Okay, look. This was actually important, I swear. I needed to completely tear apart my room and start moving stuff around. I needed to do it now. I'm running out of time, really. Did I need to do it all day today while I was home alone and the Mr was on his mountain, so that I couldn't move the heavy furniture? Yes. I had to start, anyway.
I have been feeling awful for more than a year. More awful than just the usual lupus fatigue. I had written about it occasionally, and I'd proposed theories as to what was happening. I was missing the obvious for a very long time. While this was brewing in my breast, I was increasingly unable to work, either in real estate or around the house. I stayed home a lot, but I didn't keep up with housework at all. The only rooms I'd clean on a regular basis were the kitchen, the upstairs bathroom, and the dining room table where we played D&D. In the last few months, I'd slowed down on vacuuming the living room and keeping up with my bedroom.
The bedroom was particularly problematic. Things had really piled up around the periphery: papers, craft projects, receipts, books, and boxes that hadn't been unpacked for years yet ended up in the bedroom when we had emptied the craft room for the foreign exchange student to live there... It's entirely possible that some of my increased insomnia wasn't cancer related at all, but just a result of the emotionally draining nonsense of having a cluttered bedroom.
There are several compelling reasons for attacking this right now. First, if I end up having surgery sooner than I am anticipating, then I will not be able to ask family to handle this while I'm in the hospital. That will be too late. Second, my bed is super high off the ground. The frame it sits upon is something we built when we first bought the mattress in Charleston, and we actually had to cut it down because we felt like we were on stage, it was so tall. If I'm either having surgery or chemo, I need not to climb in and out with my arms. I'm going to disassemble the wooden frame and set it flat on the floor, so that the box spring is just two inches off the floor. And on that theme, I'm also going to swap which side I sleep on. I'm usually rolling out on the left side. That's the side where the cancer is. I need to be able to just drop my legs to the right and stand without using my arms. I'm going to swing the bed over to the other window, so that I will have a more direct line to the bathroom from there.
When we first moved into this house, we had the bed on the north window, leaving an enormous open space on the south side of the room. I don't remember why I found it so disconcerting, but I insisted on moving it to the east side fairly early on. Now that open area would be of benefit. I'm going to borrow a recliner for a few weeks, so that if I do have surgery and can't sleep in a bed at first, I have a place to put it that isn't in a living room. If I only need it for a day or two, I can leave it in my room so that I can have visitors, like if my mom gets to come help out for a while. And, not for nothing, if this happens at lightning speed, then I'm going to want company in my room to watch the final episodes of Game of Thrones. Gotta put people somewhere.
The final consideration at the top of the list is cleanliness. Even if I avoid surgery, I'll still probably go through chemo. I will need a much cleaner environment to avoid getting sicker. My room was covered in a thick layer of dust and cat fur. I started dusting at the ceiling and worked my way down. I threw the curtains I made into the washer and prayed. They came out in good shape, but even the dryer couldn't remove all the Athena hair off of them. It took me hours to iron them, going over each section with a lint roller before and after the iron. I had to take several breaks to rest my back.
I worked all day, from mid-morning until late night. The picture I took was about 10:15, as I was trying to figure out how to clear off the bed so I can sleep. I have to start back up again as soon as I have a cup of coffee in hand tomorrow morning. Maybe the people who promised to help me move the actual bed will be available by the time I'm ready for them.
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