Put It In Reverse. Or Not.

I have a veritable hill of work looking at me. Not quite a mountain, but a good sized hill. Despite that I am taking a break to process my week. Right now it’s just me, Olney and Sack here. Leo took Ernie in for the surgical replacement of his kidney stent. I’ll be glad when they’re back home. He gets it done roughly twice a year so it’s routine but it’s still general anesthesia, operating room, etc. I’m so grateful to Leo for doing this as I’ve been struggling big time with walking this week. My sweet peas are the best.

I need to do a better job of keeping track of my calendar. I happen to be calendar impaired. Well, not calendar impaired exactly, more like calendar SYNCING impaired. Somehow I hadn’t realized we had so many appointments this week. We started out on Monday with a simple appointment to get shots in my knees. I must have looked wobbly as the person leading us to the room paused and then took us to a much closer room than normal.

Tuesday was just work I believe but man, my legs are just not behaving. This is the third time since my surgery where I suddenly backtrack to not being able to walk much. Back to struggling to get up the steps into the house. I could have just cried except I was too damn irritated.

I ended up sitting on the steps for a while before finally making it. The next day I had to get an x-ray of my neck and I had Ernie get me a wheelchair. I was glad I did and I was fortunate to get a couple of x-ray techs who were empathetic and helpful. Not always the case so I told them how much I appreciated it. It’s funny. There were so many times that, as much as I adored my mother, I would roll my eyes. “Really Mom, NOTHING helps your stenosis, not even pain medication?” “So surgery didn’t help at all?” I remember my sisters and I thinking, geez, SOMETHING should help, is she just being stubborn? And then when she fussed about having to get a scan because she would have to get up on the table. I remember telling her somewhat impatiently that of COURSE the techs would help her.

Heh.

My mom was right about it all. Leo must have gotten that from her. He has a tendancy to be right about things. Not that he holds that over us at all, he just is. French-Canadian Plouffe genes perhaps?

That afternoon was a big all staff meeting at work (honest to God, with everything Sola Gratia accomplishes I’m surprised the staff isn’t twice as big). I got home and managed to get up the stairs by going backwards on my butt up the steps. I gotta say, that used some muscles that might have gotten a bit dusty. Whew. It eventually worked though.

Yesterday I worked for four hours which is about as long as my back can handle. Ernie picked me up and we headed over to Carle to see the surgeon for a follow up (It’s been almost eight months, can you believe it?). I do the dumbest things to myself in my head sometimes. Somehow I felt it was just shameful to go see the surgeon in a wheelchair. Talk about ass backwards (or back asswords as Ernie’s dad used to say), who better should know that I’m having troubles walking?

The clouds were dancing and shifting in the sky and we drove through blinding rain to get to the spine clinic. Ernie pulled up just past the overhang. As it was still raining pretty hard I asked him to move so we were covered. Something was lost in that translation though as he moved the car but still left us not under the canopy. He’d already jumped out of the car and was bringing me a (very wet) wheelchair. I wanted to kill him and he wanted to ignore me. On top of that neither of us are used to me being in a wheelchair so we’re both pretty clumsy with it. I was standing in the rain, really frustrated, and hurting, so when I couldn’t get to the wheelchair easily I lost most of my powers of speech and just yelled, “TURN.” It worked. Sometimes I feel myself descending into shrewdom but sometimes it works so there you go. He parked me inside the building in my wheelchair and went to move the car. Of course he parked me next to someone else so we were blocking the way for people. And the wheelchairs they use now are the kind that can only be moved when somebody is pushing it, I can’t move it on my own at all, which of course I hate.

Ernie came back, I got checked in and then I confessed I had to go to the bathroom. He wheeled me in. He was going to step out but I told him, “Oh, for god’s sake, just stay here, we’ve been through enough together you can stay while I pee.” And then as I was attempting to get some toilet paper from the immense plastic holder I said, “Did you ever think when you saw the cute dark haired girl in the Imports section that we’d end up here?” I don’t even remember his response but I think it was somewhere along the lines of, “Nope, never could have seen this coming.” We both laughed. God, I love him.

The surgeon said my neck looked ok, everything had fused fine but that we knew there were more problems below it so maybe that needs to be taken care of. He wants to have me get an MRI (ARGHH) and then we may be looking at surgery again, going in through the front of my neck once more. God knows I don’t want surgery again but of course it would nice to, uh, well, be able to walk. Sigh.

We got home and I knew, as soon as I had a hard time getting over the threshold, that it was going to be tough getting up those damned steps. I tried my backward method. Good God, my poor butt is going to be a mass of bruises. Those steps are covered in ceramic tile and have metal edging so when you’re trying to push yourself up and over them with dusty muscles and a fair amount of anxiety, it hurts like hell. I got up two of the steps but I just couldn’t manage the third. After a lot of shifting around and muttering and swearing I finally said, “Get me a drink. I just need to sit and relax for a minute.” We’re not drinking much these days but he managed to make me a gin and iced tea (??). I told him to go away for a few minutes and I tried to relax. He came back and I managed to get up so I was sitting on the low blue trunk sitting by the back door. Normally I can get up ok from that—a little difficult as it’s low but doable. Yesterday I just had the damndest time. Finally I asked for my drink back and told him to go away. After a few sips and some deep breathing I managed it and hightailed it (if one can do that very slowly in a walker) for my corner of the couch in the media room. “GET OUT OF MY SPOT, OLNEY,” I bellowed. Oh, it felt so good to sit down. Olney understood.

I was so tired last night that I got into bed at 7:23 pm. I was too tired to read, too tired to watch tv, I was just floating in this little cloud of exhaustion, both physical and mental. I woke up in the night and ached everywhere, I even took a pain pill in the night which is highly unusual. I had to laugh as I attempted to stretch, I’m going to be covered in bruises between getting up the steps and various wheelchair bumps and bangs.

I hope to get a good chunk of my work hill done today but damn, the idea of a late morning nap seems to be rearing its pretty little head so we shall see. I’ve already spoken to the doctor’s office, the hospital, and the pharmacy, and I need to call the doctor’s office back, but you know, that might just have to wait for my nap.

Oh, and insurance approved my MRI and so Carle called to schedule it. I couldn’t do the first option or two but then she said she had some available on the 10th and 11th. I said, “Isn’t the 11th Mother’s Day? I hate MRI’s so getting one on Mother’s Day just seems insulting, let’s look at the 10th.” She laughed and gave me the available times for Saturday the 10th. I sighed and said, “Well, my mother would tell me to take the 6:30 am slot but I’ll go with the 3:00 one.” We laughed again.

My late morning nap is calling my name very louder (edit: ok, you can tell I was getting REALLY tired there. Very louder?).

Onward.

Love,
Cynthia