Patience.

It’s come to my attention that I don’t always do a very good job of keeping people up to date with my life details, instead just dropping comments about my current life events in a blog post without following through with details or a wrap-up. First, let me say to the reader that then asks me more questions: Thank you for reading and caring! I think it comes down to why I write. I never really wanted this to be a simple travel blog ” I went here, and then I went there…”. I aspire to write more compelling stories on a topic of care or concern that also happen to integrate photos and stories of my travels; however, as I travel less and more family members read my bog as a way to catch up on my life, or to see pictures I may not otherwise share, this has become more of a life journal in recent years. I’m ok with that for now, but beware I could drop an overtly political post or even some poetry on you at any time, you never know! Meanwhile, for those that asked: following the trip to Arizona my knee was feeling pretty good by the time we got back to California. Our return trip even included some moderate bike rides and hikes that did not cause a problem. So while I am concerned about how that problem popped up on my first long day with a heavy bike, it is not currently an issue. Warning, just for fun I am going to drop some photos into this post from travel that predates my blog, mostly because I haven’t gone anywhere and don’t have many new pretty pictures to share!

But then what is going on in with my foot in the above photo? In April 2021 I noticed a mass on the bottom of my left foot, and being on the ball of my foot this spot takes all the pressure in any activity. It didn’t hurt to touch or poke at the mass itself, but being on my feet a lot would irritate the entire area. I learned that I could no longer where my stiff soled mountain bike shoes and had to wear the most plush bottomed sneakers I owned if I was going to be on my feet all day — and the general area would still get swollen and sore. Since I noticed it just before leaving for Oregon for the summer I couldn’t do anything about it because my medical insurance is really only good in California (barring emergencies). So I learned to live with it, but upon return to Santa Barbara I went in to see a podiatrist. The first person I saw was rather dismissive: I could get it surgically removed if I wanted, or not. Feet were rarely the source of cancerous masses. Up to 10 weeks recovery. End of story. I let it go for awhile longer and eventually decided I wanted a second opinion. Ultimately I found a surgeon I liked a lot better. Additional images (ultrasound, MRI) still didn’t reveal *what* the mass was, other than solid not fluid. I didn’t meet with this surgeon until January and he felt that I should get it out — because it wasn’t going anywhere on its own and was impacting my quality of life.

The catch was, yes 6-10 weeks until I can return to full activity levels, but the first three weeks I would have to be off my foot completely. At the time of the appointment the semester had just been pushed back a week and with high Covid levels I could easily justify having the first couple of classroom meetings remote, so I asked him how fast he could get me in. Five days later I was having surgery. It went really well and after he excised the mass he assured me that I definitely made the right choice, it was surprisingly hard like a marble and was going to bother me for life — he was surprised I had been functioning as well as I had. This news made me feel a bit better because with any surgery there can be complications, I was especially worried about scar tissue and ending up worse off than I had started. I am now six days past the surgery and my first check up showed it looking great (photo above). Now I wait an additional two weeks to get the stitches out and then can slowly start using it as pain and swelling allow. With a little luck maybe I’ll be back to gentle road biking by the end of February! I’m sure it comes as no surprise that up to two months of inactivity will not be easy for me. I’m already getting restless and integrating upper body exercises into my life. My low back health is completely dependent on regular cardiovascular exercise, so keeping my back healthy through this is going to be my biggest challenge.

Meanwhile I am teaching a class this semester and with Covid infection rates you can imagine that everything is a moving target. After pushing the start of the semester back a week the school decided that the first month of classes will be online – except for a few specific things that happen to include science labs. So my lecture that was supposed to be in person will now be on Zoom for the first month and we will then transition back into the classroom, theoretically. I’ll hold my first lab meeting, this coming week, on Zoom just because I can’t be on my foot yet; however, the following week I plan to teach lab in person, but to stay off my foot as much as possible. This will be an interesting journey, since this is my first return to college teaching since the start of the pandemic and my skillset is way behind that of my peers. I am giving myself a crash course of the intricacies of synchronous teaching on Zoom, uploading lectures to YouTube, how to best communicate complicated drawings, etc… all while worrying about students being out sick, and the equity issue of access for students who had planned to be in a classroom, but now are supposed to be learning by logging onto their phone from their noisy overcrowded apartment that may not even have wifi. Our students most in need and taking the bravest steps to improve their life situation always bear the brunt of this pandemic, and everything always, really. I’ll do my best to help them.

Really there is not much more going on for me, but here are some pictures I like! And you can be sure that in the days before the surgery I crammed in as much riding and hiking as possible, where I snapped this photo of my friend Kris and me.