David carried me home today (as they say here in the South), and it’s good to be back under my own roof, but I have an entirely new set of problems with living that I didn’t have before this.  I’m glad I went through it, and I am assured that all went very well indeed, so well that on the first day, after surgery, my doctor was so impressed with my bold attitude (“so when can I have the other one done?” he reports me asking, right after I admonished him “now don’t screw up.”  Evidently, he enjoyed all this.  The only bad part is that it caused him to decide I didn’t need the morphine IV drip most patients get, and the other pain control measures, feeling that the epidural would carry me through after the spinal injection wore off.  It is an amazingly elegant protocol for surgery, keeping me very balanced throughout, but the aftermath–without drugs–is not to be recommended, and by that first evening, I was on the drip and feeling vastly reassured.  Things went well after that, and I am supposedly healing well, but a hospital is no place to do that, let me tell you.  It is like convalescing in the middle of a convention of some sort, with something going on everywhere around one.  One tends to get forgotten rather easily, especially when one is in some sort of predicament, i.e., waiting to be helped out of the bathroom, for instance.  As well, the body doesn’t quite seem to know how to do what it once did, and  rather like having a baby, one must re-teach such activities as sitting up and bowel movements.

I have suddenly retreated into the far North (my head) and my legs and feet have seceded to the deep south, another land entirely.  I do sincerely believe in the body’s ability to heal itself, but it is not always the kindest of healers, and it utilizes its needs to make one re-learn one’s own basic abilities.  Why just today, I find I can perform such daring feets as a pleasant stroll down the hallway with my walker, and my personal favorite:  straightening my knee entirely.

On the unit, one would hear occasional stories of a patient who had had both knees done at once, and that these were not nice people, evidently.  I can only imagine, but I think I will be in good shape for doing the other knee, after this one heals.

To all of you who sent flowers, made phone calls that I actually picked up amidst my morphine haze, and sent cards and the like, much gratitude.  The emotions are so sharp during times like this, and these gestures of love are so healing.  To my darling David, who made himself my loving support in all things and allowed himself to be snarled at and leaned on, often simultaneously, and still seems to love me, as I do him, well….this is just what love it all about, that’s all.  It just is…you know?