I know I just did a post on books (sorry, non-book readers!), but I totally forgot some books on that list and it's bothering me, so I'm adding to the list here.
The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex - I don't usually read middle readers because I think I skipped that step in my reading life. I feel like I went from picture books straight to Harlequin romances, so these early chapter books are sometimes difficult for me to comprehend. But this book was awesome. I enjoyed every page. The main character was charming, if a bit dense at times, and I liked the theme of girl power going on in in this book. If you have kids who have read The Rats of NIMH and want something else, I think this would do okay. (Okay, I feel like that's saying that Harry Potter folks should read Percy Jackson. It won't be as good, but it will satisfy some small part of the hole in your heart once you're done with the best.)
The Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire including Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz - God, I can't believe I forgot to include these books. These books were MY LIFE for so long this autumn. I was hanging out in Oz while the rest of the world went on around me. These books are long, dense, and dreadfully inconsistent. Let's discuss.
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is the first (and probably most famous) of the novels in this series. It's the basis for the Broadway show that I haven't seen, so I can tell you absolutely nothing about the comparisons (maybe Denora could help you with that), but this book is a killer. I am the dumbass who decided I would buy the unabridged audiobook for my trips back and forth between where we live now and the Twin Cities when I was making that trip two times a week for a while. It was approximately eighty million hours long and I felt every hour as if it were an entire week. The first half is SO BORING I thought I would die, but I persevered and got interested in the last half. So there's that. Maguire is a master of setting and I feel like he was loyal to L. Frank Baum's original world while adding much needed complexity. If tales of political intrigue and international relations interest you, you'll forgive Maguire for the somewhat tedious backstory in the beginning of the novel for the payoff at the end. So I was interested enough to get the second installment from our library.
Son of a Witch - This is the best book in the series, by far. I desperately wanted more about the main character from Wicked (Elphaba), but got a book about someone else entirely. You'd think the title of the book would have clued me in, but sometimes I'm not so smart. Despite my expectations, I loved where Maguire went with this book because there was only so much he could do with the slightly prickly character of Elphaba and I thought it was a brilliant move on his part to go in this new direction. When I was done with this, I went right to the library to get the next installment in the series.
A Lion Among Men - zzzzzzzzzzzz...I hated this book. It took me two weeks to get through it (which is insanely long for me). I didn't care for all the backstory on the Cowardly Lion and the flashbacks were hella boring. I felt like this book was a strange placeholder in the series that did absolutely nothing to move the plot forward. I just wanted this book to be over. And when it was over, I decided I had to complete the series because the last book had just come out AND there was a chance the last book would be as good as Son of a Witch.
Out of Oz - This book was released on November 1 of this year and I was at the library that week and I was the FIRST PERSON to check it out of our library. Woo hoo! I wanted to love this book and I loved parts of it, but not the whole thing. There were some slow moving plots and reintroducing long forgotten characters who acted out of character. The ending did nothing but make me feel ambivalent about ALL THE TIME I spent reading these books. But, and this is a bit but, I am glad Dorothy Gale came back and I feel like that made the series come full circle.
All in all, I would recommend reading the second half of Wicked and all of Son of a Witch. Sadly, if you did that, you would probably be completely confused. But once you're done with Son of a Witch, the rest of the series is completely optional as far as I'm concerned. If you're going to read this series, be warned that it will take forever.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
More Library Books
It's been a long time since I've actually talked about any books here. I've read countless, but here's what I can remember. I think I need a better method of tracking what I read.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - So this is the original in dystopian fiction, I guess. I rather liked it despite the fact that the copy I read smelled like cigarette smoke and fascinated the kitten so much I had to read it in secret in rooms far away from little kitty teeth.
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay - This book is a departure from what I normally read. It's a historical romance/mystery/academic novel filled with unlikeable characters and charming settings. I enjoyed it despite the fact that every person in the novel was kind of a jerk.
