The previous posts in order:
Recovery Day One
It’s really strange to wake up in your own bed, a familiar place, but everything about it is unfamiliar. Last night I ate dinner in bed, which is just a messy affair, not recommended. I then had to set up my own alarms to take my medicine during the night and in the morning I think I took the wrong medicine at 2am and I’m all confused. Let’s just say that a patient trying to be his own nurse has its drawbacks.
Even worse, my wife was up late cleaning up the mess in the kitchen that accrued over the past few days and lands in bed just exhausted. The next morning I get up and I get to do My Favorite Thing in the morning: Make Coffee!! :-) I’m still stiff and awkward and I have a walker so going around the kitchen is, um, ridiculous. So I put the walker in a corner, nearby, and carefully walk around a small area of the kitchen. I feel stable walking (I have my brace on) and I successfully grind beans and make coffee. Getting the half and half out of the refrigerator is a challenge because I have to Bend over to do it. So I have to squat on my knees and reach in to pick it up.
The human body is a wonderful thing. You learn in exercise classes and other places to keep your core centered, straight, and strong, but in reality your body is amazingly flexible and can twist, turn, go backwards, and do all sorts of things that I can do none of right now. I can’t twist, turn, and reach for something. I have to turn (slowly) and face it, and pick it up within a relatively small angle off of center. Forget about picking up anything off the floor, that will have to wait until I have a grabber (Harbor Freight, $1.89).
The kitchen has stuff that needs to go into the dishwasher and the dishwasher got run last night and is full. I like to be the person to empty the dishwasher. So I go about doing this (carefully!) and I have to squat down to get the basket holding the silverware out of the lower rack, hike it up to the counter, and then stand up again. The stuff in the back of the lower rack that is heavy, no way, my wife has to get those. It takes a long time but I manage to empty almost all of the dishwasher without violating the BLT strictures (no Bending, Lifting, or Twisting). I can lift 10 pounds max so emptying the dishwasher is within current specs.
I take the coffee to the table and boot up my laptop and start working. It *almost* feels normal, but it isn’t, really. Almost every breath I am reminded that I have a fractured back and broken ribs. Normal, everyday movements have to be carefully considered. An imminent cough is an urgent need to find a pillow that I can squeeze as hard as I can against my rib cage before coughing. It still hurts like hell but coughing without the pillow feels like a knife wound.
My wife serves me breakfast and it is amazing and I am so grateful she is here and putting up with me. It was her spring break this week and anything she wanted to do was ruined. I feel really, really bad about this. So now I feel stupid, I’m in physical pain, and I’m guilty. I suppose there’s someone’s job out there to tell me to forgive myself but I’m not having it right now.
Work is productive, but slow. It’s the age-old engineer’s question: “Why doesn’t this work?” I got a lot accomplished, interact with my team, write some of these newsletter posts (before I forget everything that happened) and about 3:00, while Theresa is out (running errands for me of course :-( ), I crash heavily for over an hour. I just don’t have the stamina to work throughout the day. I’m OK with this and I feel like I got a good day’s worth of work in.
After dinner I clean up (again a super slow process) and then “do laps” with my walker along the length of the living room. I do about 15 - 20 of these and when I am done the lower back / hip area where I have an incredibly ugly bruise (sorry you will not get pictures) is really, really achy. Almost painful but not quite. I very likely overdid it.
The shower “transfer” chair we ordered shows up (private Amazon delivery guy, yet another job in the new “gig” economy). My wife has to put it together, of course, but she is handy and has it up in no time. It barely fits into the opening and then I have to wriggle across it, over the top of the tub edge and into the shower proper. I have to do this without pushing up with my arms because not only can I not lift 10 pounds, I can’t push up my body because it weighs way more than 10 pounds. This is so awkward it is comical and you are definitely allowed to laugh. But I haven’t had a shower in 4 days and it just feels heavenly. My hip aches the whole time But I Don’t Give A Damn. I get to wash up and shampoo my hair and I am in heaven. We had to rig multiple towels so as not to have a lake in the bathroom and it mostly worked. And my wife has to help me rinse off because the setup here is just a joke, definitely about the stupidest personal washing set up ever invented. But I didn’t fall and I didn’t break any BLT rules so we’re calling it good.
It’s 11:00 and I collapse exhaustedly into bed. I shouldn’t have stayed up so late. I calculate my med schedule, set the alarms on my phone and collapse.
Does it get easier from here? I have no idea.
Tomorrow: Pain