Family Week at Pinewoods 2006
Camp Director’s Report
What do you get when you add together record-breaking hot temperatures, low camp attendance, a downpour in the middle of the Friday parade and a camp director on crutches? Besides an appropriately lurid potential National Enquirer headline, an amazingly successful Pinewoods Family week 2006, of course! Despite Murphy’s Law working overtime to spoil the fun, our capable and flexible staff rose to the dual challenges of scaling back dance and children’s classes to combat the heat and filling in all the holes created by a camp director who spent most of the time with her leg up in the air and an ice pack for company. In fact, they did such a good job that most campers had no idea how serious my injury was, and I got asked to dance every day. I know they wondered why I sat on the sidelines all week – I did, too!
As I sit here now, recuperating from well-deserved knee surgery and reflecting on the camp that was, I am gratified to read the glowing evaluations from campers and staff. What criticisms there were were well deserved and diplomatically presented, and camp can only get better next year because of them.
Camp Director’s Report
What do you get when you add together record-breaking hot temperatures, low camp attendance, a downpour in the middle of the Friday parade and a camp director on crutches? Besides an appropriately lurid potential National Enquirer headline, an amazingly successful Pinewoods Family week 2006, of course! Despite Murphy’s Law working overtime to spoil the fun, our capable and flexible staff rose to the dual challenges of scaling back dance and children’s classes to combat the heat and filling in all the holes created by a camp director who spent most of the time with her leg up in the air and an ice pack for company. In fact, they did such a good job that most campers had no idea how serious my injury was, and I got asked to dance every day. I know they wondered why I sat on the sidelines all week – I did, too!
As I sit here now, recuperating from well-deserved knee surgery and reflecting on the camp that was, I am gratified to read the glowing evaluations from campers and staff. What criticisms there were were well deserved and diplomatically presented, and camp can only get better next year because of them.
Despite my lighthearted report to the Country Dance and Song Society staff, running that Family week was administrative and physical hell for me. I’ve literally blocked a lot of it from my mind. Record-breaking heat? Huh. Not telling the campers what was going on? Wow.
What I will never forget is that two days before camp began, my left knee, which Bonnie the PT and I had been nursing along for months, finally dislocated. I ended up in the ER, where they gave me an immobilizer brace and said, “don’t do anything until you can meet with your surgeon.” I burst into tears. The car was packed, and we were leaving for a 10-hour drive to camp the next day. In those days when it was easier to get good painkillers, the hospital loaded me up, wished me well and sent me on my way.
At the time I felt I had no choice other than to go. It was my first year as Program Director, many people were counting on me. I was driven around the bumpy paths in a golf cart. I was high as a kite. I had a great staff to support me. They covered. I survived. We all came back the next year for a much better time.
A couple of years after that left arthroscopy to repair the dislocation, I started to feel the same sensations in my right knee. I wasn’t waiting for that kind of pain again to get something done. The surgeon I saw in Atlanta said, “I see it, let’s get in there.” The bad news on the right knee was that unlike the left, it was also full of arthritis. They scraped off the nasty bits while they were fixing the dislocation, giving me relief for many years. I was just 48.
What we know now that we didn’t know then is that arthroscopic surgery can make arthritis deterioration worse down the road.
Last November, I replaced my right knee.
What I will never forget is that two days before camp began, my left knee, which Bonnie the PT and I had been nursing along for months, finally dislocated. I ended up in the ER, where they gave me an immobilizer brace and said, “don’t do anything until you can meet with your surgeon.” I burst into tears. The car was packed, and we were leaving for a 10-hour drive to camp the next day. In those days when it was easier to get good painkillers, the hospital loaded me up, wished me well and sent me on my way.
At the time I felt I had no choice other than to go. It was my first year as Program Director, many people were counting on me. I was driven around the bumpy paths in a golf cart. I was high as a kite. I had a great staff to support me. They covered. I survived. We all came back the next year for a much better time.
A couple of years after that left arthroscopy to repair the dislocation, I started to feel the same sensations in my right knee. I wasn’t waiting for that kind of pain again to get something done. The surgeon I saw in Atlanta said, “I see it, let’s get in there.” The bad news on the right knee was that unlike the left, it was also full of arthritis. They scraped off the nasty bits while they were fixing the dislocation, giving me relief for many years. I was just 48.
What we know now that we didn’t know then is that arthroscopic surgery can make arthritis deterioration worse down the road.
Last November, I replaced my right knee.
RSS Feed