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - 600 pages so you can come to absolutely no fucking conclusion?! Fuck you, Deborah Harkness. If I had known this tome was the beginning of what I can only imagine is a series of eight million books, I would not have invested my time in it. I really enjoyed the first third, but then I realized that there was NO WAY she could clear up all the plot points she'd started and then I felt used. Yes, it's a good book if you like your books to have no ending and a thousand plot points left to be answered. (Additionally, vampire/non-vampire relationships can never end well. Can we all agree to this? And stop writing about it? Buffy and Angel have way covered this ground.)
The Spellman Files and The Spellmans Strike Again by Lisa Lutz - An incredibly lighthearted series about the Spellman family's private detective agency. Each book was amusing and made me chuckle. There are more books in the series, but my library doesn't have them, unfortunately, so I'm debating whether or not to spend some of my "get well soon" amazon gift cards to buy them on my Kindle. Not sure. But they are a nice, fluffy read.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - Oh, hell no. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME no matter what the Internetz (especially Elizabeth) tells you to do. This book is NONSENSE. It has a great premise and that's where it falls apart. (Also, this is where I tell you that magical realism is not my forte.) Dumb, dumb, dumb book. WASTE OF TIME. I want my hours back, Ms Bender.
The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus Book 2) by Rick Riordan - I'm sick of Percy Jackson. There, I said it. Percy is NO HARRY POTTER. I read the Percy Jackson series and I was totally pumped when the first book of this series introduced new characters. I even wrote that I loved the first book of the series (The Lost Hero). I guess it didn't occur to me (SPOILER ALERT) that the lost hero was indeed Percy Jackson and our boy Percy was going to make a comeback. I am so done with him, though, that I rolled my eyes through this book. No more Percy. Which brings me to...
The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles Book 1) by Rick Riordan - I just couldn't give up on Riordan, though. The first few books of the Percy Jackson series had such promise. But this series? It's just like Percy Jackson with Egyptian gods instead of Greek. It has equally annoying protagonists and I resented every minute I read this book. I think I'm done with Riordan although I really feel badly about that. But do read the first few books in the Percy series before he kills you with repetition!!
Somebody Everyone Listens To by Suzanne Supplee - zzzzzzzzzzz
New York to Dallas (in Death) by J. D. Robb - I just keep reading these Robb books because I want the smartness of the earlier books, but I've been let down by the last few books. I appreciate that Robb tried to shake things up by switching settings and introducing new characters, but it just didn't work for me. I think there's so much she can do with her original characters - a book told from Peabody/McNab/Mira point of view, a book without Roarke (send him to Ireland or something), or something. This is not doing it for me, despite what looks like amazing reviews on amazon.
Moon Dance, Vampire Moon, American Vampire (Vampire for Hire #1, #2, and #3) by J.R. Rain - A suburban mom becomes a vampire through no fault of her own and now she has to find a way to make a living without the support of her ex-husband and maintain a relationship with her children. I really liked these books. The preview for the fourth book made it seem like perhaps there was going to be a child turned into a vampire and I decided I didn't need to read Interview with a Vampire again.
That's all I can think of right now. I have a list of books I want my husband to get me at the library this week, so I will write about those soon. Any recommendations to add to my list of books to read?
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - So this is the original in dystopian fiction, I guess. I rather liked it despite the fact that the copy I read smelled like cigarette smoke and fascinated the kitten so much I had to read it in secret in rooms far away from little kitty teeth.
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay - This book is a departure from what I normally read. It's a historical romance/mystery/academic novel filled with unlikeable characters and charming settings. I enjoyed it despite the fact that every person in the novel was kind of a jerk.
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness - 600 pages so you can come to absolutely no fucking conclusion?! Fuck you, Deborah Harkness. If I had known this tome was the beginning of what I can only imagine is a series of eight million books, I would not have invested my time in it. I really enjoyed the first third, but then I realized that there was NO WAY she could clear up all the plot points she'd started and then I felt used. Yes, it's a good book if you like your books to have no ending and a thousand plot points left to be answered. (Additionally, vampire/non-vampire relationships can never end well. Can we all agree to this? And stop writing about it? Buffy and Angel have way covered this ground.)
