A Day at Home

I was awake when Liz got home from Pleasure with Payne, the fundraiser for Columbus Dance Theatre. I heard some of her stories. She was talking to her mother, Sharon, in the dining room. I was still lying on the couch, but I had recently taken another Percocet. The show did go on, but Catherine Payne had some troubles. She misremembered the way she had practiced some of the songs, and played variations on them, even getting the wrong song once. That made it a challenge for the dancers, who had to adapt. It may have been the influence of the pain Ms. Payne was in. I hear she skipped her pain meds, in an attempt to keep her head clear. She may also have been suffering from a concussion. I'm guessing there may be some follow-up to that accident.

I don't think Liz came to talk to me. She thought I was asleep, and I was trying to be. I did sleep on the couch, but I had to get up every couple of hours, all through the night, to pee. I had a lot of extra fluid on me. I weighed myself soon after I got home. Despite having no food Tuesday, a couple of sips of broth on Wednesday, and a frozen lemonade on Thursday, before eating most of the hospital meals Friday, I had gained five pounds since leaving for the hospital Tuesday morning.

I noted that I did not have a bowel movement Saturday. My last one was Friday, early morning. The med I had been given to help my gut move had been stopped after Thursday morning, but I was still on the pain meds. Between not eating, and taking narcotics, it seemed I had slowed my gut mobility. Or stopped it. I ate Friday and Saturday. Saturday, I even had solid food. But eh servings were small.

I was awake between 2 and 3 am, so I took my next Percocet as scheduled. I noticed that walking to the bathroom when it was near time for the next pill hurt more than right after the med. I tried to challenge myself to hold out on the pain medicine, see if I could stand to be without it for a while. I made it 10 minutes. Yeah, I'm a wimp. I hate pain.

So the first day home, I sat on the couch and read, I ate when meals were brought, I slept after every pill, and I walked to the bathroom a lot more often than seemed reasonable. It wasn't much different from being in the hospital, except it was completely different, and I was ecstatically happy to be home. But at that point, it was hard to visualize full recovery. The most ambitious thing I did was walk past the bathroom, all the way to the bedroom, just to take a look at it. That took its toll. What if I never got better than that, and had to walk with a pillow pressed against my tummy for the rest of my life? That would make it hard to gesture during lectures.