Unplanned Rest: How I Ended Up in Rehab

So, I know what you are thinking: His love of and indulgence in craft beers and bourbon was bound to lead him there sooner or later. Nope, it was a new re-dedication to exercise that got me to rehab. A parking lot entrance with a high curb, a rental street bike at the wrong angle, and speed, with the addition of a concrete surface and (Newton was right) gravity. All that.

I enjoyed Chicago a lot, and during the week I spent at ISTE2018 I rented bikes from DIvvY and had so much fun with that that I started incorporating the Nashville version of it into my daily exercise plans. On Friday morning I had worked out on the stationary bike at McCabe Community Center, then I rented a bike and tooled around a bit on the greenway path surrounding it and the golf course. Saturday, despite high and humid heat, I went straight for the bike, parking at Charlotte Avenue and 46th Avenue North and riding the greenway from there, passing through and along the Nashville Community College campus and then to Target on White Bridge and back through Sylvan Park after retracing my wheels. Sunday morning I set out from a parking space in front of the community center

to go all the way around the greenway trail, and I did. My bike even sported my alma mater's logo.

Panorama from the bridge at Old White Bridge--as a kid this was the road between West End and Charlotte

I loved this view--see the graffiti under the bridge

It's beautiful back there, but I won't be back there for a while. Here's why: I finished my ride, pushing the heavy bike up that last hill around at the North end of the trail by the golf course, and was about to rack the bike when I looked out Murphy Road. I thought, let's just ride up to my granny's and later my mom's old house and take a close look at it. I drive by it nearly every workday during the school year and this would give me a closer, slowed-down chance to view it. 

Past the round-about, I picked up some speed and decided on a whim to turn into the parking lot in front of the now-defunct Local Taco. I veered in that direction, only too late to realize there was a 2 inch curb at the entrance. I caught that curb at speed at a bad angle, bounce off it and back onto it, and over went my bike. 

I clearly remember thinking I was in trouble, tucking my head into my left shoulder, the higher one, and hitting the curb solidly on my right hip, knee, and elbow. Once I came to a stop I moaned, pulled out from under the bike, and stood up. The pain was incredible, deep, and certain. I shifted weight to my left foot and tried to catch my breath. I was leaning on the bike, looking up eastward Murphy Road, and seeing a slight lady in tee-shirt and shorts hurrying my way with a large leashed dog. She got to me and asked if I were okay. Long story short I gave her my car keys, pointed to my car not 40 yards away, and asked her if she would bring me my car. When she did, I asked one more favor, would she rack the rental bike? She did. "I'm not sure I am okay with you driving," she said. "I'm okay," I replied, the adrenaline clearly in charge. "I'm heading to St. Thomas ER." I muscled myself around the car to the open driver's door and got in. I drove. On the way to ER I phoned Lee Ann, "Don't be mad at me," I started off...

At the hospital I phoned ER from the parking lot. During the drive I realized I was injured more seriously than I had thought. Initial x-rays failed to show the damage, then a Cat-scan did. I had broken my acetabulum, the cup that holds the ball of the femur, that large leg bone that dogs so love to chew on. 

 

As one doctor described it, I slammed so hard on the pavement that the femur acted like a hammer and impacted so hard into the acetabulum that it created two large breaks in it. However, the x-rays showed that it was not "disaligned," which means in short that surgery was not indicated in my case. I would need to stay off of it for some weeks, but no surgery, "probably."

The nature of the injury required I be transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where "they have a trauma unit that deals with this kind of injury all day, all night long." If, as was still possible, surgery was indicated, their doctors did it several times daily. 

Off I went in an ambulance. The driver asked me a number of questions to gauge my awareness in light of several doses of morphine. When he asked, "Who is the President of the United States," I responded, "Do I have to answer that?" He told me he got similar responses every day. I complied, but I did say "Donald J. Drumph," to keep my pledge not to speak or write the evil one's name. #resist 

The nice ambulance attendants rolled me right into ER and they put me on a bed in the nearest room. The clock said 9:50am. I would be in this room until around 11:00pm. While there, I ventured out once for one more session of x-rays, these a much longer set which included new angles; once for a CATscan; and finally to go to a room in the hospital. They attempted around 5:00pm to send me home with drugs and crutches, but I failed so painfully and miserably to walk on the crutches, my hip spasming with any motion no matter that I kept from putting weight on it, that they resorted to plan B--get a room.

