Color Me Impatient

Overall my recovery seems to be proceeding normally. Though I’m still confined to the house, neither allowed to take outside walks or to drive, I will be able to drive short distances as of Friday.

In some ways, this may be the hardest part of recovery for me because now that I’m feeling relatively well and have managed to sleep at least four or five hours straight the last two nights, I want to get on with my life, want to get back to the things I’m used to doing. Of course, I don’t want to jeapordize my long-term health or risk re-injury, so, for the most part, I’m trying to be a good patient.

If you wonder why I’m so impatient, here’s a list of my recovery from surgery with landmark days:

Thursday: prostate removed.
Friday: catheter replaced because of blockage.
Saturday: first walk around nurses’ station
Sunday: first bowel movement; first sold food.
Monday: sent home, exhausted climbing stairs to bedroom
Tuesday: climbed stairs several times throughout the day
Wednesday: blockage removed in emergency room
Thursday: filled bird feeder.
Friday: first drain removed.
Saturday: most of day spent napping
Sunday: more sleeping. but with longer computer breaks
Monday: brought in garbage can; helped cook dinner.
Tuesday, final drain removed.
Wednesday: paid bills and walked up steep hill to mailbox, and back obviously

It’s all too obvious that I’m not getting much done and, certainly, nothing exciting has taken place so far, isn’t it?

I’m not even allowed to exercise yet so that I can do more than this, not that I really feel like doing too much exercise.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is that it’s difficult to sit or lie down without taking pain killers. As a result, I haven’t had much luck trying to read or even write yet.

It’s most comfortable just to stand, which may explain why I spend a considerable part of the day just plain pacing back and forth.

P.S. This really isn’t meant so much as a complaint, which I’m sure it is, as a factual statement of where I’m at at this point in my healing. Anyone considering this kind of surgery should probably plan accordingly, as I seem the norm rather than the exception.

11 thoughts on “Color Me Impatient”

  1. Dylan, et al, had those devices for holding the harmonica while he also played the guitar. If you thought you’d be recuperating long enough, you could rig something like that for your keyboard and stand in front of the computer. You could possibly even pace if you have a long cord or a wireless keyboard. Know any inventors or good fabricators?

  2. No, Ron, don’t even think it.

    I’m not plannng on being sick that long. After next Thursday when the catheter comes out, I’m going to be doing some real exercising to get back into shape.

  3. Loren, sounds like you’re doing great! And really, what do you HAVE to do? Just two things: 1. Inhale. 2. Exhale.

    Walking meditation is a good thing! Go with it. Just “be” for a while and remind your impatient brain that it has had the privilege of getting a free ride from your body for lo these many years, and maybe it could cut it some slack for once!

    Really, I’m glad you’re feeling impatient. That has to be a good sign, even if it isn’t much fun. “This too shall pass.”

  4. You’re obviously right, Dave, and I really posted this mainly to let people know that I am getting better, and rather rapidly.

    And, you’re right, it gives me a chance to fight my type A personality, and my need to always be “doing” something.

    Generally I meditate when I do yoga or tai chi, and, unfortunately, I can’t do either one of these. Nor can I use a nature walk to forget my lo these many thoughts.

  5. I’ve been trying to find this for you – remebered it from college in the mid 70s but couldn’t remember who it was by (isn’t Google a wonderful thing?)

    The Hospital by Patrick Kavanagh
    A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward
    Of a chest hospital: square cubicles in a row
    Plain concrete, wash basins – an art lover’s woe,
    Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored.
    But nothing whatever is by love debarred,
    The common and the banal her heat can know.
    The corridor led to a stairway and below
    Was the inexhaustible adventure of a gravelled yard.

    This is what love does to things: the Rialto Bridge,
    The main gate that was bent by a heavy lorry,
    The seat at the back of a shed that was a suntrap.
    Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge;
    For we must record love’s mystery without claptrap,
    Snatch out of time the passionate transitory.

  6. I like the last three lines. This is what i put on my blog, where I’ve also posted the poem:
    “I had thought of it last about 12 years ago when I’d had major surgery myself and was managing to – walk is hardly the word – inch my way in great pain along the corridor, clutching the rail with both hands, bent double. At times like these we do count every blessing. We do feel elated by every small improvement – by the ability to manage something painfully and with great effort, that we would have taken for granted, perhaps, the week before.”

  7. Sometimes healing seem SO SLOW.
    But really, it’s incredibly fast.

    Think about the insult your body has received, and yet it’s mending itself so rapidly.

    May your healing continue to progress, and may have you have just enough patience to tolerate it!

  8. Your daily landmarks present these two weeks with the shocking and leveling dispassion of an English ship’s log during the Napoleonic Wars. Your two Thursdays, for instance.

    No more of the first. May you find joy in feeding the birds, and in all the works of your hands.

    Hope your recovery moves along faster.

  9. Wow – you’ve definitely beat me to walking! No chance for another eight weeks for me. Glad to hear that you’re doing so well, and hope the healing continues.

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