Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Time

As of today (er, as of yesterday... and by "yesterday" I mean "an hour ago") it's officially been four weeks since my surgery. And it's officially been three weeks since I've posted anything here. I apologize for my absence and promise to get back to writing more regularly in the hope that I can provide some entertainment for anyone out there who is looking for a distraction. I do, however, have good reason for neglecting this blog over the last few weeks.

After my first few (hellish) days at home post-surgery, there was a great upswing in my progress. I started feeling better, moving around more, and progressively cutting down on the painkillers. The reason I haven't been posting here, quite simply, is that I'm no longer spending all day in bed with only my laptop for entertainment. These days I'm out of bed most of the day, and when I am in bed it's generally because I'm completely exhausted. I do still have pain, but the pain is generally surgical pain. My whole abdominal area is still very tender, as is the area around the incision on my back. The solution to this (the solution to everything, really) seems to be ice. I'm not sure if it's actually helping the pain or if it just soothes me psychologically, but it does help. This stupid brace, on the other hand... it doesn't bother me when I'm standing or walking, or when I'm sitting straight up in a hard chair, but it becomes unbelievably obnoxious when I lie down in bed. But if that's the worst of my troubles at this point, I think I can consider myself to be in pretty good shape. I still take three doses of percocet daily, but I've cut the doses down to one pill each (originally when I got home from the hospital I was taking oxycontin every 12 hours, too, but no more) and I don't usually need to take anything during the day. So I'm definitely making progress. My daily activities generally include a lot of walking around the house (without the walker - I stopped needing it after that first week), sitting around the house, more walking around the house... you get the idea. It's not exactly thrilling, but it's much better than being confined to bed. My next follow-up appointment with my doctor is in two weeks and at that point I'll actually be allowed to go places beyond my backyard. Ahh, how wonderful to anticipate being able to ride in a car again...! Really, though, I don't mean to be sarcastic here. I've come a long way in the past month.

I have, however, been admittedly unimaginative in my attempts to keep myself entertained. I've been astoundingly unproductive and seem to spend an awful lot of time these days watching TV or knitting. My new favorite show is the "Growing Up..." series on Animal Planet, and my absolute favorite episode is "Growing Up Walrus." Yes, it seems that somewhere over the last few weeks I morphed into a five-year-old. Really, I could watch those over and over again. But the best entertainment by far has been the steady stream of visitors I've been lucky enough to have. I continue to be amazed at the loyalty and devotion of my friends and, as always, just love spending time with everyone. I'm flattered that people have taken the time to come and see me - some traveling quite a significant distance. Your visits make me feel normal and social again, like everything is just as it always has been. I love seeing everyone, spending time catching up and talking and laughing like we always do.

Simple pleasures, true, but real pleasures indeed.

Wishing each and every one of you a very happy and healthy 2007.

1 Comments:

Blogger Marce said...

Glad to hear you are doing better. Don´t worry about being unproductive, we all tend to do that, even without a back brace!
Enjoy the time with your friends, use the time to think, to watch "growing up" on the Animal planet or whatever you feel like doing.
Oh by the way, if you haven´t yet seen the "In the womb: animals" documentary on National Geographic, be sure to check it out, you´ll love it. They even had a golden retriever pregnancy, so I was delighted since my golden retriever was pregnant at the time they aired it.

January 17, 2007 11:17 AM  

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