The Spellman Files and The Spellmans Strike Again by Lisa Lutz - An incredibly lighthearted series about the Spellman family's private detective agency. Each book was amusing and made me chuckle. There are more books in the series, but my library doesn't have them, unfortunately, so I'm debating whether or not to spend some of my "get well soon" amazon gift cards to buy them on my Kindle. Not sure. But they are a nice, fluffy read.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender - Oh, hell no. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME no matter what the Internetz (especially Elizabeth) tells you to do. This book is NONSENSE. It has a great premise and that's where it falls apart. (Also, this is where I tell you that magical realism is not my forte.) Dumb, dumb, dumb book. WASTE OF TIME. I want my hours back, Ms Bender.
The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus Book 2) by Rick Riordan - I'm sick of Percy Jackson. There, I said it. Percy is NO HARRY POTTER. I read the Percy Jackson series and I was totally pumped when the first book of this series introduced new characters. I even wrote that I loved the first book of the series (The Lost Hero). I guess it didn't occur to me (SPOILER ALERT) that the lost hero was indeed Percy Jackson and our boy Percy was going to make a comeback. I am so done with him, though, that I rolled my eyes through this book. No more Percy. Which brings me to...
The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles Book 1) by Rick Riordan - I just couldn't give up on Riordan, though. The first few books of the Percy Jackson series had such promise. But this series? It's just like Percy Jackson with Egyptian gods instead of Greek. It has equally annoying protagonists and I resented every minute I read this book. I think I'm done with Riordan although I really feel badly about that. But do read the first few books in the Percy series before he kills you with repetition!!
Somebody Everyone Listens To by Suzanne Supplee - zzzzzzzzzzz
New York to Dallas (in Death) by J. D. Robb - I just keep reading these Robb books because I want the smartness of the earlier books, but I've been let down by the last few books. I appreciate that Robb tried to shake things up by switching settings and introducing new characters, but it just didn't work for me. I think there's so much she can do with her original characters - a book told from Peabody/McNab/Mira point of view, a book without Roarke (send him to Ireland or something), or something. This is not doing it for me, despite what looks like amazing reviews on amazon.
Moon Dance, Vampire Moon, American Vampire (Vampire for Hire #1, #2, and #3) by J.R. Rain - A suburban mom becomes a vampire through no fault of her own and now she has to find a way to make a living without the support of her ex-husband and maintain a relationship with her children. I really liked these books. The preview for the fourth book made it seem like perhaps there was going to be a child turned into a vampire and I decided I didn't need to read Interview with a Vampire again.
That's all I can think of right now. I have a list of books I want my husband to get me at the library this week, so I will write about those soon. Any recommendations to add to my list of books to read?
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Post Surgery (Alternately, NGS Gives TMI to the Interwebz)
Here's the truth about what happens after surgery. My surgery was four hours long, done the day of the injury. I have three plates and countless screws replacing bones in my lower left leg. That's all well and good, but here's the dirty truth no one ever tells you. I'm thinking of this as the equivalent of my birth story, although no one ever gives me enough details about their birth stories, either.
I remember going into the OR, having the anesthesiologist mock both Michiganders and the Detroit Lions (who were going to get their asses handed to them by the New Orleans Saints that night), having said jackass anesthesiologist put a mask over my mouth and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in my hospital room during the second quarter of SNF. After I ascertained that I was alive and my leg was still attached, I ask how the Lions were doing (badly).
Medication: While in the hospital, I had an IV with some pain medication. I rarely used it because I would forget to push the button. When the physical therapist came in the room, I immediately hit it, though, because she wanted me to GET UP AND MOVE. I didn't like her very much at the time, but I learned a lot through our appointments - how to get up, use the walker, and do very practical things like get in and out of the car.
For pain: I was on oxycontin while I was in the hospital and for a week when I got home. I took it twice a day at first and tapered down to just before bed for the last four days. For the first week and a half, I took 5 - 15 milligrams of oxycodone every four hours depending on pain. I rarely took 15, but did once in a while, especially at night. I am on oxycodone still, 5 milligrams before bed. I also took some before our car ride to the doctor yesterday, but I'm pretty sure I could have done without it. I can take Tylenol every six hours as needed.
