Post- Surgical Routine (or what am I doing now?)

I must be better because I am bored.

My days have settled into a post-surgical routine.  I get up, take my pain pill and dive for coffee, as always.  The coffee I mean not the pain pill.  Though, when I wake up it has usually been 8 or 9 hours since my last pain pill so I dive for the pain pill too. 

My breakfast is very different than my pre-surgical breakfast.  I used to eat Greek yogurt (for the protein), 1/2 banana, and twigs (high fiber cereal).  Now I have a couple of crackers or Ken's banana bread and that helps with the chronic nausea that I have.  This morning I read all about the great hairstyles for 2010, with chemo I will be missing those.  I ordered some chemo scarves off the internet.

Then I sit, read the paper, read a few emails, check for comments on my blog, and call my mother.  Then I read some more.  By now it is noon, as soon as I start wandering around the apartment I figure that I am probably hungry.  So I heat up or nibble on some of the food that people generously sent.  People send lots of food when you are sick.  Thank goodness for the ravenous 16 year old.  The half of sandwich or couple ounces of meat and left over vegetables or fruit I eat would leave enough food for the next century.

Every day I try to take a nap right in the afternoon.  Late afternoon, I shower, which is my big excitement for the day.  I can now wash my own hair.  Then I read some more.  We eat dinner.  After dinner, we watch movies or DVD's from friends.   Then more reading and off to bed.

Christmas Eve I didn't get a nap in and I sat holding my face in my hands at the dinner table at 7:30 p.m.  I napped until 9:30 and then I anxiously sat in my chair waiting for Santa. I finally went to sleep after 1 a.m. and somehow still missed him.

Sometime throughout the day, now that I am feeling better, a couple of times I day, I try and stretch my shoulders and arms.  I do gentle lifts from a list 8 pages long from the hospital.  I was supposed to start these day two.  Day two I couldn't even stand up. Let alone stand up, do these 6 stretches five to seven times each (repeat for both sides), lay down and do these 3 stretches five to seven times each, then sit and do these 3 stretches five to seven times each.  Even now I do 2 or 3 a few times each day. I can feel how much time and effort full mobility in my shoulders and arms is going to take.  I know I need to start working on it more.   I long for the return of my natural flexibility.

This is the small work of surgery recovery.  Time for my nap.