I started this other post to try and capture how I feel, but it was so messy. Looking at it all there, I don’t want to share that here for all. I need someone to talk to. Someone who knew me before and liked me then. In the process of growing up I think I lost some of my better qualities. How do you get the good parts back? I want to talk about all that and go through photos & scrapbooks & keepsakes & get all these people back in my life & not live all across the world instead.

Also, I’m having the surgery. Next week. I don’t want to talk to people about it, but I still feel weird about it so I’ve been closed off.

Labels: all the feelings, nostalgia, surgery, take me back to the start

This splint is starting to smell, but not horribly, just distinguishably.  Like I've been marked.  Marked by repetition.  Marked by a scalpel repeatedly, if we're being grossly accurate.

I've lost my gray hoodie, which is the only coat I own that fits comfortably around the splint.  I was sifting through the hall closet trying to find it and was baffled by two questions.  When did I get so many coats? And, why don't any of these coats fit around this stupid splint?  I counted 4 coats that I've received as part of my job, 2 I have not even worn yet because of all the surgeries.

All winter I either wore that ratty hoody or my green winter coat. I hate that green coat now.  I was going to donate it to the homeless, but good thing I waited, except nope, that was too tight too and I found out too late.  I looked like a woman in labor, with my eyes closed, breathing in short, sharp breaths as I tried to pull it off my arm and not pull my wrist out of the splint.  Which is pretty plausible.  My hands have been all up in that joint, it does not seem hard to alter or remove.  To be clear (and fair to my claims to be devoted to this recovery, which I am)  I only removed the wrap from the middle of my arm to moisturize the skin (on my arm, inches from the stitches) to try to reduce the itching and reduce the possibility of me scratching distractedly and accidentally doing something damaging. I also had to remove the cat hairs that had poked under the bandage and were also distressing my skin.

What can I say, I finished this terrific book with amazing word play and all I can focus on is how much I want to rip this splint off and scratch my arm red and raw.

Labels: new cast blues, recovery, surgery

Going into surgery, I had four really good books arrive for me at the library.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
AND FINALLY Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles

The thing is, I didn't take any extra time off work, so I have been go-go-going and trying my best to not fall behind at work.  And my medicine makes me feel tired, so I try to take it at the end of the work day.  Monday night, first day back, sleepy from the meds, I open Tyler Johnson Was Here and the tension hits me immediately.  Probably not the best thing to start reading when you're at your most vulnerable.  Or maybe that is the time to read it? 

Labels: new books, reading, surgery

I had the worst time sleeping last night, up every hour.  The problem is that I specifically woke up at 5:00am to take my pain killer so that I wouldn't be too tired when I got to the office (usually the first two hours after taking the meds are the most sleep inducing/hazy).  But I was pretty wide awake.

So I didn't take any other pain killers today.  I'm still struggling to not type with my left hand, but the overall pain is minimal.  My wrist itches like crazy under my splint though.  That and the anxiety from work is intense.  I would almost consider asking to take anxiety meds, but the surgery is already exhausting me.  I don't want to be calm, but constantly asleep.

Which somehow reminds me I need to go bring my plants in.  Got to keep them from freezing outside before they have a chance to bloom!

Labels: anxiety, recovery, stress, surgery, work stress

My presurgery playlist helped, but it was missing something. So in the end I settled on The End by The Beatles. The drumming in it helps put me in a good mood. My voice still hasn't fully returned, so I whispered along:

Labels: recovery, surgery

Hoping this is my last wrist surgery. Cause fuck it I just want to dance!

Listening to my Indie Friday playlist to get me in an upbeat, I-will-conquer-this-surgery mood. I've got some ideas for tweaking it, but hope I don't forget them when I wake back up.

Real talk. I will do what it takes to survive. Even if I can't buy my house yet. But I will have a large garden, and next year I will have bees. I have a new nephew I adore. A niece who I love to pieces and who shows me all kinds of affection and wonder.

I don't have any romantic love prospects. I'm not going to let that stop me from my house and the garden and the bees. I will do all those things with fierce passion and persistence. But I still have strong feelings for him. Anything can happen in surgery. So know that I love you. Know that I regret our decision, that I would work so hard to get you back and be the best for you. Would, because the one thing I won't let myself do is chase someone who doesn't want me with this much passion, love, and desire to build a companionship worthy of us. I loved you the most. But not the best I could have. I know that now.

I miss you all the time, often for unknown reasons. I feel like I'm missing part of myself. Or like without you I close off part of myself. People always say they knew their spouse was the one because they made them a better person. I'm not sure if that's quite it. I think together they are just able to be their full selves and that makes them feel better.


I don't know. There's so much I could say but my IV bag is almost empty and I don't want them to see me like this when they take me back to surgery. I pray for strength in all this.

Labels: surgery

I have been trying to keep my mind off of my upcoming doctors appointment and the possibility of another surgery.  My stomach was a bundle of knots last week after I found out so I spent this weekend focused on my garden and a romantic comedy style book, Still Me by Jojo Moyes.

I am tired of this cold weather. Somehow the cold seeped into the front room I am growing my seedlings in and the water in the grow kit was ice cold so I had to replant all of my plants and mix the soil with new dry soil to try and soak up some of that moisture and avoid drowning or freezing my seedlings. I've kept a lamp on them at night, but it's not as good as a heat lamp.  Gardening felt like a chore and not the usual therapeutic experience.

