Ups and Downs

Ups and downs, ups and downs, there’s been a fair passel of ‘em over the last 24 hours.

I hit the recliner*-sack early (for me) last night but couldn’t quite drift off; the left leg was twitchy. Finally I gave in and took half an Ativan (my fallback prescription for restless leg on the rare occasions nothing else will work) and decided, what the heck, let’s try the bed again. So up the stairs I hitched, got settled, and drifted off to a good four hours of deep sleep. Who’dathunkit, huh? When I woke for the inevitable bathroom run around 5:00 a.m. I decided to finish the night in the recliner. So down the stairs I hobbled, got settled – and discovered that, after hours of unaccustomed stretching out of the leg, the hip was now achy. Sigh…. Up to the drug stash; one 5 mg oxycodone down the hatch; back into the recliner, and down into Morpheus’s welcoming arms….

At 8:00 a.m. the rumbling of the basement garage door opening sent the cats clumped asleep on me fleeing wildly and I woke up in time to greet the friend delivering groceries. We chatted, she departed, and I decided to feed the frightened felines, most of whom emerged from their hiding places by the time I’d finished dishing out the morning meal. I carried Sally’s up to her second-floor realm, eyed the abandoned bed across the hall, and decided what the heck, I’m up here anyway, so heaved myself back in and dozed off.

The arrival an hour later of the woman who’s cleaning the catboxes for me woke me up and I stumped back downstairs for breakfast and some reading for pleasure, then proofread a job. That done, I assembled a batch of paperwork and lurched up to the second-floor office and its computers to take care of various banking, bill-paying and bookkeeping that needed doing. Given how uncomfortable the office chair is for me, even padded with a pillow, I’d been dreading the duty, but it had to be done.

Well, at least Sally was happy about the hour I spent in there; I sure wasn’t. I had to get up and stand or crutch-walk about now and then to get through what all had to be completed, but completed it was at last and I could lumber back downstairs, suck down another oxycodone, fix myself a much-belated lunch, and collapse into the living room recliner, icepack at hip, rest and repast restoring me to comfort and good humor.

It’s a damned good thing I set up the mini-office downstairs before the operation; there’s no way I could do extended work in the upstairs office, not for almost a month before the operation, in fact; not now; and not, I suspect, for some time to come.

So it’s been a time of ups and downs, stairwise, physically, and emotionally as I contemplate what I can accomplish now on one crutch (got the plants watered, even upstairs where I have to fill the can at the bathtub faucet, an awkward process even with two good legs), what the accomplishment takes out of me, how far I’ve come and how far I still have to go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*I may have been unclear in previous missives: I have two recliners at present. The sleeper is on loan from a friend and lives in the front room downstairs; my own recliner, less comfortable for sleeping but just fine for lolling about, lives in my living room, flanked by side tables for laptop and printer/scanner and facing the television.