Other meds: I take aspirin twice a day to prevent blood clots. Since I'm not super active at the moment, it's a risk. I'm also on birth control pills, which increases the risk. I really worry about blood clots, so I try to get up and about the apartment as much as I can tolerate. I take a calcium supplement with Vitamin D to increase bone growth because my doctor is terrified about how soft my bones are*. I took a laxative for about a week when I got home because a side effect of the oxy medications is constipation. I am still taking a stool softener because, um, it's hard to poop. I have never in my life been constipated before and it sucks, maybe worse than the pain from my foot. Seriously. I took an anti-nausea drug while I was in the hospital and I still take it occasionally when the constipation thing is bad. I am glad I tolerate the pain medication as I am quite comfortable most of the time, but I have never been in so much intestinal discomfort as I have been in the last three weeks.
Bathroom: My dear husband put in a new detachable showerhead with a hose before I got home. He also purchased a TRANSFER BENCH. If there is one piece of home health care that I had never heard of before this incident that I will never tire of singing praises, it is this bench. It allows me to get in the shower without worrying about my foot or falling down. I am pretty well obsessed with it.
Getting there: It's a pain in the ass. I use a walker because when I tried to use crutches in the hospital, even the physical therapist was puzzled by my lack of coordination. Crutches = me falling again, so I use the walker, even though it's slow as hell. I spend most of my time on our recliner with pillows stacked up under my foot, so it's an agonizing process of moving the pillows, putting the recliner down, getting the walker ready, and then getting to the restroom. It can take ten minutes. As soon as I stand up, all the blood rushes down to the injury site, causing swelling and pain almost immediately. I dislike the process intensely.
Using: My husband taped a styrofoam cooler shut and I use this cooler to prop up my foot while I'm doing my business. Because of the constipation issues from the pain medications, I am sometimes in there for a while. Until very recently, I required my husband to help me do everything from sitting down to positioning the cooler to getting up again. I can now officially say that I can use the bathroom by myself now, but I found it all quite humiliating. Marriage vows say in sickness and in health, but they say nothing about using the restroom.
Bathing: It's exhausting. The transfer bench is awesomeness. The shower head is pretty awesome, too. I could have bathed myself from the day we got home if I wasn't so tired and scared of hurting myself. I still have Dr. BB stay in the bathroom with me, but he mostly just talks to me and fetches me things and makes sure our kitten doesn't jump in the bathtub with me (she likes running water, no matter how hot). I have yet to shave my legs, but I think I have enough endurance to be able to pull it off the next time I shower.
Activities: I had planned on reading, watching television, doing crosswords, writing cards and letters, and being cerebral and smart! But, see, the words floated in front of my eyes. I couldn't concentrate on 30 minute television shows without losing focus and having to ask for clarification on a plot line during an episode of How I Met Your Mother. It's only been the last few days as I've taken less and less of the pain medication that I can stay awake longer than about two and a half hours. I can finally read, but watching tv or movies is difficult. The pain medication does weird things to you, people.
Sleeping: I sleep a lot, but that's not terribly unusual if I'm completely truthful. I slept in the recliner for the first two or three nights I was home, but then I moved to the bedroom. I switched sides of the bed with my husband so my bad leg would be on the outside of the bed (so I wouldn't whack him with my cast in the middle of the night) and we propped up my foot with about eight hundred pillows. My husband was worried I would kick the pillows off and drop my foot to the floor, so he rigged up our coffee table next to the bed with blankets and pillows so my leg would fall onto that. I have never had to use the coffee table back up, but it comforts Dr. BB so he sets it up every night. Secretly, it comforts me, too. I have trouble sleeping, not because of the pain, but because I have extremely vivid nightmares. I think those are side effects of the pain medication and I hope they'll go away when I stop taking it (hopefully by the end of this week or next). I have yet to kick the boy while sleeping.
