Time is a funny thing. We all move through it, apparently in one direction, but we all experience it differently. As anyone struggling to finish a test on time (or someone waiting for their partner to finish looking at Every Shoe In The Store) knows, how quickly we perceive time's progression definitely seems to be related to the individual experience.
So here I am, two weeks to the hour since I was in mid-surgery, and I have to tell you that my sense of time is completely screwed up. I thought I had trouble telling what day of the week it was before!
As I've mentioned, a big part of how I dealt with pre-surgical stress was simply to focus on where I was going to be at point X of my recovery. In a week, in a month, etc. Having had that experience once before, I figured the stakes might shift a bit, but I'd still be looking at the same sorts of mileposts at more or less the same amounts of time since surgery.
Not even close.
Two weeks seems like forever. Two weeks ago I was lying on a table with a bunch of highly trained medical professionals looking in my thoracic cavity and thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of scar tissue!" I remember going into the surgery thinking that in a week, I'd be home, and in another week, I'd finally be comfortable sitting up in a chair, finally be able to prepare my own food, in other words starting to get back into the swing of things. I thought that I'd have made ten trips to the anti-coagulation clinic, and be struggling with light-headedness whenever I went anywhere. I'd just be to the point where I could walk comfortably.
Well, we're about three weeks past all of that. No light-headedness, very few trips to the hospital, I'm walking a lot more, I'm able to get into and out of bed without assistance and have more or less four days after surgery. I'm comfortable in a wide range of chairs and seating. I'm laying flat in bed at night, with some occasional side sleeping.
My legs are strong enough for me to drop down with my upper body vertical enough to pick up things I've dropped. My core is strong enough for me to sit up from a horizontal position without any arm assistance.
Even the scars from the various holes and incisions are looking amazing. Groin excepted, that one is going to take a while because it runs across bendy bits (fortunately not the occasionally bendy bits, though). And it's looked gnarlier than anything else pretty much from surgery on.
About the only thing that hasn't really improved is consistent sleep. Admittedly, we are in bed by 9, and asleep by 10pm, and then shooting for an 8am breakfast, but I am definitely awake for an hour or two.
I'm also looking forward to getting off of the Oxy, which has been fine and I have been good about keeping my pain down to nothing most of the time. I do notice that I have trouble with a bit of short term memory, especially when it comes to whether or not I've taken my pills, but I have various methods to keep track (like leaving the "extra" pills, not taken at 9am/pm, in a dish so I can see what I've taken already). I definitely feel like I'll be able to rotate my upper body easily to look behind me when I can drive again in, oh, more than two weeks.
Sorry to be so boring. No major complications, no wondering what I should eat, no massive shifts in drug regimens. Just getting back to normal at a surprisingly fast clip. And trying to remember that while I feel great I still have this enormous broken bone (or equivalent) that is pretty damned central to my structure that's held together with titanium wire right now. To be fair, it's been very good about reminding me that I'm not back to normal yet, just mostly.
I've even signed up to sit in as an accompanist for the Balladeers at the end of April for a few rehearsals and possible a gig, pending how I feel in a couple of weeks of course.
I am absolutely positive that the majority of my fast recovery is because I was in such good shape before the surgery. At this point 30 months ago, I felt like a very old man. Now I feel like I did about six weeks into my couch to 5k running program less than 24 months ago. And looking forward to running more than I can tell you.
For now I'm going to limit future posts to reports after seeing my various doctors, with an occasional status update if there's some time between them. I see the surgeon's nurse on Friday, and that is my first real professional data point since leaving the hospital. Then it's a couple of weeks more until I see the surgeon in mid-April, followed by my cardiologist and GP.
In other words, I'll see you in the future, and for both of us I'm guessing it will have seemed like both an eternity and a few seconds...
Doug
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