Why I Haven't Written Much Lately

Apparently my shoulder is pretty badly torn up due to a fall in my driveway this past April (yes, it was still icy). It has three separate injuries that I've circled.

How I've managed to get along since April with a shoulder that messed up is a story of good friends and farm employees stepping in to fill the void. It's also a story of denial: each day I woke up to pain and spent the day in pain encouraging every thought that it was a little better than yesterday, maybe, and ignoring impulses to stop doing the things that are a part of my life at Chiron's Grove. It is a story too of Van becoming gradually more insistent that something be done, and finally of having such a bad week that I gave in and went to see Bunky Bernstein, my doctor and near neighbor. Then came the MRI--a desperate expense--and finally the diagnosis and the plan. Fortunately, Mel (of Mel's Meadow, where we keep the horses when the fences are in good repair) tracked down the information I needed to get health insurance through a program in the state of Vermont that is offering financial help and covering preexisting conditions. Every time I talk to her, Mel has another idea for making sure I find the help I need.

So here is the plan: surgery as soon as the insurance is in place, followed by two weeks of mostly pain management, followed by another four weeks of keeping my arm in the sling, followed by a year of rehabilitation before reaching a point of maximum use (note that this is not the same as full recovery--apparently the biceps tendon will be in a new place and one or two other changes will be permanent).

The farm can't survive this unless I do the hard thing and ask my friends to help. So here it is, to all and sundry, a request for help. What I need is for anybody who can to come and stay for a week or so with me during the first several months of this saga, to help with moving hay and water and mucking out stalls, to ride the horses (if you can), and to help with training and spoiling my diverse herd.

I will be selling as many horses and ponies I can, but the basic three will remain: Dante (whom I love and whom Danny rides), Rocket (who is Van's horse), and Meg (who isn't here yet, but who is to be my long-awaited endurance trail horse).

The others are all for sale: Memphis ($4500), Vegas ($950), Jack ($950), and Cocoa ($1250). Their descriptions are on our website under "Horses for Sale."