Kitchen Note: 7/13. Cortisone Shot

“Your x-rays look fine,” the physician assistant said. “No arthritis.”

Saying an x-ray of my knee looks good is akin to saying the surface of the ocean appears calm. Then National G or some other science show, narrated by a fellow with a plummy Oxford accent, sends a pile of impossibly expensive equipment down into the depths, where no human could survive. There cameras track eyeless, wildly colorful creatures wending amongst tentacled otherworldly lifeforms, all of them managing to exist in the hottest cracks of the earth’s crust.

I keep asking for an MRI. An MRI of my knee would resemble the ocean’s bottom, where the freaky life forms live. But MRI’s, you know, they cost lots of money. So I get waved off.

“Your surgeon didn’t want to operate on the varicosities,” She continued.

She’d read my medical file. Good for her. That surgeon feared blowing the veins. Feared causing a bleed. Feared, period.

He wasn’t wrong.

I asked if she knew about Ehlers-Danlos. She admitted she did not. That’s fine. Better they admit they don’t know. I pulled down my pressure stocking, revealing the bursitic lump and varicose veins. It’s not a pretty sight.

Her eyes widened. “Does that hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve had cortisone shots before, though, right?”

“I’ve lost count. Go ahead.”

Cortisone shots, if you’ve never had the pleasure, are frontloaded with lidocaine. If you’ve been walking around in agony for months, the immediate relief is wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that I forgot post-injection protocol, which is to go home, sit your butt down, and prop the affected limb up. Add icepack and maybe a feline. Instead, being me, I went to the supermarket. Damn, I felt great.

Until the lidocaine wore off.

—

There are countless photographs of a seated Marcella Hazan, drink and cigarette to hand, peeling mounds of vegetables and looking utterly at peace with the world. Me, I need to stand in the kitchen. Perhaps this is due to being somebody who once danced and now has few physical outlets. Or maybe it’s a question of ergonomics. Whatever the case, I’ve never been able to cook–or prep–seated.

After a morning at the desk, restless, I decided to try and do a little kitchen work. Basically, the work I’d meant to do yesterday.

Rockfish for John. Fortunately it was sparkling fresh. Maldon salt and a squeeze of lemon juice. Then back in the fridge until dinnertime.

The first batch of oven dried cherry tomatoes.

Favas, in need of double-peeling and boiling. They’re waiting while I ice my knee. So is tomorrow’s chicken, awaiting its pre-salt.

—

These days are the hidden parts of illness. These days are the hidden parts of life. There is nothing to do but wait and remember those who are enduring worse.

In a few days my knee will recover. There will be a brief, bright window of relief, a time when I can easily walk distances, when the patella won’t crack dozens of times daily. Then I’ll take a misstep or lean down to grab something or nothing at all will happen and the bursitis will return. In October I can get another shot.