Restrictions

[Warning: this post is just grumbling, not even any pictures.]

I had some surgery a couple of weeks ago. Actually, two weeks ago to the minute, now that I think about it. It wasn't major surgery, but it wasn't exactly minor although I don't know how you classify that sort of thing. I spent one night in the hospital, and several days on the couch without moving much at all. Now I feel almost normal, except that I tire easily.

But apparently inside me things are not yet mended. I keep visualizing the surgery as the sort of mending I do on clothes -- stabilize the edges, sew on a patch, cut out the weak bits, tidy it up, and put it back in the drawer. I gather that this, instead, is more like building an artificial reef: the doctor put in the framework, but my body must do the coral's work, building a strong and solid repair layer by tissue-thin layer. My conscious self's job is to not interrupt that process.

So no lifting. For the past two weeks, I've been unable to lift more than 10 pounds. Today I graduate to no more than 30 pounds, but the sudden change seems odd to me and I'm going to try to go a little more gradually. No exercise -- including no yoga, no tai chi, no Wii bowling. For the past two weeks I haven't been able to drive, but that's over with just in time for the start of Charlotte's preschool (and for a threatened ice storm).

In practical terms, this means I have to plan ahead and have my husband strategically place the heavy things I will need during the day -- laundry hampers, my sewing machine, the enormous box of white-clothes-for-dyeing that just might hold the garments George needs to make his clone trooper costume.

But it also means that when George suddenly wants to try needlepoint, I can't move the 20 boxes of yarn that are in front of the one labeled Needlepoint. It means I can't overdye the screaming blue Ayany yarn, because I can't lift dyepots. And -- worst of all, I think -- I'm pretty sure "no exercise" means another four weeks before I can spin with a wheel, which of course is now what I want to do Most of All.

Hence this whine. But at least I am comforted by the thought that all bets will be off at the end of February. I'm going to try to use this time to imagine what it would be like if this were a permanent situation, say due to a heart condition -- and then use those imaginings to fuel both my own attempts at better fitness, and a little more sympathy for the apparently unimpaired folks using handicapped parking spaces.

In the meantime, I guess it's back to the Beech Leaf vest.