Recovery on the fly – good drugs to get you by.
Before I begin this blog, dear readers, I must, (absolutely must!) address the question that thousands of you have asked me, (OK, maybe not thousands, but definitely a few!) since reading my last blog, Flutter like a Butterfly, Sting like a B
The Question: (for those of you who didn’t write in, BUT, would dearly love to know):
Did the home visits from N.A. (Nurse Angelo) ever materialize?
Fabio
The answer, my friends, (and much to my dismay) is NO! (And) RATS! And…Fudge-a-Fuddle-Duddle!
The gorgeously inimitable N.A. has not shown up for any in-home visits. (For the record, I left my high-tech GPS for N.A. at the nurse’s station so that he could easily find the rural ranch that I live on…but alas, no-thermometer-wielding nurse has come-a-callin.) But then, we all suffer these little moments of disappointment in our lives, n’est pas?
Now…where were we?
Oh Yes! The Art of Recovery:
Day One: I’m out of bed and onto a wheel-less walker, doing my rendition of the Three Stooges’ vaudeville bit (for those of you young enough to remember)
Ssssshhhhh…low…..ly I turn…step by step….inch by inch.
Day Two: Up and at my hospital window drinking (I wish!) in the panoramic view of Toronto’s C N Tower.
Day Three: Drivin’ up the highway with Nurse Jackie, (N.J.), headed for home-sweet-home, happy to be doing so, but disconcerted about the hours of in-bed-rest that lies ahead.
However, I had a list for that! Because I refused to be bowed, shocked, or spun by all the negative swirl around the boo-ga-boo-ga massive pain hype of knee replacement recovery, I’d compiled, (pre-surgery) a ‘Buoy Me Up’ list of activities I could accomplish whilst in bed.
Top of the list- (usually at the bottom, the veeeery bottom, mes amies), was the adding up of my tax receipts.
Y. A. W. N.!
But how interesting for a bed-ridden peep.
Not!
(To be honest, the last list of ‘bed goals’ I’d made had N. O. T. H. I. N. G. to do with the mathematics of tax receipts. Although…. come to think of it…. multiplication might have been a factor… (Ahem)
But I digress…..
My list also included tasks such as tackling hundreds of print images stored in drawers and drawers all over the house. (Yes thirty-somethings, Ma and Pa Kettle used to actually PRINT the pictures they took of family and friends!)
There were various other sedentary activities on the list-that-I-never-actually-read once I came home from the hospital, but I am sure, if I ever go back and read it, I will enjoy an outsized belly-laugh-and-a-half.
So what is life-after-the-dreaded-knee-surgery-like?
Well, I am happy to report that I’ve been Rockin d Rehab (which is considerably different than Rockin d Casbah)
Although….
There is ALWAYS a though, or a but, n’est pas?
It seems that, on a frosty Friday night, a couple of weeks into my recovery, I was perched on a pillow that was perched on a chair, eating a dinner of fish and chips, (what a good Catholic girl I yam!) when the Raptors game came on, with Leonard, and Lowry, J.V. and VanVleet, rolling and pumping onto the court. I am, shall we say, the BIGGEST of RAPTORS FANS; I’ve been Downtown, I’ve been hooped, I’ve been looped, well… you get the idea….
LET’S GO RAPTORS! LET’S GO!
In my haste to watch the game from whence I sat, I leaned over a little too enthusiastically on the pillow, that was perched on my chair, as my buddy Jack (Anderson) called the first play. Reminiscent of the Three Stooges, SL…OW….LY….. I slid, inch by inch, first fell the perched pillow, then fell the perched Moi. It was, dear readers, a Fuddle-Duddle-full-out Britney Spears jingle….
OOPS I did it again
A dunk, A thunk, and…. some definite dribbling
It is a testimony to my long-standing clumsiness that neither the in-laws nor the assorted friends at the dinner table jumped up or freaked out with ennui.
Husband: So, like, how are you gonna get up, Cece? How are we gonna do this?
Friend to Brother-in-law, (B.I.L) who previously had knee replacement:
Can you kneel on a new knee?
B.I.L.: No, man. That’s next to impossible. The knee parts move and shift about.
Me: Hellooooo! Don’t worry about me. Just talk amongst yourselves until I figure this out.
Like Humpty Dumpty rolling Rub-A-Dub-Dub, I leaned on my right arm to take the pressure off my left elbow, (which I broke six months ago….don’t ask!), rolled onto my left (porcelain replacement), hip, turtled over to my chair, and Voila! I was up!
“What’s the score?” I asked triumphantly to all and assembled.
“8 out of 10,” my B.I.L. said. “And, the Raptors are winning too!”
Game time decision for the next Raptors game? I needed to either calm down OR, pitch the perched pillow.
C’mon, Dear Readers, we all know exactly which choice any fan-loving b-ball enthusiast would absolutely make!
LET’S GO RAPTORS! LET’S GO!!!