Pillows: While I was in the hospital, Dr. BB pretty much stayed with me from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. This meant that he didn't have any time to buy pillows. We only had the pillows on our couch and the two pillows on our bed at our house and that wasn't going to be enough. I was surprised when I went out to the car and found the backseat filled with brand new pillows, not entirely sure when the boy had the time to buy them. He later confessed that he had gone to Walmart and purchased the pillows at midnight the night before, breaking our decade long ban on all things Walmart, damn it all. These pillows are kind of crappy, I will admit, but do the job. We have seven of these Walmart pillows and I've only ever wished for more a few times.
Pain: The most pain was in the xray room before surgery. Since then, I've been relatively comfortable in terms of pain. But I am uncomfortable most of the time. Yesterday my cast was replaced with a heavy, hot, pain in the ass boot. I am constipated a great deal of the time. I hate bothering my husband for food, so I am somewhat hungry a lot (although I'm starting to get better about just catching him when he's already in the kitchen to bring me food!). And, probably the worst thing is that the rest of my body does not need to be immobile, so all of my joints and muscles are craving movement I just can't give it. I spend a lot of time trying to get the rest of my body comfortable.
Eating: I was too nauseated to eat anything while I was in the hospital. I would dutifully fill out a meal request sheet each day only to be horrified when it was delivered? Why would I circle chicken broth? What the fuck was I thinking? (Story from the hospital: My dear husband had gone to get a salad for himself for dinner. When he started eating, I made him leave my room because it smelled too bad. Salad. Dude, I was in a bad way.) Two weeks to the date from the accident, I ate my first "real" meal. But, and here's where things are sad, I still don't have any cravings for anything sweet. Our cupboards are filled with Christmas cookies, fudge, and other goodies people keep sending and I don't want any of it! But, salt? Bring it on. My friend visited and brought us some Doritos, which we would NEVER buy ourselves and I've been chowing on those.
Things that I regularly eat: popsicles, hard boiled eggs, pudding, bagel with butter, peanut butter, or cream cheese, yogurt with granola, tortilla chips, crackers, prunes, bananas, various types of other fruit, prunes/craisins/other dried fruit and sherbet.
Things my husband purchased thinking I would for sure want to eat, but can't even fathom eating: ice cream, M&Ms, and Cheezits. Someday I will eat them, I hope.
I don't know why I'm writing this. Mostly just so if someone googles "what happens to me after surgery" I can reassure them that I, too, needed help getting to the bathroom.
*Me too. We will be discussing some weird genetic things at my follow up appointment in a month.
I remember going into the OR, having the anesthesiologist mock both Michiganders and the Detroit Lions (who were going to get their asses handed to them by the New Orleans Saints that night), having said jackass anesthesiologist put a mask over my mouth and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in my hospital room during the second quarter of SNF. After I ascertained that I was alive and my leg was still attached, I ask how the Lions were doing (badly).
Medication: While in the hospital, I had an IV with some pain medication. I rarely used it because I would forget to push the button. When the physical therapist came in the room, I immediately hit it, though, because she wanted me to GET UP AND MOVE. I didn't like her very much at the time, but I learned a lot through our appointments - how to get up, use the walker, and do very practical things like get in and out of the car.
For pain: I was on oxycontin while I was in the hospital and for a week when I got home. I took it twice a day at first and tapered down to just before bed for the last four days. For the first week and a half, I took 5 - 15 milligrams of oxycodone every four hours depending on pain. I rarely took 15, but did once in a while, especially at night. I am on oxycodone still, 5 milligrams before bed. I also took some before our car ride to the doctor yesterday, but I'm pretty sure I could have done without it. I can take Tylenol every six hours as needed.
