Well, I thought I had started a blog and saved it (a few days back) but do you think I can find it? Me neither. So I'll check the Facebook statuses (stati?) and see what life has been like. I have a good memory, but it's short. Like me.
July 22: Home. Air conditioning. Left over wedding cupcakes. But it is a lot farther to the bathroom, and no one is bringing me my meds on schedule. No one in the other bed with any symptoms I have to listen to, however. There are pros and cons but I think being home means I am closer to recovery. Big plus.
July 23: Slept like a log last night. Home sweet home.
Not sure how a log sleeps ... presumably without waking or moving.
July 25: Well, one can accomplish many things while recuperating from falling and breaking a leg. First you need helpful minions ... Mine likes to dust, so we've been discarding, rearranging, and tidying the top shelf of my office/bedroom. Then I was looking for receipts, so I was sorting through my filing drawer in my desk. Stuffed peppers and Greek potatoes for supper were yummy, and a delish cupcake leftover from the wedding. Air conditioning still rocks!
This dusting and so on has continued on and off, and I just finished clearing off all the dust bunnies that have been holding a convention on the top of my desk behind the computer. Apparently, dust bunnies are attracted by the electricity from the computer and love to hide among all those computer wires.
July 30: A little bored at 2:38 am...wish I could fall asleep at night.
This past month has been a little stressful, tired and napping during the daytime, then lying awake a lot of the night. I talked to my doctor about it this past week and I'm benefiting from taking Melatonin at bedtime.
Serious problem here... I am out of cookies. Entertaining ride to and from the drs office today in the wheelchair cab. He had 20 customers today, most in wheelchairs. It is a good thing we got right in at the doctor's office...wheelchair took up most of the waiting room!
That was my first trip to the doctor's office. I am now navigating the world with my walker, for the most part, as long as I don't have to walk too far. My cookie cravings were met with great satisfaction by a couple of cookie angels, otherwise known as friends of mine. With chocolate chips.
August 4: Had fun today copying photos from FB and making my own slide show to run on the computer. If one is going to be laid up, and can't scrapbook, at least one can get creative in the computer room (my new bedroom, temporarily).
This was also my 29th wedding anniversary, but the logistics of doing anything like going out to dinner with a wheelchair after my husband's arrival home from work at 6:30 pm, defeated any hope of such an event taking place. Playing with my daughter's wedding photos was much fun.
August 11: Hooray ... I made it to church today! And had a 2 hour nap in the afternoon.
This was via my mother's car and a walker. And the whole adventure definitely required a nap afterward. It was good to see people in my church family again. They have been so good to us, bringing meals, flowers, cards, and so on, as well as phoning and e-mailing encouragement.
August 12: Feeling totally blessed...shower bench arrived today from the medical supplies company, ladies from our Bible study brought a bounty of vegetables, baking, snacks, and stayed for a visit. And my mom brought a quilt over for me to do the hand stitching on the binding.
I think my vanished blog had something to do with the amount of equipment that WorkSafe has provided for my recovery. I know many people have had bad experiences with this organization, but so far, I have had a lot of people on my side, checking to see how I am doing, making sure that I have what I need. I haven't tried the crutches yet, feeling that their instability combined with my own might not be a good combination.
August 17: Apparently I am not Superwoman! It is not possible to have 5 hours of sleep at night and then go to a wedding and the grocery store without having an afternoon rest. And peach pie. Trying not to sleep now so I CAN sleep tonight. For anyone who is not recovering from a broken femur, that doesn't sound like a hard day, but I am doing all this with a walker, hopping on my left foot.
This business of hopping on the left foot is very exhausting, even when I am allowed to put "feather-weight" on the right foot. I was trying to describe it as playing hopscotch on the wrong foot. It only makes sense to people who have played hopscotch, however. I am right-footed as well as right-handed, and can't stand on my left foot for very long at all. Having to depend on it to get me around is a bit of a pain. "Pain" in this case means inconvenience, as I also seem to have to correct everyone's idea that I must be in a lot of physical pain because of the broken leg (femur). I am not, actually, as I take extra-strength Tylenol a couple times in the daytime (as I have for years) and T-3s at night, so any pain that decides to sneak up on me is dealt with before it gets out of control.
August 19: Life is an adventure. Yesterday my twins turned 18, so I went on an adventure at Walmart to buy birthday cards. I got to ride on an electric scooter. Too much fun! Out for a family dinner in Kelowna and got to ride on the new stretch of highway 97. Today's adventures included counting offering at church, getting a filling at the dentist, a much needed nap, then at suppertime, a fire at the landfill that brought us a great view of the helicopters refilling with water, smoke, flames, and planes dropping fire retardant. Oh, and the newlyweds were over, and we had other friends drop on to watch the fire from our vantage point.
Part of keeping a positive outlook is keeping an adventurous spirit. Instead of moping around the house, bound by what I can't do, I look forward to trying my limits. And the electric scooter at WalMart was a blast! It fits into my ever-evolving mental picture of what I will be like as an "older" person. When I was diagnosed with polymyositis, I pictured myself needing a wheelchair by this stage in life (27 years later), since most of the documented cases at that time were women after menopause. When I was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, I was on oxygen overnight for quite a period of months. So I added an oxygen tank to my mental picture. Then I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. The treatment I have been having involves a medication used for males with erectile disfunction. So now, the mental picture is of me, in my motorized wheelchair, rocketing down the street with my oxygen tanks, staying ahead of a bunch of little old men wanting my Viagra.
August 22: Suffering from a lack of a small crochet hook to put together a sweater made of baby wool.
Once I finished sewing the binding on the quilt (Aug 12 - done in 2 days), I began looking around for other projects to work on. However, there are a couple of problems. First, everything is upstairs and I am downstairs. Second, anything that was on the main floor has gotten caught up in the whirlwind of cleaning up and arranging a room for me down here. So I don't know where the pattern is for the sweater set that I started 4 years ago, and I can't find the little hook that I always use to tuck in the ends of the wool where I join a new ball. Where oh where are you, little hook? Playing hooky??
August 23: Climbed a mountain today ... actually a stairway, in reverse, seated. The butt shuffle was much easier on the ground. I had a four-year-old showing me the technique on the way down.
So, this is how to get to lunch at my mother's, just across the street. First, the wonderful mother picks me up and drives me across the street. I navigate into the house with the walker and sit down two steps up from the basement floor. Lifting my body with the strength of my left foot and leg, I balance with my right foot, and raise myself one step. Stop, rest, repeat. At the landing, I cling to the strong post to turn around for the second half of the stairs. Two steps up, sit, *lift, raise self, stop, rest*, repeat. It's like a knitting pattern: repeat from * to * until the top of the stairs is reached, then cling to the top of the stairway railing, the post and the walker until balance is achieved. Goal: Lunch. Achieved. Also a lovely visit with a cousin and her 4 year old son, who accompanied me on the reverse journey, sliding down the stairs. The son, not the cousin.
And that brings us to today, when I attended another wedding. I was a little miffed at the ushers, who were under orders not to let the guests through the centre aisle, so I had to go to the side door, and hop sideways down the length of the 10 or so seats at the back of the church to get to a seat that was probably 3 or 4 walker hops from the ushers' position. For heaven's sake, I wasn't going to mess up the pretty decorated aisle! Sigh. And this is just with a broken leg. I can only imagine what people who are disabled have to put up with as they go about their daily lives!
So there are ups and adventures and downs and disappointments in this new, but hopefully temporary, reality of mine. Signing off for tonight.
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