Haven’t heard from me for a long while? First of all was my pain. Second was the fact that for some reason the site refused to cooperate. In my absence, it set up fences, barriers, all sorts of nonsense that I had to wade through to remind it who was boss. It’s MY site! Two-factor authentication be damned! So my other utterly splendid step-daughter this very day managed to talk to it in its language. You have to be a certain age to communicate at that level. Younger than, well, younger than I am.
I will try to catch us up. I have been incoherent, I admit. You can only take so many oxycodone before you lose track of the sensible narrative of your life, What had seemed sensible.
I have so many times described my recent story in my head. It has been quite eloquent, its nuances. Where the pain begins, how it shuts off all else until it’s had its say. The cramps that double me over. It has been about a year, really. My back surgery, the second one, was last January. Through a series of events I have ended up here in rehab. I don’t think it’s the fault of my neurosurgeon. The surgery seems to have been successful, but it turns out that the muscles and tendons have been having a fit. While we were at the lake, I started having sudden cramps, so severe I cried out. Screamed out.
Some parts of this image are relevant, some not. The assignment was to guess which was which.
Of course this was far along in the process. Much waiting—for an appointment, for test after test, for another appointment. We came home from the lake after only 2.5 weeks, and because I couldn’t do anything but sit on the sofa watching the lake and waiting for people to bring me food. And drugs. And as soon as we arrived home---the very next day—I slipped off the end of the sofa onto a pile of towels. Jerry called ”Wellness”, who called the ambulance, and I was loaded onto a gurney by five guys and then onto the back of what is essentially a truck bed (maybe you know what ambulances are like) and driven across the road to the hospital. From that point on, it was a blur. A steady but uneven succession of muscle cramps that hurt so much I shook all over.
Guess which are the right pills, which are the wrong ones. Guess which country this is.
In the ER, I was given a dose of nerve relaxers intended for younger people. This caused me to hallucinate. I was positive my nurse was from Guatemala, but we were all really from the Philippines. I was asked over and over to say my name, the date, year, my birthday. What’s that building out the window? Something in Guatemala. Oh no. How could this possibly be Munson Hospital? How could this possibly be where I am? Where am I? I could not form even one coherent sentence.
They took pictures of my head, torso, legs. I screamed when they put my gurney in the elevator to get more pictures, expecting more cramps. It was awful. I wouldn’t know how awful except that my other dear step-daughter was there with me every step of the way, and described it to me later. She said she was scared. After taking every picture of my head, and back, lower back, etc., it was determined that I had no fracture. That I hadn’t broken my head. Then it was a matter of balancing drugs to even out the nerve impulses as much as possible. I was in the hospital five days. Then off to rehab, where I’ve been for two weeks. Rehab will be a story, my children, for another time.
I deserve congratulations putting all these words in a row, neatly arranged to make sense. Even if I’ve had to write and rewrite. I have gotten this far. Tomorrow will be another day.
At last there are explanations! I have had huge cortisone shots in the right places and have begun PT. I hope to get out of rehab next week. I still can’t walk far, or without a walker, but that will come, with work. Starting at the bottom.
It’s hard for me to write this. The letters are clearing up a bit, but they’re still dancing. Give me a few days, I’ll tell you more.