The End of Recovery

It seems crazy that I go back to work on Wednesday, that nearly six weeks have come and gone. It feels like both forever and a short slice of time, and I'm honestly ready to go back and finish out the school year. Family in the Midwest were confused, because they're almost done if not done, but we go until June 26th (although last day with kids is June 19th). So I have almost a month left, but really just 19 school days when I show up Wednesday. Which is NUTS.

Since my last recovery post, I've been able to do more, which is lovely. Only in the past few days have I been able to feel like I'm truly back to regular activity, although I still get real tired.

As of Three Weeks, I was largely couchbound, and halfway to going back. I had my second post-op followup with the surgeon on Friday 5/10, and he cleared me for regular activity, within reason. "Don't go doing everything all at once," he cautioned. So what did I do? I went to see Avengers: Endgame with a friend, went to dinner, went to Home Depot, went back to cooking and being more up and around, went grocery shopping for my mom's Mother's Day brunch... and by Sunday afternoon I thought I was going to DIE. I honestly felt like my incision was opening up and my intestines were going to come spilling out at any moment. It hurt SO BAD. I felt better on Monday after spending Sunday evening on the couch, moaning, and Monday on the couch as well, limiting my stairs and my movement.

I panicked. I can't go back to school soon if this is how I feel after normal activity ran through my head over and over, until I called the surgeon's office and left a message on the nurse's line and then used the mychart portal to send an email, hoping for a response sooner. They said no. I'd asked for my back-to-work letter on the 10th, and even though I hadn't submitted it yet they were like, "If you need to change your date you need to see the doctor, so we'll set up an appointment for Monday (5/20) and see what happens." I was honestly annoyed, because I was only asking for two more days of not working (this year we have a miraculous four-day weekend for Memorial Day, so if I went back on Tuesday 5/28 I would be gaining nearly a whole week for two days of work). But, the RN said that it's normal to feel like crap after returning to normal activity, and I still had a week and a half to suss it out, so let's see, shall we?

So I slow rolled it a bit, and worked my way up to more activity throughout the week. By the end of the week, I could do a little gardening, I could go for a 3 mile walk, and I didn't have any of that "I've been gutted" feeling. A little sore, yes... in need of naps, yes... but feeling like death? No. So I cancelled the appointment and wrote a message in mychart that they were right, I just needed to keep building up my stamina.

It will be nice, because I go back Wednesday, I have that day and Thursday, and then I have a nice long weekend to gear up for a four day week, and then there's only two full weeks and a three day week left after that, with students. I can do this.

My big accomplishments have been planting up the deck railing planters and pots (with the help of a friend who did all the heavy lifting for me on Wednesday), planting my small corner garden out by the street (the first 5 plants were done by my mom, I felt well enough Saturday to brave the shovel  and get 5 more plants in the ground...), taking a long walk, and starting to get back into school work.

Oh, and reading -- although getting back to normal activity definitely took time out of my schedule and so my numbers slowed down, which is okay. I also watched a few movies and am enjoying Dead to Me on Netflix, although I was surprised my friend who recommended it didn't mention the pregnancy loss aspect of it, which I'm going to take as a compliment, but was initially jarring nonetheless.

To recap, here's the list from the beginning, bringing me up to 18 books so far (I'm just starting my 19th, I fear my weird overly ambitious goal of 20 won't come to pass):

Week One
- Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett
- You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein
- Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy
- The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

Week Two
- Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
- The Country Diary of An Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden
- The Power by Naomi Alderman

Week Three 
- Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patti Yumi Cottrell
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- Maeve in American: Essays by a Girl from Somewhere Else by Maeve Higgins
- A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Wild Gatherings: Quirky Collective Nouns of the Animal Kingdom by Matt Sewell
- Man-eaters Vol 1 by Chelsea Cain +

Week Four
- The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Week Five
- The Secret Place by Tana French
- The Unwinding of the Miracle by Julie Yip-Williams
- Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Week Six (so far)
- The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang

I loved all five of these, not a stinker in the bunch.