So then I threw myself into my book and it was so good I read it in under 24 hours.  I lost my voice this week and it still has not come back completely.  So when I found myself laughing while reading the book, it wasn't my laugh.  It was cuter actually.  Like my speaking voice is this raspy ex-smoker whisper, but my laugh is like a little girl's. 

I tend to avoid romance novels because the genre just seems so repetitive and cheap (to me at least), but there are some romance cross books that can pull me in.  Still Me is the third book in a series about this slightly wacky English girl, who is pretty much my age.  I think the main character is endearing, and I'm rooting for her, so I overlook when and if the books take on a dream love feel. She had a lot more struggles with her love life in this book though, so it was easier to feel like I could relate and cheer her on harder.

In this book she gets into letter writing, which caused me to reflect.  Letter writing feels more intimate than sending emails.  It's less of an impulse, because you know after you write it you have to post it and it won't arrive instantaneously.  You have to be more confident in the contents. And you have to have faith that a reply will come, unless you're saying goodbye.  I actually have several letters I've never posted for this very reason. Even though I had strong feelings I wanted to express, it wasn't the right time to share with that person.  People look back at past figures in history or authors and they look through their correspondence and it is so eye opening and gives the public a better idea of the inner workings of those in the past.  I wonder if they've ever run across letters not sent though. Would they be filled with passion, stories of betrayals, or just composed of fear? Or composed of love? And I would love you better, I would love you better, I would love you better, I would love you better, I would love you better.

Labels: gardening, letters, reading, surgery, The Maccabees

I wanted to tie this post to Josh Ritter's Wolves, but it's been done. Still it's the song I listened to on repeat in the car. I wonder if the wolves could be your fears. He finds them everywhere. To me that's my anxiety. Heartburn, indigestion. No not that. Fear in the pit of my stomach, churning. Nausea on an empty stomach.

There's a song, that fits wrapped around your shoulders, that can soothe me through it all. I know there is, but I don't remember discovering it. Razzle Dazzle Rose helps soothe me some. Is that a trumpet? Is that the soothing part? Maybe. Or her voice. Mostly Tracyanne Campbell's voice.

Rose, I'm feeling older 
Courage my love it makes me bolder

I need courage. I need hope. I need a hug.

I think getting outraged at the doctors office makes you crazy. Everyone else is speaking so calmly, why would you raise your voice? So I just smile and nod and try to make them feel better about my news. That's screwed up. Both versions. The one where I try not to make a big deal out of it and the one where you get emotional in public. Where is the inbetween?

I don't know if I can go through that surgery again from the beginning. I don't know if I can hold my head up every time I lose a part of myself. I want to feel whole again.

Labels: anxiety, Camera Obscura, emotions, Josh Ritter, mixes, pissed, processing, soothing songs, stress, surgery

My fitbit goals were off the charts (for me) for most of last year between working at Nordstrom and working in the garden. I started off taking Tess on a lot of walks, but it was hard to drag her out of the yard after the fence was built.

There was this point after I had been in casts for over a month that I was like, "No fuck this, I can still work out my core & my legs and I'm not going to let this stupid cast hold me back!"  I cannot stress how hard it is not to move your arms when you move.* So then my whole body was heated up, and I couldn't really cool down my arm, and it was sweaty and trapped in a cast I was stuck with for another week.   That part was inconvenient, sure, but the smell!  Oh, the smell made my stomach turn.**

So when I get out of this wretched cast I am going to start my home workouts again. I still have both of my braces, so as soon as my doctor gives me the okay to go into the lighter one, I am going to start using the more structured one for my workouts.  I was so much healthier last year.  I even reached my weight goal.  I want to get back there.  It's impossible to weigh yourself with a cast and get an accurate reading, so I have no clear idea how far off I am.  I just want to be a healthier me.  All around.  Healthy, happy, doing what I love.

 *I actually had a nerve block in my arm for this surgery.  One of the worst decisions of my life.  When you start to regain feeling, it's not all at once and not all in the same area.+   It took quite a few hours for all of the feeling to come back to me, I want to say it was double the time that the Anesthesiologist had said.  I am still missing some feeling in my hand, which is hard to tell with the cast on and they do think I will feel more when it's off, BUT there is a little path up my pointer finger that just feels cold and I do not think the cast is causing that.  I think they nicked another nerve.  And I think that I would have realized all of this a lot faster if I had not gone with the nerve block.

+ Funny thing about getting a nerve block for your wrist is that they numb your whole arm from a nerve in your shoulder.  While it is numb, it is completely dead weight, and you have to carry it/support it with your other arm or it will dangle and hit things and that is a really easy way to injure something you just had operated on.  I also realized how heavy an arm is.  It's not as light as I thought it was.

**That's another difference with this surgery.  I have been so nauseous since then.  It was like 2 or 3 weeks after my surgery that I started getting car sickness and would get to work just in time to puke.  Sometimes in the morning I have to delay getting ready because continuous movement can make me nauseous.  Brushing my teeth/mouthwash, nauseous.  And my stomach turns now, over several things, not infrequently.  Feels like it's being wrung out.  And all of this started after I had finished all of the additional medication from the surgery.

Labels: be more positive, healthy decision making, new cast blues, stay in the light, surgery