Indulging in a little catharsis, and planning out my New Year's resolution.

Last night I couldn't sleep. Too many thoughts swirling around in my head, all of them revolving around the ankle problems that have been making me miserable since June. I'm a very infrequent blogger, but I need somewhere to purge these thoughts that interrupted my slumber. Bear with me, if you will.

Let's rewind back to about four years ago, when the pain started. It would only happen every couple of months: I'd be walking around, in the mall or on campus, and then as my left foot met the ground I would suddenly feel a sharp pain which would last only a matter of seconds. And then just as suddenly it would be gone, as if nothing had happened.

Now let's rewind back even further to April 2001, when I fractured my left fibula, dislocating my left ankle in the process, during rugby practice. It was three days after my 25th birthday and any youthful illusions I still had of being indestructible had been shattered. Before the surgery to repair the joint, I remember my orthopedic surgeon showing me my x-ray and explaining that the integrity of the "box" housing my ankle joint had been compromised, and that if not repaired properly the joint can eventually become arthritic. Though I still remember this clearly, I ask myself now why I did not pay closer attention to this warning.

Ok, fast forward to June 2010. As I was running with Kevin, I noticed an uncomfortable pull in my left heel. But, stubborn as I am, I finished my workout anyway. Over the next couple months, the pain in my heel was accompanied by an escalation in the pains had experienced in my ankle. By August I was experiencing this pain on a daily basis. My primary doctor said I had achilles tendinitis, and that the ankle pains were related to this. Seems like a reasonable enough diagnosis.

A week later I am at the podiatrist (for a completely unrelated matter) and I ask him about these pains, telling him this is the same ankle that I injured almost ten years ago. What he told me echoed what my orthopedic surgeon explained to me almost a decade earlier, but with a twist: he said that once the integrity of the "box" that the ankle joint rests in is compromised, even after the -best- of repairs the joint is more likely to become arthritic. Essentially, what I thought my surgeon would be careful to prevent turns out to be unpreventable all along.

And so here I am, on the cusp of the new year, and my ankle hurts even when I hobble about the house. I will be going back to my primary doctor on Monday, and hopefully we can find out whether this is really arthritis or if it is simply a relapse of tendinitis, though this time in my ankle instead of my heel. Or maybe a sprain.

At any rate I have been feeling very introspective about the past few years. Yes, I did heed the warning signals and consulted my doctor back in 2007. But at the time I had a different primary doctor, one whose medical advice in many instances would eventually fail me. He had broken his leg when I was young: he fell off his skateboard and suffered a compound fracture in his lower leg. After healing he still continued to run without problems. So he told me that it was okay for me to run, to take some motrin to help with the occasional pain, and to just "suck it up". Though this advice may have worked for him, I think where our cases differed was the fact that his break did not involve a complex joint. I don't think he took this into account when he offered this advice to me.

So this means no more running for me. Ever. Even if the current pain is due to tendonitis, I think it is time for me to pay attention to the signals and take care of what is left of my ankle, so that my joint doesn't degenerate completely. It's been painful to come to terms with this. I've been running off and on since junior high, and I mourn the loss of it. By letting go of the hope of ever running again I'm also losing an activity that I shared with Kevin, and which helped bring us together. It was Kevin's participation in Grandma's Marathon in Duluth that reunited us after years apart and provided the setting for our friendship to blossom into love.

I feel a lot of regret over the decision I made a decade ago to join the rugby club when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Sure, it was fun. But it lasted a full four months before it was over. And now ten years later I'm still paying for it. I could still be running now if I had been more cautious then.

But now it is done, and I know it can't be undone. I can't "unbreak" my leg. The Second Law of Thermodynamics pretty much assures this. So, abiding by the laws of physics, I'm choosing to align my thoughts with the forward motion of time and the inevitable entropy. Come Monday I'll go see my doctor. My current doctor is a lot more knowledgeable and thoughtful, so I feel I am in good hands. And I'm thinking, when I'm ready to work out again, it'll be swimming for me. Before tonight I was never a fan of swimming for exercise, and I remember being one of the slowest and least efficient swimmers in my junior high gym class. But now I'm willing to give it another chance. Heck, I'm happy with the thought that there's still -some- option left for me.

I know it will get better. About this time two years ago when my TMJ was at its worst, I thought I would never recover and all I really wanted to do was curl up in fetal position from the pain and despair. Though it has been a slow process and although my jaw is not 100% healed and may not ever be, the pain has now been minimized and I have learned how to take better care of it. And I think emotionally I have grown stronger because of what I went through. So I am not without hope. If not physically, I know I will at least heal in other ways.

I tend to be cynical about New Year's resolutions. Why wait for the new year to change, when you could start today? But if I were to have one this year, it would be to rehabilitate my ankle and then get my swim on. I think it's a reasonable goal.

Hypatia of Alexandria

Years ago, before we even thought of dating, my husband Kevin emailed me and suggested that if I ever have a daughter, I could name her Hypatia (I was engaged to another at that time, and Kevin's email was a congratulatory gesture, but that is another story entirely). It was about a year before I went back to school to study Computer Engineering, and I was a little intimidated about diving headlong into such a male dominated profession. So I was amazed to learn about a woman who was a prominent mathematician and astronomer and who gained the utmost respect from her male contemporaries in the 4th century, when women barely had rights at all, much less commonly held down careers in the hard sciences.

Hypatia was born somewhere between 350 and 370 A.D. to Theon Alexandricus, a mathematician who was one of the last known scholars associated with the Library of Alexandria. Hypatia collaborated with her father on many writings, but she also wrote works of her own. Among these solo projects was a commentary on the 13-volume Arithmetica by Diophantus, a commentary on the Conics of Apollonius, and editing of her father's commentary on Euclid's Elements. She is thought to have invented the hydrometer, which is used to measure the specific gravity (or relative density) of a liquid. She was also the head of the Neo-platonist school in Alexandria where she taught philosophy.

Her life was ended too soon when she became the target of those who blamed her, falsely, for the strained relations between Imperial Prefect Orestes and the Bishop Cyril. Unfortunately, her demise has sometimes overshadowed her accomplishments, as others in later generations have used accounts of her death to support their various religious (or anti-religious) views. I prefer to be inspired by what she accomplished while she was still living, which were so unique for a woman of her time.

Though I have grown increasingly more at ease with my place as a woman in a still primarily male dominated vocation, I still get excited whenever I discover new female role models in the area of mathematics or other sciences. Today is a day to honor another such woman: Ada Lovelace Day. A day created in honor of one such woman who has been credited as the first computer programmer, and to draw attention to women who have excelled in science and technology.

On my summer reading list: Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr by Michael A. B. Deakin.