(Image of my 17-foot 2025 Jayco SLX Sport travel trailer, parked in my gravel driveway)
As you know, I bought a new travel trailer. Brand spanking new. I wanted to start this divinely directed journey in a trailer that I knew would not need repairs, would have a warranty, and would work perfectly. I know, I know… new is no guarantee, it depreciated the moment it was take off the lot, etc, etc. But hey, I’ve never owned a brand new vehicle, fresh out of the factory. All my life I’ve had used vehicles. Used clothing. Used dishware. Even my husband had been married twice before (cue “Secondhand Rose”).
So when it came to making this decision – one that would radically and drastically change everything I knew about my life and myself, one that would challenge me and inspire me and ask things of me that I couldn’t even fathom - I chose the path of least resistance, which just happened to also be indulgence. It was undoubtedly the more expensive route, but the pieces had fallen into place, the timing was right, and once I stepped inside, it felt like home. So it happened.
The salesman asked, did I want to bring it home today? Ha ha ha ha ha - no. I have a Prius. Could they deliver it to me, until such time as my house sells and I can get a more appropriate vehicle? Absolutely. They offered a class if I was interested, on how to work the thing. Hell yeah I was interested, are you kidding? My last travel trailer barely had power, an icebox for a fridge, and a toilet you had to remove and carry out the door to empty. This new baby was WAY more high-tech, and I had no idea how most of the stuff worked.
The ‘class’ was the following week, and I imagined a little group of us – new RV owners, with virtually no clue what we are doing, learning together, smiling and nervous. Well, not exactly. It was just me and a friendly expert who rattled off information as we walked around and inside – so much information - which flowed through my brain and out my ears and went into my hair. It was… a lot. I tried to keep notes on my phone, but at some point I just gave up. I learn best by doing, anyway, and there is always the interwebs. More importantly, being who I am, I know that I can ask anyone around me for help, and afterward I will have a new friend (and I’m told that whoever interacts with me is going to walk away feeling better, and that’s the whole point).
Some things I’m just going to have to learn as I go. Probably most things. In all aspects of this thing, not just trailer operation.
The first thing I did when my baby (The Ripple Effect, Ripple for short) got delivered was start dismantling her. Well, that’s not true. I went inside and just soaked it all in. This was going to be my new home for the foreseeable future. All 17 feet of it. It smelled so new! Everything was so clean! Wow! I love this for myself!
I assessed the amount of storage (a surprisingly large amount), figured out where I was going to put the litter box (there’s a large cubby right next to the toilet that is perfect). And agreed with myself again that the queen bed, which jutted out into the middle of the space (when you walked in the door you practically kick it), had to go.
Taking it out was the first step, and it was a scary prospect: once you start demo, there’s no going back. I was going to remove what was basically a giant wooden box with a hinged lid that served as support for half of the queen size bed. Terrifying. What if they had glued it to the floor? What if, in taking it out, I ruined… everything?
I’ve put enough furniture together to know where I needed to start, so I unscrewed the hinges of the lid and the hydraulic lifts or gas struts or whatever they were. Off came the lid, and I had a big chunk of plywood sitting off to the side. Easy-peasy. I’m so good at this stuff.
Then I had a box, three walls of which were attached to the floor. The fourth wall I was not about to break (ha), it was part of a platform – a giant soffit if you will - that covered the water tank and the front storage compartment. It stretched the entire width of the trailer, and it was going to become my closet.
I unscrewed all the screws I could find holding the thing together and gave the front piece a couple of knocks with a hammer. It came away pretty cleanly – hooray! Now for the sides. Unsurprisingly, they were NOT budging. They had been attached to the soffit from the INSIDE of the soffit. Oh dear god.
Well, okay. I had to remove the top panel of the soffit, that’s all. Sure. Yeah.
I’m gonna make this long story a tiny bit shorter and just say that there was some cursing, there was some hammering; there was a phone call to my ex, more cursing. Some sitting and thinking. More hammering. That’s all. I got it out of there.
(Image of a piece of plywood and laminate leaning against the wall of the trailer)
I stood back and surveyed the result. All I could think was, well, it’s mine now. LOL.
The difference was remarkable, though. I suddenly had room to set up a folding table to paint at. I could put the table away and have room for yoga. And most importantly, I now had a place for my clothes!
(Image of the interior front of the trailer with a cleared floorspace and a large soffit that looks like a bench across the width of the far end; above it is open shelving)
Side note: you may not know this about me, but I love clothes. Since I decided to embrace my inner hippie, my clothes are such fun to shop for (thrift stores all the way!) and even more fun to look at. I am no longer interested in solid colors head to toe: bring on the paisleys and florals, the bell sleeves and gauzy dresses! I wanted to take ALL of them with me, which meant I needed a closet. My plan was to construct an incredibly sturdy closet rod, suspended on thick wooden planks which are attached to the platform with angle brackets, and held in place with a wooden curtain rod. Voila! A closet!