In the room, I was told not to eat or drink anything after midnight in case doctors decided to exercise the surgery option the next day. After a mixed night's sleep, I awoke to medications and blood work and spent much of the day waiting. I worked on blogging ISTE18. Around 2:00pm I was informed I could eat: no surgery! The attending team had prescribed immediate rehab, we decided on Stallworth (only blocks away) and an ambulance was ordered. One nurse said that in the 3 years she had worked there she had never seen anyone so fast-tracked out. 

I arrived at 3202B in Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Center around 4pm, and began a series of schedules to get stronger. When a Physical or Occupational Therapist told me to do 20 reps of any exercise, I did at least 25, sometimes 30. When I did a timed session on the tabletop hand-cycle I inserted one-handed sets and sprints. When a tech was called away for some reason and I finished my assigned activity I repeated it or did another one my position would allow. I worked hard. Today, it's my "Independence Day," and I finish this as I am awaiting the discharge papers to return home. Lee Ann has borrowed or bought all that I need to function at our home and you can rest assured that I will keep pushing. I have to be at school by August 3 and teaching in my temporary portable lab by the first of the next week. I'll do it. Thanks to all my friends and family and to literally everyone at each of the three facilities that nursed me through to the path of healing. In all my time this past week there has only been one doctor, nurse, tech, or service person of any sort who seemed any less than completely present and dedicated to caring and helping. I won't point that person out, because everybody has a bad day and who knows what challenges that person was facing that day/night. #kindness #bekind

flag waving, hoping for a new America post-Drumph

4th of July fun (Channel 2, Nashville)

Going ahead and posting and will clean up later. My ride's here. Play this game:

Where's Scotty?

ISTE 2018 Chapter 4--Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday morning Andy and I were up early for the PLN Leaders Breakfast. He worked out in the flashback exercise room while I took an hours' bike ride for a little exercise, packed my Oculus Go into my backpack, and took a Lyft, mindful of the schedule. I had a plan. A few weeks before the conference I queried ISTE Director of Community Engagement Simon Helton about a time limit he, in an earlier email, had set for PLN Award introductions. "Really? 30 seconds?" Simon had responded that yes, there is so much to get through that we have to keep it short in order to get people to presentations and the PLN Community Fair. Okay. I decided that the only way I was going to make it through this was with humor. I adapted the Girl Scout Law:

Girl Scout Law

I will do my best to be honest and fair,
    friendly and helpful,
    considerate and caring,
    courageous and strong, and
    responsible for what I say and do,
and to 
    respect myself and others,
    respect authority,
    use resources wisely,
    make the world a better place, and
    be a sister to every Girl Scout. 

I had to narrow down my Girl Scout Law adaptation to reference only its first half, though darn, is Mary the queen of "using resources wisely," or what? But once I rephrased that portion of the Law I had only enough time to close with "In other words, she's a pretty darned perfect Girl Scout. Please join me in congratulating this year's recipient of the Virtual Pioneer of the Year Award, Mary Howard ."

After I had an image of my tiny speech I uploaded it to my Oculus Go library and had it on the library screen with the image of the little speech. The introduction was videoed by Andy, so there's no denying this happened:

Kind words from friend and Board member Dr. Sheryl NussbaumBeach on da twitter:

I'm just so proud of Mary and so happy the introduction didn't bomb!

After the breakfast, having completed our last official act, we spent time on the expo floor. We split up, and I ran into Bob and Rosie, who steered me to the Microsoft "world" on the Expo floor. Once there, I discovered amazing things about Office365, our MNPS office tools suite. I am intrigued by Immersive Reader and plan to share what I learned there and will pursue in online tutorial resources with teachers at my school. I got to view it in a 3D goggle presentation and then I had a 15 minute experience exploring Hololens! What fun. I want one at home, but at a current price tag of $3,985 per unit, I doubt we'll be using it in the classroom any time soon.

