I’m Here, Sort of…

Willem went and bought me this adapter thing that lets me be online despite the absence of WiFi or similar here.  I won’t be able to be on every day, but it’s really good to know I can pop by when I want.  I’ll have an intermittent presence online for a while… like a lot of things, I’m being told to focus on the positive, “Well, it’s better than nothing!” instead of on the frustration of an imperfect system.  But I am here, can check email, can post on the blog and Facebook… so, fine, better than nothing!

Let me sum up with the facts, throw a little opinions and emotions in there, and then see if I can’t sleep a little tonight.  I could have taken sleep medication a few hours ago, but I really hate the kind of sleep that gives me, so I only take it when I know I have something coming up the next day that makes more than a few hours of sleep necessary.  Nothing scheduled tomorrow, so sleep is optional.  And, remembering the radical hysterectomy at 32 nonsense, the worst of the hot flashes happen when I’m sleeping.  Might as well stay awake, sometimes.

I’m now in a rehabilitation facility about three miles from my house.  This is excellent because it’s so much easier to see Willem and my mom (who has dropped everything and moved in to help with the kids and the house and is really, truly being wonderful about it) and the big kids and Gretchen and several other people who live closer to me.  It’s also horrible because they have a strict, firm rule that says no babies – so I can’t see Isaac at all, perhaps until I’m discharged.  I’ve seen him four times, he’s 25 days old.  Each day that ache gets bigger, and sharper.

Physically, I’m healing well.  The size of the wounds is shrinking and while changing the dressing is still unbelievably, wordlessly painful, the process of is also a little quicker each time.  I’m not a big enough girl yet to choose to handle dealing with it alone, but I can imagine the day… or maybe I’ll just be able to find enough people willing to listen to me snivel and moan and writhe, and watch an indisputably unpleasant display of wounds and sponges and tape,  to get through to the end of this.  In theory, the original dressing was put in on March 10 and it should be about a month-long process of magically shrinking  wounds (and, credit where credit is due, they are shrinking), so April 10 would mark the end of that month… my hope muscle has not just atrophied, it has scurried off to places unknown, but that would make for a measurable, finite sort of calendar, while my brain is starting to convince itself that this is all just going to stretch out into infinity.

I’m able to walk well with a walker: confidently, quickly.  I can also walk without one, though I’m a bit slower and still nervous.  That’s much more a mental thing than a physical thing, though.

Fine motor, I can write again.  Early days, it was touch and go, and when I could write it looked like I was using my left hand, when I was not.  I’ve not yet tried knitting  – sort of a mental block there, again, I think – but my stepmother brought me bulky yarn, fat needles and simple patterns.  I have the technology.

To get discharged from this hospital, I need to attack a sort of two-pronged set of priorities.  One has to do with the wound dressing, our friend the VAC, getting it changed regularly.  That’s the nasty, hurty part with no good solution except it is a little smaller and faster each time… it will get better.  I have to keep having wound changes every 3 days for about 2 more weeks, plus or minus.

The other prong has to do with gross motor skills, I have to be able to walk certain distances, lift certain weights (but not TOO big, I did just have multiple major abdominal surgeries) climb a certain number of stairs, etc.  They don’t seem concerned about Occupational Therapy (OT – fine motor skills), I think on the theory that they can do that on an at-home, outpatient basis.  I took four laps around the floor today with Physical Therapy (PT), using the walker only because they wanted me to, so it’s a start.

Emotionally, I’m all over the map.  I started this evening very rough, but time online helped steady me.  Just the routine of it, and the comfort of friends all over the place, and the possibility that someone out there might be listening and might respond… you just help remind me that life does go on and it will be OK again.  So, thanks for that.  I’m struggling mightily with not being able to see my son, that ache just gets bigger and sharper every day.  I have a lot of anger and resentment and why-me and so on, and am using a paper-and-pen journal to work through what I can.  I’ll be getting into therapy, and likely couples counseling given the nature of my surgeries, as soon as possible after I’m out.

And I’m hoping to see a GYN as soon as possible (not one from the group that was treating me, or rather not treating me, before) because instant menopause from the hysterectomy is not helping keep me on an even keel.

So.  In a large nutshell, there I be.  Somehow it got to be 3:00 in the morning, not sure how that happened.  I’ll go see if I can’t shove a little bit of sleep into the evening, in between my angry neighbor’s uncannily regular and superhumanly loud calls for the nurse. (These continue even when the nurse is physically at his bedside.  He is not blind or deaf.  He’s just irate.  And dedicated.)

Emails, PMs, texts, calls, they all work well as ways to reach me… if you’re worried about interrupting something, don’t be, I just don’t answer the phone if I’m busy.  And your communications do matter, they do help, more than I can express.  This whole situation bites.  Loneliness gnaws.