My stress level is reduced by a factor of ten, at least. They let me come home, even though I still have a drain in my abdomen. There wasn't much more they could offer me in the hospital that I couldn't manage for myself at home, and for a lot of this, my conditions here are better. I'm relaxing easier. I keep falling asleep, and feeling like I'm sleeping deeply, even for twenty minute catnaps. I just woke up to find I'd blinked out halfway through this very paragraph, and after a snack of applesauce delivered by my handsome husband, and the next two pain pills I get to consume in about 70 minutes, I plan on powering myself down for the night to finish that good sleep. No blood pressure cuffs, no bed alarms, no IV tubes in my way. Heaven.
It takes Rabbit a whole day to forgive me when I go away on vacation. This is the longest I've ever been hospitalized, so she acted like I just left her and went to play in Colorado for the first few hours I was home. Eventually she curled up next to me and purred against my knee, to let me know she cares. The other black and white units aren't nearly so tough to recapture. Alfred has kept steady pressure on my ankles, proving correct everything I said to the nurses. Those compression socks were comforting to me (when they weren't binding me to the bed in a moment of crisis) simply because they reminded me of Alfred. Doesn't everyone feel better with the sensation of a seventeen pound soft kitty on their legs? The dogs didn't know I was home until dinner time. The man let them in, and after I gave them a minute to dance around like fools downstairs, I quietly said, "aren't you going to go see who else is here?" The two who are able to climb stairs took off like a shot to find me. I think Bump is most pleased to see me, even more than Athena, because now he gets to stand guard at my feet around the clock, just as he has for the last seven or eight years. He takes his role as my deputy very seriously. There was a visit from a therapy dog on Friday, but she was nothing compared to my loyal sidekick.
I know that I had a horrid birthday last fall, but I swear to you, that in no way did I use that to find pleasure or a sense of justice that today was the man's birthday, and it was basically a crappy day for him too. From the first moment I woke early in the hospital, to now, as he is trying to finish up his tasks and go get much-needed sleep, I have wished him happy birthday. I wanted to give him a special meal, or at least a treat like that gluten-free angel food cake I learned was easy to make. The best I had was to stop making him drive an hour each way, twice a day, to see me lie in a bed with tubes going in me. That, and no matter how many times I told the hospital and kitchen staff that I was gluten free, it never appeared on my chart, so when my lunch arrived with a peach cobbler, the lunchlady and i conspired to tell him we brought him birthday cake. He didn't buy it, but he ate it and smiled just a little.
It's going to take days, or even weeks, to work through all the swelling in my abdomen. I wore my loosest sweatpants to the hospital, so I would ostensibly have something come to wear home that didn't bind me around the incision sites. That didn't work as planned. I am shaped like the Fruit of the Loom Apple right now. So much water around my middle, and hourly trips to the bathroom are only now beiginning to help. I can see definition in my hands again, rather than the chubby paws I came home with. I have been rinsed clean from the inside out. Now I feel like a whole new woman. Not a springy, spritely girl, mind you, but there have been some changes. I think they will end up being worth it.
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