But first, it was time to turn the dinette into my bed. Take the table top off the rail on the wall, lower it to the benches where it rests on a little lip. The cushions fit snugly together to cover the area like a twin mattress. It’s a very clever system. The queen “mattress” was just a big piece of a very stiff (yet surprisingly comfortable) plastic-y foam, easy enough to cut down to the right size. Or so you would think.
I put a new blade in my beloved knife (I’ve cut many a piece of sheet rock with that baby), measured once, measured again (my grandpa, my dad, and my husband long ago drilled into me: “Measure twice, cut once”.) Then I took a straight edge and a sharpie and made my cutting line. I knelt on the mattress in an attempt to compress it and started to cut.
That knife did more tearing than cutting. Ugh. This wasn’t like regular camping foam, which you can compress and cut. This was a whole different beast. Fibrous, tough, and not at all compactible, the mattress was unwilling to be sliced cleanly. Even when I did start to make some headway, I would run into a mass of fibers that had melded together into a tumor, which had to be excised.
It was at that point that The Trouble began.
All this demo was happening on April 18. It was a Friday. Just a month before I had surgery on my left knee to removed my scarred and fluid-filled pre-patellar bursa. I had been living with an egg-sized, firm blob on my knee for over a year. It was not at all painful, it was just annoying, as it prevented me from kneeling. In its own way, it was kinda cute. I had named it ‘Janice’ after Maggie Wheeler’s character on Friends – the infamous on-again/off-again girlfriend of Chandler (“Oh. My. GAWD!” was her famous catch phrase). I bore no ill will towards my Janice, I just wanted her gone. So I could, you know, kneel. For whatever I needed to kneel for. Like on a mattress, to cut it down to size. And yoga. And… other stuff.
Janice had been removed, the incision had healed well, and I was at 100% functioning. I’d had to remove the six stitches myself after about ten days, because they were digging into my skin and it was starting to get red and inflamed. The incision was healed, but I put steri-strips across it just in case. It seemed to be holding well. I could squat, I was walking my four miles in the morning, everything was fine.
Then the area started to fill with fluid. Across the entire top of the kneecap, joint fluid or more likely the serum that fills in empty spaces after a surgery (the reason drainage tubes are sometimes put in). I was still wrapping the knee or wearing a compression sleeve, but nevertheless, it persisted in filling. Not extremely, not to a painful bursting point – just a half-inch high or so, but still, I couldn’t kneel. It was like a 1970’s waterbed, you could push down on one side and it would bulge the other size. Gross, I know. I had called and spoken to the surgeon’s office, they had said to keep it wrapped. I made an appointment and carried on with my life. A few days later I squatted to clean the litter box and when I stood up, my foot was wet. The ace wrap was wet. There was clear yellowish fluid trickling down my leg. The very bottom of the incision had opened, just enough to allow it to drain.
Well, crap.
I cleaned it up with an alcohol wipe, put a couple layers of gauze and a bandage on it, wrapped it up, and hoped for the best. My appointment was a few days out. I figured it was just a fluke. Still, I was delighted that some of the fluid had drained. Kinda wished I’d have squeezed more out, lol.
A few days later I was curled up on my couch, my knees just clearing the edge of the seat. The knee formerly known as Janice’s place had refilled with fluid, despite being constantly wrapped or in a compression sleeve. But I could still bend it, so I had tucked my feet up and was just watching YouTube. Chilling out. When I stood up, my knee was wet. Again, it had opened and leaked clear through the bandage and the compression sleeve – and had actually created a puddle of fluid on the floor. Which I stepped in. Ugh.
Cleaned, wrapped, gauze and bandage. It happened again the next day, because as quickly as it emptied, it filled again. Thankfully my appointment was just another day out.
At my appointment, I didn’t actually get to see my surgeon. Instead I saw his PA, who seemed unconcerned about the fluid or the leaking. I asked if there was a way we could, I don’t know, put in a drainage tube? Because clearly this was not healing right. No, she said, they weren’t going to drain it. I needed to just keep it wrapped and take 800 mg of ibuprofen twice a day. “But it’s not inflammation,” I said. I poked one side of my kneecap, and it bulged the other side. “It’s fluid in there. It’s not inflamed. And wrapping it does nothing. It refills after it drains.”
“Well, let’s give it a month, keep it wrapped, and we’ll see. If it leaks again just clean it and bandage it.” And no, it wasn’t possible to see the surgeon today. Sigh.
Needless to say, I was less than pleased. But there was nothing I could do except what she had instructed.
Fast forward. There I was, kneeling on my mattress, trying to cut it. It was not going well. You can see where this is going, right?
I stood up to re-evaluate. What the hell? Why was there a wet spot on the mattress? A very deep, wet spot.