We met up for lunch at Giodarno's Pizza. But we had to have deep dish pizza in Chicago or risk being the laughing stock of our friends and families upon return home. But the PIZZA! Oh my!

The house tee-shirt the servers wore was black with white lettering: "I got stuffed in Chicago." After eating two pieces of a medium sized one I might have bought at tee, but I was feeling so plugged I felt I might have to get an XXL to fit me!

After Giordarno's Andy had to get with his NY peeps at the conference center and Mary wanted to do the Expo floor again so I headed over to the Marriott across the conference center to meet up with Jan Zanetis. She wanted to introduce me to a most interesting fellow who has a tech startup for helping young student athletes. You may well be hearing about Athlete Foundry over the near future, as they pursue a commercial model for student athlete support that sounds well-rounded, student-centered, and potentially playing-field-leveling. Perhaps more about that later.

Back at the conference, I met up with Andy and we made our way through the Poster Sessions. One of my enduring epiphanies at this year's ISTE is that one can make a conference of it without ever setting a foot into a "sit and git" session driven by a PowerPoint. We can do that in Second Life as well (and we can mirror the posters and the expo floor experiences). What we cannot do is actually be in the same physical location, looking into one another's real physical eyes, and having a conversation that has the vitality of interaction that can only be experienced in the same "meatspace." Yes, that is the term we have long used to describe physical geolocation. If you want a fun diversion (SQUIRREL!!!), check out the google results for that term.

But I digress. I just love the Poster Sessions. It's very much what like Andy, Mary, and Bob and Rosie did in the Playground--standing in one spot at a table with a display and a computer and/or other gear, and explaining how this can help one's students learn and grow. Instead of three tables, there are 50, each with a different topic.

I glommed onto one in particular that I would like to share. How could I not be drawn to the middle school Mexican lads in their khakis, blue blazers, and ties explaining their project wherein they melded language learning and science research and created presentations on dark blue painted cardboard from boxes, assembled them into "rooms," took 3D photos, and shared those on a webpage created in html? Man, I write long sentences. You may have to reread that last one aloud to get it. Somehow I feel that project deserves that sentence. The session, entitled "The Sky and Beyond: Languages and Science 3D," is described at the ISTE Program webpage, but again, for details, we needed the humans. Two young men were eager to share and did so, encouraging me to sign their poster and then to keep the school-branded pen. Their teacher shared his badge and contact info, and yes, we will be in touch!

Poster sessions are perfect for educators who are interested in a wide range of topics. And of course the Expo floor, once you understand that every person who approaches you wants to sell you something, can be a great set of learning experiences themselves.

It was time for the Tuesday Keynotes before we knew it. The highlight for me was the casual onstage interview with science fiction author Andy Weir, though I enjoyed the presentations by Katie Martin and Michael Cohen. Weir was self-deprecating and sardonically funny as he shared his rise to best-selling author from accidental software programmer. Martin was impassioned about our need to teach differently and I remarked to Mary in a whisper that her slide about student engagement in school sliding down from relatively high to very low in the elementary to middle school years could have been mined from a David Warlick presentation 20 years ago. That said, new teachers need to understand Warlick, Sir Ken Robinson, and now Martin's message warning of how creativity and imagination are schooled out of our children methodically due to the vestigial way many teachers teach, which is also the teaching method most school districts primarily support. Cohen had a similar message, focusing on creativity and showing examples of his student's work in the community instigated by students and empowered by school, not squelched by it.

We went our separate ways after keynotes, and I met up with the lovely and aforementioned Dr. Compton (see Take 1, Chicago 360/TILT) for an adventure out to the Chicago Museum for Science and Engineering. An event hosted by Microsoft and Powerschool (now a Microsoft company--everyone will be soon), we had discovered Friday that we had both been invited and had then made an assignation to meetup at the conference center to travel together. There we had (very) light hors d'oeuvres and water/soft drinks prior to sitting in the museum's theater for a filming of a Microsoft vodcast, where we were the live audience. That was interesting, but very old school, a "sit and git" in the guise of entertainment. The content was great--community service described by students, maker learning by teachers, etc., but the presentation was driven almost universally by teleprompters. No matter how sincere the presenter on stage I could not get past the fact that most were reading prepared and practiced script. I told Helen that was an hour of my life I could not get back. I was very impressed with resources at https://education.microsoft.com and will be exploring those as I plan for the coming school year at my Middle School. The exception to the rule was a spoken voice poem from artist Toney Jackson. He made us sit up and take notice. Amazing...