The Hazel Wood was definitely a favorite, I'd had it for a while but it finally called to me, and I read it in almost a single sitting. It was upper YA fantasy, but not other-world-space-or-dragons type fantasy,
more of a meshing of worlds, I suppose. I can't really say much without ruining things, but it was very well done and it didn't make me want to throw it, not once. I thought the characters were fascinating, and it wasn't predictable. LOVED it.

The Secret Place has been on my to-read shelf for about a year, and while it wasn't a particularly fast read and the beginning sort of dragged for me, by the third-to-halfway-point I was utterly captivated and couldn't put it down. It was fascinating, taking place largely at a girl's boarding school in Ireland, where a murder of a boy from the neighboring boy's school happened last year, but now someone has put a card on this anonymous message board meant to give girls an outlet and give the adults insight into problems, a card that says "I know who killed Chris." So the present day parts take place over one day of interrogation at the school, and the past parts go back to the beginning of the school year until the day the murder happened. It made me eternally grateful not to be a teenager now, it was fascinating for some procedural stuff about interviewing minors, and it had several layers that kept me guessing.

I could (and will) write a whole blog post on The Unwinding of the Miracle. It was not a light and beachy read, as Julie was a real person who wrote about living with and dying of Stage IV colon cancer, but it's not just a "I have cancer" book. It's the story of her life as a visually-impaired culturally-Chinese immigrant from Vietnam, it's the story of how she wanted to portray her coming to grips with her illness and preparing for her death as brutally raw and honest, it's a philosophical journey into what it means to know you're going to die young (she was in her early forties) and how to try to plan for your family after you're gone... it was just beautiful. And a lot of what she said about how people treated her could be transferred over to infertility, although obviously not apples to apples because typically you don't die from infertility. I would put this book up there with Nina Rigg's The Bright Hour (another young woman writing about the process of living with and dying of cancer, but in her case Triple Negative metastatic breast cancer), which I also loved and recommend highly. I was glad I read this one on my Kindle, because I highlighted the ever-living crap out of it.

Bird Box was a curiosity project, because I watched the Netflix movie when my dad was here and then learned that it was a book first (I thought it was adapted to a book from the movie, which sometimes happens but not in this case), and wanted to read and see which one I liked better. I absolutely HATE that the cover has that printed "Netflix movie" sticker marring what is otherwise a lovely cover image, but it was that or an actual movie cover, so lesser of two evils it was. It was structurally very much like the movie, going back and forth between Malorie's trip down the river with the children and flashbacks to how she got to that point in the first place. The movie was DEFINITELY Hollywood-ized, and some of the more ridiculous scenes from the movie did not quite happen that way in the book, but I see why they did it. The movie was also updated, as you could tell technology had progressed quickly since the book was written. Amazing how quickly things become dated now! The book was taut, and the prose was spare, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I thoroughly enjoyed it and consumed it like candy.

I seemed to go back and forth from fun to heavy, and The Collected Schizophrenias was definitely not like consuming candy. It was, however, well-written and a fascinating window into what it is like to live with schizoaffective disorder, to be diagnosed later after an initial bipolar diagnosis, and to learn just how stigmatizing having anything resembling "schizophrenic" in your chart can be. The collection of essays covered everything from the diagnosis process, to higher education's difficulty accommodating for the severely mentally ill, to various delusions, to decisions regarding children, to Slender Man, to the trouble with reality when you get immersed into certain movies. It was beautiful, and interesting, and gave a lot of food for thought about treatment options for the severely mentally ill, the effectiveness (or not) of involuntary hospitalization, medication, and how to live your best life when you know you will have psychotic episodes that are terrifying. A solidly absorbing read that's also super informative.

So there it is, only two days left before I dive right into the sweaty time of year, the crazy end-of-the-year days of middle school. I am already looking forward to going to bed at about 8:30 on Wednesday night, anticipating the exhaustion but also the excitement of seeing my kids again, of getting back into a routine before the expanse of summer hits and I have free time again but without the inability to physically do all the things.