No amount of preparation is enough for any big event. I made peace with that long ago. Despite not being packed, I’m ready to leave for Chicago on Sunday and ready—so very ready—to swap out this awful, splintered and burred knee in favor of some metal and plastic. And, after having a day to come to terms, I’m ready to do it as outpatient surgery.
That’s right—outpatient.
On Monday morning at 7:30 I’ll arrive at the hospital alone. They’ll put me under heavy sedation—not general anesthesia—make a 4-7” incision down the middle of my right knee, remove my kneecap, sand down the ends of my femur and tibia, install some new parts, glue me together, make sure I can walk and climb a couple of stairs, and send me on my way.
I’ve had lunch dates that last longer.
I have to remind myself that most people only stay in the hospital one night with this procedure. I was staying a few more because I live four hours away and at first the ortho wanted me to stay close. But that was before he got my medical clearance declaring me in pretty damn good shape. I’m also significantly younger than most people who get new knees. The average age is a good 16 years older than me.
What can I say? I’m advanced.
Why the sudden decision to remove a whole-ass part of my body and send me home (well, hotel, as I refuse to venture more than a mile from the hospital on my first 24 hours with a new knee)? I bet you can guess.
Fucking Covid.
I got the call while sitting in my car in my driveway Friday morning after going for my pre-op Covid test (negative). Five minutes earlier, I got a text from my cousin, informing me that our 97-year-old Grandpa Chuck has Covid.
Fucking goddamn Covid.
(As of this morning he said he was feeling pretty good, which is saying something for anyone with a whole body full of 97-year-old parts. But he also lives in assisted living in one of the many Covid cesspools in Missouri, where Gov. Droopy Dog insists that EVERYTHING IS FINE when, in fact, nothing is fine in regards to this disease.)
Anyway.
That was a lot of information to get all at once when all I wanted to do was listen to my three favorite tracks from Bat Out of Hell for the 27th time since learning about Meat Loaf’s death shortly after I got out of bed.
My throat still hurts from my performance. Not fucking Covid.
Later, when I told a friend about having a Meat Loaf bender all day, he seemed a bit bewildered and asked if I was a fan. I mean, is anyone my age a Meat Loaf “fan”? I wouldn’t describe it that way. We know I’m a Wilco fan: I go to many of their concerts, often in far-flung places. I buy their new releases before hearing them. I write about the band’s music at length. And yes, there is a prayer candle with the image of an Uncle Tupelo-era Jeff Tweedy on my desk shut up we’re talking about death and dying.
People my age aren’t Meat Loaf fans. We just got in his path.
I don’t remember the first time I heard “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth,” or “Bat Out of Hell” (my personal trifecta). I do remember being far too young to be listening to them and watching the videos, where this big, sweaty, and, to my young mind, menacing man in a ruffled tuxedo shirt wailed and made out with Karla DeVito on a sound stage both under- and over-lit.
“On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?”
But in college in the early 1990s, while bathing myself in grunge and alternative, Bat Out of Hell became one of the few shared soundtracks among my housemates. While one roomie listened to Wynonna, another was recovering from her Nelson-fueled teen years, and a third worshipped Eddie Vedder, we all absolutely loved Bat Out of Hell, cranking it up loud in our unheated living room, wild and brand new to the world.
Bat Out of Hell sounds like being 19 and in love, drunk and sweaty and dazed.
Not quite ready to embrace our own music, but feeling out our freedom with this album from our childhood. Maybe because we all had childhood encounters with it that we might not remember even though it left indelible traces on how we chose our music from then on. Possibly it was from our shared affinity of Rocky Horror Picture Show and his role as Eddie the lobotomized biker.
Or maybe it was the plastic-bottle tequila we drank.
Am I a fan? No. Do I love some of those songs like they’re a part of me? I absolutely do, and I can’t imagine going the rest of my life without craving them on occasion the way I sometimes crave cheap orange soda or rainbow sherbert. Things that are no longer a part of the daily, or the weekly and monthly of my life but maybe once or twice a year I absolutely need to survive.
Yesterday, I consumed Meat Loaf to live.
Later in the day, after tearing through the responsibilities of hotel reservations, securing an extra day of pet sitting, canceling and making appointments, trying to finish my last day of work, and making far too many calls to the ortho’s nursing team with questions, I found out that Meat Loaf not only died from Covid, but had some grumblings about the vaccine and mandates. I don’t trust any of the news sources reporting this and won’t link to them but …
Goddamnit, Marvin.
Does it even matter now that he’s dead? Does the cause of anyone’s death matter? Dead is dead. I had a lot I wanted to write in my pro-vax, pro-stop-this-shit, anti-drive-thru-knee-replacement righteousness yesterday. None of it matters now. My disappointment in friends who’ve recently disregarded the Covid safety recommendations in favor of fun doesn’t matter. We’re all navigating as best as we can and there aren’t going to be any winners either way.
“There ain’t no Coupe de Ville lying in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.”
Yeah, there’s a lot of suck at the moment. And yet, with my annual Meat Loaf binge and the promise of mobility and all that comes with it looming so close, I find myself digging past the sadness and disappointment, fear and cynicism because under it? I feel 19 and in love. Drunk, sweaty, and dazed.
Handclaps sound like heartbeats and life.
I can't believe they're giving you a new knee under only sedation, but if it were me, I'd prefer that. You'll feel much less out of it when the surgery is over. I know you'll be so relieved when this is all over. With just one new body part you'll feel like a whole new woman.