You guys... and mice

Just a quick note to thank you guys for your comments... besides the people I know by name, there's my loyal follower "Anonymous," and I don't know if there's one Anonymous or multiple Anonymi (I know that... oh, wow, I was going to say "I just made that up and I know it's not a word but I like it," but lo and behold, it's already on Urban Dictionary!), but I appreciate everyone's comments and support.

Going back to work has been okay... sort of!  Monday I went back, wore myself out, came home, had some, um, intestinal drawbacks, and woke up Tuesday with bleeding that I was pretty sure was normal, but I wasn't 100% sure so I stayed home and called the surgeon's office and got the nurse's confirmation that it was.  So today it was back to work again, and my abdomen is still not entirely thrilled with sitting upright so long... but reclining hurts my back.  Catch 22ish.

Waiting for a furnace repairman to come listen to the odd noises the furnace has been making since he repaired it in April.  Getting close to wit's end from the apparent infestation of mice in the house - maybe it's my imagination, but it feels like there are more this year than before.  Jerry and I tried to do the humane catch-and-release thing for years, but they always came back (I suppose if Jerry'd driven across the river and left them there, that might have done it), so then we resorted to a rat zapper, which worked, even though I hated doing it.  Now I'm using rat poison, and I hate that too, but I just don't know what else to do other than call an exterminator, which I assume would do the same thing.  Occasionally I find a poor little mouse corpse in the basement, but I think mostly they are expiring in the walls, and sometimes that means a really bad smell for a while.  Latest is somewhere in/near the bedroom, but I can't find it, and I certainly can't move the bed to look in the closet/crawlspace under the stairs - difficult at the best of times, impossible (and prohibited for me) right now post-surgery.  So I've been sleeping on the futon upstairs in Jerry's Buddha bedroom, which is what we called the bedroom he adorned with thangkas and Buddha statues and a framed parchment with Tibetan writing on it, even a long Tibetan trumpet.  Emotionally difficult, being in the room that was his retreat, but I suppose it should be no different than sleeping in our bedroom without him.

And of course, my first night up there, I got up to go to the bathroom at 3:30 a.m. and the flush on the toilet broke: the arm was so corroded that it disintegrated into about three pieces.  I need to go to a home store and get a replacement and cross every digit that installing it works (which seems unlikely - it's like a toilet repair just cannot possibly work on the first go, ever), but I haven't got the energy yet.  Maybe I'll do that tomorrow night: I have a very late therapy appointment, so I'll have to leave the house in the evening anyway.

Anyone wanna buy a house?  It's beautiful, really.  It's just... it's a house, and it's too much for me.  I need to be in an apartment, preferably with an on-call maintenance person.

ETA: $99 later, a strip of paper was removed from a wheel or a fan or something that spins, and the furnace won't make the weird noises anymore.  I hope.

Another ETA: I'm getting all but the good parts of Truly, Madly, Deeply in my life: bereaved translator with rodent infestation in her house that keeps needing all sorts of repairs done.  All I'm missing is Jerry's ghost coming back to comfort me and then push me onwards in life... and a Mark Damien de Grunwald.

Three weeks later

It's three weeks since my surgery, and I still find it hard to believe it's actually been done, and there are no longer a uterus, cervix, and huge fibroid inside me.  (When I saw the surgeon on Monday at my first followup appointment, he showed me a photo of what was removed - he also emailed it to me, but I'll spare y'all the fun of seeing it.  I'll just say that the fibroid mass was a lot bigger, and a lot more disgusting, than I even imagined.  But fascinating, in a sick kind of way.)

I'm scheduled to go back to work half-time starting Monday.  Financially it makes no sense, unless I can get disability for the hours I won't be working, and even then it doesn't - although financially this job doesn't make any sense at the best of times; logistically it makes no sense (more than 2 hours in traffic per day to work four hours per day?).  And I'm actually not sure I can hack it yet - I went out today to get some cheap yoga pants so I actually have pants I can fit into for work, along with the maternity belly band I got earlier to hold my other pants up when they're not zipped - anyway, just going to the local Old Navy and back was a bit rough on my abdomen, and wore me out.  So all that driving next week might be too much.  Still to be seen.  Still to be seen also is how long it will be before my swollen abdomen goes back down to its previous size (after that, I'll be interested in having it go down in size some more).

Tomorrow a haircut appointment will get me out of the house again.  Then the weekend, then work.  We'll see how it goes.

Definitely NOT Sane

Amount the hospital has charged my insurance for my 1 1/2 days there: $37,420.50.  That doesn't include doctors' fees, other institutions' fees... etc.

So many rants I could start in on.

Sane?

So how many widows get to 17 months after their husbands die and then just decide to think that their husbands will come back someday, I wonder?  I'm not sure if that's the best way to put it.  As usual, as ever, I know Jerry is dead and not coming back.  And I don't think he is coming back, I don't believe it, I don't hope for it... but somehow I look at photos of him and... yes, I know he's dead, I do know it.  But it's like I'm deciding consciously not to accept all of that right now.  I'm not even sure what I'm saying.  Just that somehow right now I feel like I'm rejecting the finality of Jerry's absence and am deciding I don't want to deal with it right now.  While also not for a second really thinking it's not real.

Yikes... sounds kind of insane.

Recovery is going well, I think.  I'm still spending most of every day watching TV and lying around, although I'm a bit more upright now than I was.  My lower back is not happy with all this lying around, and I'm actually thinking about how nice it'll be someday to start running again (let's not forget I've run twice since July, or was it once?).  My farthest ventures outside have been to the mailbox.  My first post-op appointment is a week from tomorrow, and it'll be interesting to see what the surgeon thinks of my progress.

Waiting to Sing

As long as I can remember, I've loved singing - yes, there's Sacred Harp, yes, I was in Russian choirs in college and grad school (briefly), but most of my singing is done along with recordings - I tend to sing along with anything I'm listening to (and when the lyrics are in a language I know nothing of, I hate to think what I'm saying).  And right now... I can't sing.  I forget occasionally ("Rolling in the Deep" just came on), and my abdomen reminds me right away that it's not time yet.  So a good measure of my recovery progress is going to be when I can sing again.

A week past surgery. Still sore, still mostly lying around. Don't know if my hormones are confused, although things I've read tell me even if you keep your ovaries, things get unsettled. But I've had some very intense crying jags, feeling Jerry's absence in a place more deep than before... if that makes any sense.  Even while it's happening I realize it's going to pass - but while it's happening, it also feels like emerging from my surgery was a huge mistake, that it all should have ended right there, so I wouldn't have to keep working so hard to continue on in this world without Jerry.  I know: sounds scary and melodramatic. It passes. I know it will pass. I'm not suicidal, never have been.

But it's hard.

Lying around a lot

I am now on Day 5 without fibroid and uterus, having undergone 4 1/2 hours of laparoscopic surgery via daVinci robot last Thursday.  So far I'm a huge fan of robotic surgery and of my surgeon - it's all gone so smoothly.  It's hard to get used to spending my time mostly lying around, and, as was pointed out to me recently, I have gotten so used to being the caregiver that being the person who needs caregiving makes me feel hugely... guilty. Anyway, more another time, when I'm not typing on my phone, but just wanted to let y'all know I'm doing well... and lying around a lot!