Fuck.
Lather, rinse, repeat. I cleaned, bandaged, put on a clean compression sleeve, etc. Couldn’t help but wonder if this was just going to be my life now, without Janice. She was certainly getting her revenge!
After blotting the considerable amount of fluid out of the mattress with a towel, I gave up on the knife, got some scissors, and started cutting the mattress that way. It worked like a charm. A challenging, time-consuming, hand-cramping charm, but a charm nonetheless.
Once it was cut down to size, I put in on top of the cushions – a perfect fit, a wonderful twin-size bed! Hooray! I gathered up my stuff and the piece of foam I’d cut off and headed into the house. It was the last time I would set foot in Ripple for weeks.
At some point, who knows when, that sneaky devil, Staphylococcus, had found its way into that little hole in my knee. A few hours later I was in severe pain, watching my knee start to swell and get red and very, very hot. That evening my sister brought me to the ER, where they pulled fluid out for testing with a large syringe and a very large needle (I think it was 4”, 18 gauge, IYKYK). The fluid was cloudy, nearly opaque. Not good. (I am going to spare you the gruesome images of my knee, but I took a lot of pictures to keep track of the progression. Message me if you want to see them, lol.)
Over the next few hours my knee continued to swell until it was like I had a football in my leg where my knee was supposed to be. The pain was terrible. I couldn’t sit still, and I was rude to the doc which I still feel guilty about. After his assessment a sweet young man, new to the job, gave me a shot of morphine which made me loopy and giggly, but did nothing for the pain. Sister Amy was great, she found a wheelchair and wheeled me to the bathroom and back a couple of times - pain and anxiety were keeping me from peeing, so there was that discomfort as well. I was a mess. I did my best to just roll with it all. I had no idea what the universe was trying to tell me, but it was… wow.
They eventually sent me home with cephalexin and hydrocodone (which I hate taking, because not only do opioids not work on my pain, they constipate me instantly). I sat on my couch in agony, unable to bend my knee at all, not even really able to put weight on my leg without lightning bolts of pain. The bitchin’ cane I had bought for after the surgery finally came in handy.
The next day was Saturday, and the surgery center was open for walk-ins, so I went in. The ortho doc (sports medicine guy, not a surgeon) on duty was concerned about the redness that was spreading from the area, and he drew a line around it, so we could keep track. My knee was swollen and shiny and still oozing. It was gross. There wasn’t anything he could do, though, so he sent me home to await the test results from the sample they took at the ER, and to go back in if it started getting worse.
The weekend was a haze of pain, but the swelling started to go down slightly and the redness was staying inside the lines, so I was hopeful. Frustrated, but hopeful. Still, I know that everything happens for a reason. I assumed I’d find out the reason eventually.
On Monday morning I got a call from the surgeon’s assistant. “You have a staph infection,” she said, cheerily enough. “Dr. P just happens to be here, we’re doing some surgeries today, so he wants you to come in and he’ll see you when you get here. Just come to the ER, they will be expecting you.” Well, okay then.
Sisters were at work, so I packed my phone charger and a protein shake, and drove myself there. They were indeed waiting for me. Put an IV in almost immediately, and a few hours later I was having emergency surgery. Until we knew if the infection had gotten into the joint or my blood, I was given two different broad spectrum IV antibiotics. Oh, yes, I was definitely being admitted! I’d be there a few days at least. Infectious Disease was coming to see me soon. Would I like to order some dinner? My head was spinning with all of it. This thing had gone off the rails and I was just along for the painful, startling, isolating ride.
(Image of my right forearm; there is a hospital ID band around my wrist, and an IV line which has been taped to my forearm)
It did cross my mind, lying there alone, looking out the window at the church where my parents got married, that a staph infection could kill me. Instead of being afraid, though, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I thought about my kids and my sisters, and I knew that they would be okay. They would grieve, sure, but they would be okay. I knew that no matter what happened, it was meant to happen. It was all as it should be. In fact, it was beautiful. I was utterly traumatized, completely exhausted, and my body hurt all over – but my soul was soaring. I have never had such an experience before, one that had me literally on the edge of my life. It was intense, it was completely beyond my control, and it was exhilarating.
What a thing it is to be human. I was full of gratitude for Louis Pasteur, who made it possible to figure out what strain of Staph was trying to kill me. I was so grateful for my sisters, who somehow always make these situations fun, and brought me homemade chocolate chip cookies along with my things from home (and took care of my Salty baby). I was so very thankful for the window that allowed me to see the sky and some trees. Everything was enhanced, brought into focus as it flowed by me on the blurry waves of time. It was extraordinary.
The Ripple Effect was just going to have to wait. For the moment, I was preparing for my journey in an entirely different way.
(Nighttime image of St. Rose of Lima church in Kankakee, IL, illuminated by floodlights)