Also before proceeding, I can't believe that my last post about autumn in Manhattan omitted the soundtrack to the season. I've been unable to dislodge Beth Orton's "Sugaring Season" from my car. It's accompanied me on every rollerskiing trip to the lake. "Call me the Breeze" won song of the year for 2012 while we were in Germany, right? I wish she would come through Kansas City so we could make a guys' night out of it, maybe share some salads before the show.
About a week ago I hit the road to Topeka (ok it only takes about 45 minutes to get there, but work with me).
The first stop -- this being a 40-something road trip -- in past years it would have been the casino ... -- was my new spine doctor's office. It only took me three months to get an appointment upon reentering the country. Oh, and one trip for an MRI, another for x-rays, and a third to pick up the CD at a different location. And then a fourth trip because they failed to burn both the MRI and x-ray images on the same CD on the first try.
The news was not especially uplifting, if not exactly spine tingling. Back in May, I wrote:
<<It looks like I have Spondylolysis, which, as Wikipedia puts it bluntly, "is a defect of the vertebrae." Even more specifically, my L4 and L5 are not fused correctly, and I was likely born this way. According to the Cleveland Clinic,“Spondylolysis is a specific defect in the connection between vertebrae, the bones that make up the spinal column. This defect can lead to small stress fractures (breaks) in the vertebrae that can weaken the bones so much that one slips out of place, a condition called spondylolisthesis.” And according to the good Priv.-Doz. Dr. med. A. Badke Stellv. Ärztlicher Direktor, I have said spondylolisthesis. Luckily I do not have Spondylosis -- seriously, this is a third term and condition (basically a form of degenerative arthritis).>>
Unfortunately, Dr. Fritz of Topeka (nice continuity with the
German name ...) reports succinctly that I do in fact have
"spondylolisthesis, spondylosis, and spondylolysis." So there you
have it meine Damen und Herren -- the triple crown of spondys!
The sort of good news, however, is that I'm a good candidate
for surgery, which could, if all goes well, buy my a couple pain-free decades.
At least I think I might be a good candidate. By the time Dr. Fritz had
finished saying "rods, pins, and screws," I was close to passing out,
and I think I missed the final metal-related noun he listed off. We didn't even
get to "catheter." For now, it looks like we'll wait and see how long
I can do activities not called running pain-free. This winter's ski season will
be a major test. I do think yoga is helping, and I'm really quite good at it --
just ask Sam and Jessa. When in Manhattan, btw, I prefer Orange Sky Yoga. The
previous link is worth clicking. You gotta love the video of doing yoga in the
Flint Hills.
The best news of all is that Fritz gave me gratis mental
health and fitness check-ups as well. In his summary letter to me, he began:
"On physical examination, this is a well-developed, well-nourished, white
male in no acute distress." Jane, Sheila, Katie, Brian, and the rest of my
clinical friends, can you tell me what one calls this lower-than-acute level of
distress that I have? I should do something about it ... Fritz also reported
that "his neck is supple without bruits." Which got me thinking, what
does champagne have to do with my neck? Moving on, I feel validated now that I
spent my 20s and 30s reading history because he wrote that my "speech and
fund of knowledge is good." But I was a little disappointed that he would
only stick his neck -- supple neck? -- so far out as to write that "his
strength appears to be good in the upper and lower extremities." Well,
c'mon Dr. Fritz., what's with the lazy "appears"? I was perfectly
willing to do a push-up test.
Sadly, I forgot to get a picture with Dr. Fritz, unlike with Herr Doktor Badke. I liked him a lot. He was data obsessed and kept telling me
that no data supports any theory about what one can do with the spondys, what
activities are kosher, what prevents the pain, etc., which is about what I
figured. Everyone's stumbling through the dark when it comes to the spine.
From there I continued down I-70 into downtown Topeka. After
lunch at PT's coffee, it was on to the state capital, where my friend Virgil --
longtime editor of Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains -- had
arranged a surprise VIP tour for me guided by the head of the capitol's office.
You see, being book review editor of Kansas History has its perks.
The capitol building is under renovation, although the dome
has a fresh coat of copper and looks great. The building is perhaps best known
for its John Steuart Curry murals. Man that's a lot of white people painted on
walls -- and one especially angry white dude (that being John Brown). Well
that's not quite fair: Indians appear in the murals kindly helping Coronado,
the Spanish governor of a province of northern Mexico, when he entered Kansas
in 1541. His journals note that he encountered many "shaggy cows" --
bison. I don't think he wrote about sunflowers, though maybe Virgil can comment
here. And Virgil, as an agricultural historian, feel free to comment on the
imagery of the hulking shirtless farmers. Seems kind of 1930s-ish to me, not
1950s-ish.
The VIP tour included a stop in Governor Brownback's office, and I mean his office, where in the interest of healthy, civil debate, I remained completely quiet.
The final highlight was seeing some workers obviously enjoying their task of putting down a floor that will double as a county-by-county map of Kansas. When we showed up, they had only finished the western part of the state -- the half with the easy, mostly square-ish shaped counties. Riley Country, in contrast, must have put the floor-cutting technology to the test.
When I got back to Manhattan, everything had changed. At least it seemed that way at the new Bourbon & Baker. The 2008 food scene has arrived in Manhattan people! We now have our very own establishment with egg-topped small plates and ironic comfort desserts.
Ok but more seriously, the place is very good, and opened
well. The fried chicken on a waffle was fantastic, and so were the Russian
Roulette peppers (and for that matter so was the fried chicken on a biscuit).
Dear Germany friends, a restaurant serving small American plates would make a
killing in Tübingen. And while
we're on the subject of what Germany needs (and you thought I had grown tired
of the subject ...), it's been a solid couple of weeks on the beer front. At
Bourbon & Baker Brent finally found the elusive Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quadruple.
That's right, Martin, beer aged in bourbon barrels.
And I heartily recommend Celastrina, Odell's new saison.
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| Photo credit: drinkingmadeeasy.com and Carrie Dow |
Speaking of road trips, it's time to hit the road for real in a few hours. See you in Chicago.