Learn more about presenters at this event at the Microsoft Education site.

Thankfully we were herded off all the way through the museum to the half-dome planetarium/theatre on the other side of the building. By this time we were all buzzed to view the scheduled premier of the BBC documentary "Oceans: Our Blue Planet."

The Executive Producer, Jennifer Hile, was there and spoke a few words about the immense difficulties surrounding the filming of this movie to the steeply-assembled masses. We noshed on our box lunch turkey sandwiches, which were clearly intended to stave off starvation until the Powerschool Reception after the movie. Excitement built until an organizer came out and opened with the words, "I am so sorry to make this announcement..." You can guess the rest: No movie. Turns out the projection room in the theater was tracking 187 degrees and no tech fix was in sight. Ah, technology, can't live with it, can't live without it.

We had a drink and some finger-food at the reception in the lobby just outside the half-dome, and chatted with Jennifer Hile for quite a few minutes. She's dedicated and talented and I can't wait to see this film. It's sure to come to Nashville, likely to our Adventure Science Center, so I'll watch for it. Another good moment was the chance to introduce Helen to Mike Lawrence, former ISTE Board Member now working for Powerschool. Helen, to keep the story short, recently developed the new ISTE Teacher Certification course and was to be co-teaching an elite beta group that course in Arlington Virginia the following week. Small world? Mike will be a student in that course. He joked that now he would have it easy and she, smiling but not joking, responded in her lovely British accent, "Oh no, you must know I'll be harder on you." Sorry, Mike! And you're welcome.

We were among the first at the reception to head across the building to the buses parked in the aftermath of pouring rain. Cue the pouring rain, the long wait as the organizers decided which bus was going where, the load-on to separate buses with the quick see ya later hug, A short ride to the hotel, where I was afforded curbside service just for me at my hotel, due to having chatted with the stern but amiable driver and maybe alleviating some of his anxiety during the chaotic transition from Museum to hotels. Andy was still out. He got to the hotel and we pretty much retired, prepping for the final day of the conference, which I will not belabor.

Andy was up early in the morning to make his crack-o'-dawn flight and was gone, though I had all of the above to remember him by. Aside from the stellar closing keynote by the stellar Nadia Lopez  
(my hands-down favorite of all the keynotes), we were done here.

Wednesday evening Andy and I did enjoy a final dinner at Cindy's rooftop restaurant before we hit the room, and here are a couple snaps from that:

                                 

After Andy met with his NY folks we headed down to lakeside, he should have packed and retired, since his flight back home to NY was early early. I had a quick couple of beers (they had to be gone by check-out tomorrow!) and grabbed the two Hemingway Short Stories I had packed for the trip. "Let's take a walk," I said, and we did. We walked past Buckminster Fountain one more time.   

                       

From a bicycle cart vendor, I bought a light-up helicopter toy for the beach. Lee Ann and I were planning to drive to Pawley's Island a week from the coming Thursday to enjoy some down tome. Little did I know that I would wipe out on a rental bike in Nashville and spend that week in physical rehab at Vanderbilt Stallworth Rehabilitation Hospital, where I'm penning these last few lines. Suffice it to say a broken acetabulum (hip socket, essentially) cut the beach trip short. I should be home in a day or two after working my way out of the debilitating hip joint/muscle spasm stage to the 12-week projected right leg "touch only no weight bearing" stage of my healing. My wife is so great. She said, "We'll go to another beach over Christmas Break, I'm just glad you're going to be okay." I could have stayed another week in Chicago had I not so missed being with my honey. All was good and would be so.

Andy and I strolled to the lakeside and sat down. Fireworks began. I fired up cigars and my iPhone and Livestreamed Facebook. Good night. Watch...

Quickckjumps: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3