I do feel alone quite often, but that’s a function of my recovery. It’s hard to get out and socialize; moving is painful, I get so tired, and being in a crowd (even in a restaurant) seems to unsettle me in a new way. I don’t know if it’s because for 18 months I’ve essentially lived most of my life in a hospital room, a bedroom or my living room, but my Living with Loss group at Gilda’s Club (6-10 people) is about as large a group of people that I feel comfortable interacting with.
Category: Recovery
Grateful Every Day
We’re buckling down because a ‘once-in-a-decade’ storm is supposed to be coming, although at this point it’s six hours late (and it will probably be angrier for waiting…) One friend is writing, his wife is making Swedish pancakes and the kids are organizing a board game for later in the day.
Pushing Myself To Exhaustion
As seldom as I seem to be blogging these days, you may not hear from me again until after Thanksgiving, so I hope you all have an exceptional holiday with loving friends and/or family and snugly animals to pet and love! And thank you all for sticking with me during this really rough year. It’s been hard, and I’ve had a good amount of loss, but I have SO MUCH to be thankful for – and I am!
An Arc
I can’t believe I haven’t blogged in a month! It’s been QUITE a month. I thought that by now I’d be writing about my adorable tutoring students, and how every day I could see in their happy, fascinated faces that I’d made a REAL DIFFERENCE in their little reading lives. Unfortunately, Health ran interference on…
Acclimation
This year has been a long journey of learning to acclimate myself to a new – everything – it feels like some days. Recently I was in a group where we were asked to describe ourselves using a series of adjectives. It was a confusing exercise, and at first no one did very well with…
Testing Myself
As my recovery progresses, I find that I am ‘testing myself’ many times each week to quantify how much independence I’ve recovered. A few months ago I was sleeping around 18 hours a day. I’d sleep 12 hours at night, and take two naps during the day. I needed all that sleep, but now I’m…
A Return To Baking
Today I’m going to make some cookies. I’ve entered myself into the Minnesota State Fair under the Decorated Cookie category (this year’s theme: Minnesota Flowers) and I’m raring to go!
I’m planning on making up a bunch of royal icing using meringue powder (so it will keep, in an airtight container, for up to a month) and I will practice a few different types of flowers and decorating techniques in the two months before I have to turn in my cookies.
Game Of Alones
It’s a good season of GOT, Gerry would have loved it. I’m loving it. It seems a lovely farewell to a beloved TV series; I wish I had had time to give Gerry the same kind of farewell. I still wake up in a cold sweat from dreams about Gerry dying with no one around him but medical staff, no family, no me. I was functionally immobile from my reaction to strong chemo, but that doesn’t lessen my guilt at not being WITH him at the end. Just because you know something’s out of your control doesn’t necessarily lessen the guilt.
Chronic Pain Revisited
After the past 9 months I’d be happy never to see the inside of a hospital again, but part of me is also wondering if a knee replacement is in my future. I see an orthopedic doc in a few weeks, the same doc I saw 2 years ago who gave me a shot in my knee that helped quite a bit, and I’m curious to find out if this knee pain can be surgically remedied.
SPRING!
Today I celebrated the arrival of Spring with a little walk, and I’m insanely proud of myself. I got up and dressed, went downstairs (then went up stairs to use the bathroom, then downstairs again, a marathon!) And then, with the help of a friend of Andy’s who was over this morning, I took my…