Other meds: I take aspirin twice a day to prevent blood clots. Since I'm not super active at the moment, it's a risk. I'm also on birth control pills, which increases the risk. I really worry about blood clots, so I try to get up and about the apartment as much as I can tolerate. I take a calcium supplement with Vitamin D to increase bone growth because my doctor is terrified about how soft my bones are*. I took a laxative for about a week when I got home because a side effect of the oxy medications is constipation. I am still taking a stool softener because, um, it's hard to poop. I have never in my life been constipated before and it sucks, maybe worse than the pain from my foot. Seriously. I took an anti-nausea drug while I was in the hospital and I still take it occasionally when the constipation thing is bad. I am glad I tolerate the pain medication as I am quite comfortable most of the time, but I have never been in so much intestinal discomfort as I have been in the last three weeks.
Bathroom: My dear husband put in a new detachable showerhead with a hose before I got home. He also purchased a TRANSFER BENCH. If there is one piece of home health care that I had never heard of before this incident that I will never tire of singing praises, it is this bench. It allows me to get in the shower without worrying about my foot or falling down. I am pretty well obsessed with it.
Getting there: It's a pain in the ass. I use a walker because when I tried to use crutches in the hospital, even the physical therapist was puzzled by my lack of coordination. Crutches = me falling again, so I use the walker, even though it's slow as hell. I spend most of my time on our recliner with pillows stacked up under my foot, so it's an agonizing process of moving the pillows, putting the recliner down, getting the walker ready, and then getting to the restroom. It can take ten minutes. As soon as I stand up, all the blood rushes down to the injury site, causing swelling and pain almost immediately. I dislike the process intensely.
Using: My husband taped a styrofoam cooler shut and I use this cooler to prop up my foot while I'm doing my business. Because of the constipation issues from the pain medications, I am sometimes in there for a while. Until very recently, I required my husband to help me do everything from sitting down to positioning the cooler to getting up again. I can now officially say that I can use the bathroom by myself now, but I found it all quite humiliating. Marriage vows say in sickness and in health, but they say nothing about using the restroom.
Bathing: It's exhausting. The transfer bench is awesomeness. The shower head is pretty awesome, too. I could have bathed myself from the day we got home if I wasn't so tired and scared of hurting myself. I still have Dr. BB stay in the bathroom with me, but he mostly just talks to me and fetches me things and makes sure our kitten doesn't jump in the bathtub with me (she likes running water, no matter how hot). I have yet to shave my legs, but I think I have enough endurance to be able to pull it off the next time I shower.
Activities: I had planned on reading, watching television, doing crosswords, writing cards and letters, and being cerebral and smart! But, see, the words floated in front of my eyes. I couldn't concentrate on 30 minute television shows without losing focus and having to ask for clarification on a plot line during an episode of How I Met Your Mother. It's only been the last few days as I've taken less and less of the pain medication that I can stay awake longer than about two and a half hours. I can finally read, but watching tv or movies is difficult. The pain medication does weird things to you, people.
Sleeping: I sleep a lot, but that's not terribly unusual if I'm completely truthful. I slept in the recliner for the first two or three nights I was home, but then I moved to the bedroom. I switched sides of the bed with my husband so my bad leg would be on the outside of the bed (so I wouldn't whack him with my cast in the middle of the night) and we propped up my foot with about eight hundred pillows. My husband was worried I would kick the pillows off and drop my foot to the floor, so he rigged up our coffee table next to the bed with blankets and pillows so my leg would fall onto that. I have never had to use the coffee table back up, but it comforts Dr. BB so he sets it up every night. Secretly, it comforts me, too. I have trouble sleeping, not because of the pain, but because I have extremely vivid nightmares. I think those are side effects of the pain medication and I hope they'll go away when I stop taking it (hopefully by the end of this week or next). I have yet to kick the boy while sleeping.
Pillows: While I was in the hospital, Dr. BB pretty much stayed with me from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. This meant that he didn't have any time to buy pillows. We only had the pillows on our couch and the two pillows on our bed at our house and that wasn't going to be enough. I was surprised when I went out to the car and found the backseat filled with brand new pillows, not entirely sure when the boy had the time to buy them. He later confessed that he had gone to Walmart and purchased the pillows at midnight the night before, breaking our decade long ban on all things Walmart, damn it all. These pillows are kind of crappy, I will admit, but do the job. We have seven of these Walmart pillows and I've only ever wished for more a few times.
