for our dining pleasure three meals a day. Almost immediately we both started having “watery motion.” At first it was quite welcome to clear out the pipes from the week of hospital sluggishness. But after a few days of mild to moderate diarrhea we started rethinking our food choices. We eliminated all the fresh produce from our meals. This made no difference. I even backed away from the restaurant and bought cereal and yogurt from the commissary, but this also had little effect on my body’s purging. A week of this is going to be plenty.

The festival of Devali, the goddess of light happens in India the last part of October. This is the biggest celebration of the year and it goes on for four days. One of the recent trends in the celebration is the lighting of “fancy crackers.” It used to be sparklers and colorful fountains but in recent years the entire city goes crazy with loud booming explosive fire crackers. The blasting goes on for hours. The working class of India, whose average salary is about $150 a month, spends millions on these banal explosives. It really sounded like a war being waged from our hotel room. Fortunately Ruth never travels without ear plugs, so we witnessed this famous Indian celebration hunkered down in our room, attempting to muffle the deafening sound.

The festival of Devali is also celebrated by lighting oil candles. The restaurant was beautiful as these whispers of light lined the window cells and perimeter of the gracious room. Ruth and I were the only ones in the restaurant this particular night. We were seated right by the window looking out on the courtyard that was also lit up with colorful lights. The place was really slow during the holidays. I was not feeling well and ordered only a seven-up for my dinner. This was Ruth’s birthday and she was feeling a little let down partly because I was so self focused on my painful condition and there was no sense of celebration honoring her day. Our conversation was strained so with a feeling of heaviness I got up to return to our room. My long hair brushed into the lit candles and unbeknownst to me, provided additional fire works. Ruth fortunately noticed that my hair was on fire and immediately smothered the flames with her shawl. It was quite comical, but I found no humor in the event. My nerves were shot from the trauma of surgery, and painful recovery, and I went into shock realizing just how close I came to utter disaster. When I got to our room, I covered my singed, stinky hair with a bandana, took a valium sleeping aid and curling up in the fetal position, rocked my miserable self to sleep.

The next morning, after a very good night’s sleep, we were able to talk about how each of us was feeling. At this point I could laugh at the previous night’s debacle, and thanking her from the bottom of my heart for her quick saving action, we both felt relieved and back on our sisterly track.

Most of this week at Woodrose was spent resting on the comfortable bed, writing and reading e-mails, reading this great book, Shantaram, about an escaped convict who flees to India. He falls in love with Bombay and relays one extraordinary tale after another. It's written by Gregory David Roberts, and is a book I highly recommend. Not being able to seek out adventures myself, ( are you kidding, I couldn't even stray far from a toilet!) I found great delight in reading about another's love affair with India.

The Salon at Woodrose proved to be excellent in the treatments offered. I went in for a pedicure. It was such a healing experience. The ladies working there were from a northern state in India, they were Oriental looking and just exquisitely beautiful. They were completely present in the treatments offered, and so attentive to my well being and comfort. I availed myself to their healing hands receiving facial, scalp massage, and manicure each on a different day.

One of my main concerns during this week was how I was going to handle the return passage to home. I still could not bend my knee comfortably. Mostly I needed to keep my leg up on the bed or chair as the pain became really intense when I sat for any length of time. Our trip home would take place starting on Tuesday Nov. 4, Election Day. This was exactly two weeks after my surgery. Ruth wisely counseled me to not dwell on this future event but just take each day as it comes, and work at increasing my range of motion. The day before we were to fly home I had the staples removed from my incision. There it was, this Frankenstein scar, six inches in length, tight and sore. I was instructed to keep the wound unbandaged and allow the fresh air to aid in healing. My last day of PT they had me lay on my stomach, which felt really weird and uncomfortable, and had me bend my knee back beyond 90 degrees. The young therapist who I’d worked with some, assisted this stretch really cranking on it, a bit too aggressively I felt, but got it to bend further. I was told to add this stretch to the repertoire of exercises they had established for me. Of course my knee responded to this extreme bending by swelling up good and stiff, with the pain increasing. Just what I needed before I traveling. This was the last of my guided time. From this point on I was on my own to heal and continue my strengthening and rehabilitation. But first I had to undergo the long journey back home.