My novel Curva Peligrosa opens with a tornado that sweeps through the fictional town of Weed, Alberta, and drops a purple outhouse into its center. Drowsing and dreaming inside that structure is its owner, Curva Peligrosa—a curiosity and a marvel, a source of light and heat, a magnet. Adventurous, amorous, fecund, and over six feet tall, she possesses magical powers. She also has the greenest of thumbs, creating a tropical habitat in an arctic clime, and she possesses a wicked trigger finger.
With two new books being published by Shanti Arts, and wondering how best to market them, I’ve been thinking about book festivals I’ve participated in. I realize that, while these events are great for focusing on the many book genres available, I also have concluded that I probably won’t attend one again. A few years ago, I signed up for the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, a relatively new venue at the time. Its first session was in 2015, and it claims to be an international event that draws people from all over the world: “More than 50,000 diverse people of all ages, from urban to suburban Bay Area communities and beyond.” 
My 
$900 on contest fees. I’ve been shortlisted in a memoir magazine contest and been declared a finalist for another book award. In one case I won a Bronze Medal in the Female Memoir division, and in another, I was named a runner up in the Memoir category. None of these “honors” paid me any money. The announcement of my “win” is most often followed by a bombardment of emails encouraging me to pay more for editorial or marketing advice or for a bronze medal on a colored ribbon or to enter more contests or book festivals. I’ve won no mention at all in six contests, and five have yet to report.
Writing is such a part of my day that if I don’t get to it, I’m constantly distracted, as if I have a lover I’m thinking about. It’s like a siren’s call, pulling me away. My husband Michael notices it. He comments on me seeming drifty. He’s right. I’m not fully there. The discipline of writing an hour or more a day pulls me into myself and gives me the contemplative part I need. Balance. 
Thanks to Sara Hart for interviewing me on her podcast PRIME SPARK WITH SARA HART and whose
It’s no surprise that I’ve been thinking a good deal about dreams and the role they play in our lives. Why? Shanti Arts Press released my latest poetry collection on June 27 titled 
Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, THREE MUSES, published by Regal House Publishing in September 2022, was shortlisted for the 
Joe Safdie has been lurking in and around the poetry world for 50 years; his first chapbook, Wake Up the Panthers, was published in 1974, while he was still an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. His ninth book, published last year by Spuyten Duyvil, is 
My novel Fling, a wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and travel, was published in July 2015.
Kathleen McClung is the author of four poetry collections: A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, winner of the 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize, Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly and Almost the Rowboat. Winner of the Morton Marr, Maria W. Faust, and Rita Dove national poetry prizes, her work appears in a variety of journals and anthologies. From 2021-23 she has served as guest editor for The MacGuffin, a print literary journal based in Michigan. She also served as associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and judged the contest’s sonnet category. In 2018-2019 she was a writer-in-residence at Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Kathleen teaches literature and writing classes at Skyline College in San Bruno and directed the Women on Writing conference there for ten years. She also teaches privately and at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in San Francisco. Visit her website at 
Whenever I give a talk or reading, someone in the audience asks where my stories come from. I find the answer more complex that what it would appear to be on the surface. What are my narrative seeds? What starts me on these explorations of others’ lives?
Partial knee replacement
August 31, 2009
3 Comments
Try Oxford: It Isn’t Just for Scholars
On August 13, 2008, I didn’t win an Olympic medal, but I did celebrate a year of being pretty much pain free in my left knee—better than a gold medal to me. Before August 13, 2007, I couldn’t have made that statement. The cartilage in the medial (inner) part of the knee joint had worn away, and I had been walking bone on bone for a long time. Though I could still ride a bike without too much discomfort, walking gradually became extremely difficult.
My only relief came from steroid shots, which I got three times a year, but they gave me only three weeks to a month of partial respite. My stomach can’t tolerate NSAIDs, and Tylenol was useless. I was running out of options.
In May 2007, I made an appointment with Dr. Eugene Wolf, one of the best knee specialists in the area (he has offices in San Francisco and Greenbrae, California). I asked him to prescribe a knee brace. Dr. Wolf wanted x-rays of the knee, but he wasn’t encouraging about the benefits of such a support. By the time the x-ray technician brought in the film, I felt I’d run out of options.
Dr. Wolf put the images on a screen, comparing them with others taken a few years earlier. He finally spoke, confirming what I already knew: I had no cartilage remaining in the medial joint. I also had many loose bodies swirling around under the kneecap and elsewhere, creating potential problems for the remaining good cartilage and the patella because of the grating action.
He said, “You need an operation.” I, of course, thought he meant a total knee replacement, having assumed that was my only alternative. Then I heard him saying, “You’ll walk out a few hours after the one-hour surgery.”
That’s when he told me I was a good candidate for the Oxford Unicompartmental Knee System, a knee implant that duplicates the original knee joint and is used in situations like mine where I still have stable cartilage in one section. I didn’t need a total knee replacement.
Dr. Wolf pointed out there’s a major difference between the Oxford knee implant and other unicompartmental devices: it is mobile bearing. An artificial meniscal bearing glidea freely throughout the knee’s range of motion, replicating normal movement. The free-floating nature of the device also improves durability of the implant because the wear and tear is distributed evenly over the surface. Most will last the lifetime of the patient. Also, the incision is less invasive than for other mechanisms, especially total knee replacements, and the overall trauma to the knee is far less.
The device has been available in England and Europe for over fifteen years and in Canada since 2000. But the U.S. didn’t approve its use until three years ago. In an article on Today’s Surgicenter, Dr. Wolf says,
‘Up to 40 percent of the 500,000 patients that now undergo total knee arthroplasty in the U.S. could benefit from this new knee prosthesis now done on an outpatient basis.’
After discussing it with my husband, I made a date for outpatient surgery on August 13, 2007. I walked out of St. Mary’s Hospital a few hours after the operation—six hours to be exact. I used crutches for support, but my left leg bore my full weight. I had a few days of pain that Oxycontin controlled successfully. After three days, I switched to Advil, used mainly at night for pain management, along with ice packs. I never felt overwhelmed with pain. I could move about with one crutch. After about a week, I didn’t need any painkillers, for the most part. I started bending and straightening my leg immediately and began physical therapy at two weeks. A month after surgery, I was back to my usual routine at the gym, upper and lower body strength training, and riding a stationary bike.
Today, a year and a half later, I’m not only walking without a limp and free of arthritis pain, but my knee feels normal. Except for the scar and some loss of feeling around it, I wouldn’t know I’d had surgery, and the implant feels like a natural part of my anatomy, not like a foreign object.
Clearly, I’ve become an enthusiastic advocate for the Oxford implant. It can be a miracle for many people. So if your doctor has told you a total knee replacement is in your future, think again. You may have more choices than you thought, and you don’t have to go to Oxford. It will come to you.