Pain: The most pain was in the xray room before surgery. Since then, I've been relatively comfortable in terms of pain. But I am uncomfortable most of the time. Yesterday my cast was replaced with a heavy, hot, pain in the ass boot. I am constipated a great deal of the time. I hate bothering my husband for food, so I am somewhat hungry a lot (although I'm starting to get better about just catching him when he's already in the kitchen to bring me food!). And, probably the worst thing is that the rest of my body does not need to be immobile, so all of my joints and muscles are craving movement I just can't give it. I spend a lot of time trying to get the rest of my body comfortable.
Eating: I was too nauseated to eat anything while I was in the hospital. I would dutifully fill out a meal request sheet each day only to be horrified when it was delivered? Why would I circle chicken broth? What the fuck was I thinking? (Story from the hospital: My dear husband had gone to get a salad for himself for dinner. When he started eating, I made him leave my room because it smelled too bad. Salad. Dude, I was in a bad way.) Two weeks to the date from the accident, I ate my first "real" meal. But, and here's where things are sad, I still don't have any cravings for anything sweet. Our cupboards are filled with Christmas cookies, fudge, and other goodies people keep sending and I don't want any of it! But, salt? Bring it on. My friend visited and brought us some Doritos, which we would NEVER buy ourselves and I've been chowing on those.
Things that I regularly eat: popsicles, hard boiled eggs, pudding, bagel with butter, peanut butter, or cream cheese, yogurt with granola, tortilla chips, crackers, prunes, bananas, various types of other fruit, prunes/craisins/other dried fruit and sherbet.
Things my husband purchased thinking I would for sure want to eat, but can't even fathom eating: ice cream, M&Ms, and Cheezits. Someday I will eat them, I hope.
I don't know why I'm writing this. Mostly just so if someone googles "what happens to me after surgery" I can reassure them that I, too, needed help getting to the bathroom.
*Me too. We will be discussing some weird genetic things at my follow up appointment in a month.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Woman in the Mirror
Each time I see her, I recoil in shock. Her hair is greasy, uncombed, and tinged with so much grey, I turn around to be sure a smoker is not ashing on her. Her face is pale, so pale that she knows that when she tries to use foundation, even the lightest shade is going to be too dark. Her eyes appear larger and larger each time I pass, as if to encroach upon her face so she is eventually just lank hair and dark eyes peering out of spectacles.
She is always hunched forward over a walker. This posture, combined with the grey hair, makes her appear so much older than she really is. Today there were tears as she angrily tried to stand up straighter, only to lose her balance and almost reinjure herself. She struggles for independence every day, telling her ever patient husband, no, I can do it by myself almost as often as her two year old nephew says that same thing to his mother. The independence is hard won, but he still won't leave her alone for longer than an hour.
***********
Today my doctor made fun of himself as he talked about how I had to embrace the injury, to accept it - work around it. My life is a stream and there's a big boulder in the stream bed, he said, and I can either stop flowing or I can go around that boulder.
I have embraced my injury. I examined the HUGE incisions and watched as they pulled out stitch after stitch after stitch today. I will do the exercises and hopefully regain full range of motion.
But I have a harder time with the accident itself. It was a stupid slip and fall accident, but when I close my eyes at night, I see it over and over and over and over and over again. Falling, crawling, begging, alone, scared, and helpless. I stay awake for hours, knowing that when I close my eyes, every nightmare will be me at a low point in my life when I felt most powerless. I wake up sobbing, clutching my leg, unable to articulate to that ever patient man what is wrong with me.
When the paperwork first came that said all of this was going to be covered by workman's compensation (which: weird, but thank your own mystical deity), we pored over it and laughed about the part that said it would cover any mental health counseling needed. What on earth would I need that for? a slightly moronic me laughed.
***********
She gets stronger every day. She can use the walker to get down the hallway and back now without being winded. She can stay awake for longer than three hours at a stretch. She can go to the bathroom without help. She can read without the words swimming in her vision (finally).
