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Stamina
I don’t have any. At least not physical stamina. My back was still a little wound up this morning but the spasms were milder and infrequent. But it was difficult to walk around comfortably when you feel like your back might attack you.
I had to return the rental car this morning and pick up our beloved Subaru from the dealer who did drivetrain work while we were gone. And pick up more Tylenol. Driving was no problem and the errands were easy. It was a bit of an odd feeling walking around in public with a walker, perhaps a glimpse of my older self decades from now. The service writer at the Subaru dealer was genuinely interested in what happened to me and was happy to see me standing in front of him in relatively good shape. Big thanks to my neighbor Joe who helped me get from Avis to the Subaru dealer.
Back at home, the last bit of my code that was giving me trouble started magically working after a simple “recompile”. For you non-techies this is like putting something back together exactly like it was before when it wasn’t working, but now it does. Frustrating. But I debug it a few times and it is clearly working correctly. I spend the next few hours working on the next task and eat a little.
By 1:30 or 2:00 I am exhausted. I’m cat napping on every compile, a computer task that takes around a minute for what I’m doing. Normally I would multi-task reading other code or skimming email but I can’t do it. I finally give up and lay down for an hour. After I get up I feel much better (and awake) but I’m astounded how little physical stamina I have. I get a lot done the remainder of the afternoon but I’m wiped out again by 6:00 and random parts of me start hurting again, lower back, a rib, and my back is tightening up like guitar strings getting tuned. I get a stab of rib pain at “knife wound” pain scale. I’m lying down on the couch and I don’t want to move for fear of provoking something.
After my wife gets home I start explaining to her (while prone) how to make soba, a Japanese buckwheat noodle, in soup, for dinner. When I finally get up to help her do the last part, I carefully roll to get up and… nothing hurts. What a relief. We eat dinner and do the New York Times crossword puzzle.
I go to bed immediately after cleaning up. Tonight my back is not wound up and spasming and I am So Grateful. I’m also not as exhausted like I was many nights after the accident but the overwhelming thought in my head is my lack of stamina during the day. I don’t know how much energy healing takes but it seems to be plenty.
Tomorrow I will talk a bit more about assessing pain and some thoughts about opioids and how I was able to avoid them. (Spoiler: mostly luck).