She will get through this. Because the woman in the mirror is stronger than she looks right now.
She is always hunched forward over a walker. This posture, combined with the grey hair, makes her appear so much older than she really is. Today there were tears as she angrily tried to stand up straighter, only to lose her balance and almost reinjure herself. She struggles for independence every day, telling her ever patient husband, no, I can do it by myself almost as often as her two year old nephew says that same thing to his mother. The independence is hard won, but he still won't leave her alone for longer than an hour.
***********
Today my doctor made fun of himself as he talked about how I had to embrace the injury, to accept it - work around it. My life is a stream and there's a big boulder in the stream bed, he said, and I can either stop flowing or I can go around that boulder.
I have embraced my injury. I examined the HUGE incisions and watched as they pulled out stitch after stitch after stitch today. I will do the exercises and hopefully regain full range of motion.
But I have a harder time with the accident itself. It was a stupid slip and fall accident, but when I close my eyes at night, I see it over and over and over and over and over again. Falling, crawling, begging, alone, scared, and helpless. I stay awake for hours, knowing that when I close my eyes, every nightmare will be me at a low point in my life when I felt most powerless. I wake up sobbing, clutching my leg, unable to articulate to that ever patient man what is wrong with me.
When the paperwork first came that said all of this was going to be covered by workman's compensation (which: weird, but thank your own mystical deity), we pored over it and laughed about the part that said it would cover any mental health counseling needed. What on earth would I need that for? a slightly moronic me laughed.
***********
She gets stronger every day. She can use the walker to get down the hallway and back now without being winded. She can stay awake for longer than three hours at a stretch. She can go to the bathroom without help. She can read without the words swimming in her vision (finally).
She will get through this. Because the woman in the mirror is stronger than she looks right now.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Life Happens
You wake up one morning, captivated by the lovely snow. You think to yourself, hey, this is why people live here. The trees are beautifully flocked with snow and it's just a delightful world. You hum Jingle Bell Rock as you clear off your car, slowly drive to work, enjoying the sports radio talk about how your team is going to play on Sunday night football for the first time since you moved to Minnesota, and everything is going your way.
Until you get to your job, step out of your car, and fall on the black ice, breaking your ankle, and say a word so foul that you are embarrassed about it even as you type these words.
The most traumatic part of the entire incident is how I had TO CRAWL from my where I fell across what seemed to be a mile-long driveway, up seven stairs, to pound on the door of a family who had no idea that their Sunday morning was going to be so incredibly screwed up by their son's math tutor clutching her leg in agony.
I will be fine. Some day. The surgery went well. There will be no weight bearing on my leg for (gulp) six to eight weeks, but some day I will be able to once again go to the bathroom by myself, take a shower by myself, and do more than squirt water from across the room at the naughty kitty when she is incredibly naughty.
I have done no Christmas shopping and have no idea how it's going to get done. I have sent out no Christmas cards and I have no idea how that's going to get done. But I feel like I had to post here, to let you know that I'm still here, I'm still alive, and I'm going to be fine.
One week down. Five to seven more to go.
Until you get to your job, step out of your car, and fall on the black ice, breaking your ankle, and say a word so foul that you are embarrassed about it even as you type these words.
The most traumatic part of the entire incident is how I had TO CRAWL from my where I fell across what seemed to be a mile-long driveway, up seven stairs, to pound on the door of a family who had no idea that their Sunday morning was going to be so incredibly screwed up by their son's math tutor clutching her leg in agony.
I will be fine. Some day. The surgery went well. There will be no weight bearing on my leg for (gulp) six to eight weeks, but some day I will be able to once again go to the bathroom by myself, take a shower by myself, and do more than squirt water from across the room at the naughty kitty when she is incredibly naughty.
I have done no Christmas shopping and have no idea how it's going to get done. I have sent out no Christmas cards and I have no idea how that's going to get done. But I feel like I had to post here, to let you know that I'm still here, I'm still alive, and I'm going to be fine.
One week down. Five to seven more to go.
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