paltry, sage, rose merry & time: Back to those handy bullet points

I normally sleep on my belly, and the physical therapist that visited me in the hospital told me that position was the worst possible position for your neck. She said that I must not sleep on my belly, and I explained that even if I go to sleep on my side or my back, I always end up on my belly. Can't teach an old dog new tricks and all that. So then she said I had to wear my collar to bed. That would be very uncomfortable. I suggested that I simply sleep on our sofa, because that's the only place I sleep where I never end up rolling onto my belly. So... ever since the surgery, I've been sleeping on my back. That was fine with the hospital bed that I could raise and lower to comfort level. But I have to admit, I'm getting a little tired of sleeping on my back on the sofa. This afternoon, I was once again reading through the 6 pages of instructions from the PT, and I discovered that I can sleep on my side! You have no idea how happy that made me to read that.

You know how once you run out of milk, all you want is a glass of nice, cold wonderful milk? And you know how once you are told you can't sleep on your belly, all you want to do is lay down on your bed on your belly? *sigh*

When I cleaned out my rolltop desk the other day, one thing I found is this little, orange Tupperware container. It's the one I took to have the nurse put my staples into it. I got this at a Tupperware party back in 1980 or 1981, and you could only get these at a party, if I remember correctly; you couldn't order them. When I found it in my desk, I was so happy. Look! I found you! And let's not discuss the part about how I totally forgot your existence. I used to have an olive green one, too... I wonder what happened to it... And, please remember, this was the very early 80's, and I was around 20 years old, and times, well times were very different back then. For example, we thought it was really cool to keep a couple of joints and a clip in a handy little Tupperware container like this one. Tupperware... it can store everything for you! Oh, Tupperware was big back then, none of those Ziploc or Glad storage containers around back then. Tupperware was it, baby! Later, in the mid to late 80's, I used this orange container for holding hair bands. Back then I had really long hair, & I liked to drive with the windows down in my car... but if I didn't pull my hair back into a ponytail, it was agony to brush all the snarls out. I was constantly losing hair bands, so I would buy a pack and stuff them into my neat Tupperware container and store them in my purse. Always at the ready.

Sandy sent me a wonderful gift basket from L.L. Bean, and it arrived early Monday morning. It's the beautiful birch basket pictured below, and it was filled with blueberry pancake mix, lemon & blueberry muffin mix, maple syrup and blueberry preserves, along with a sweet blue kitchen towel that reads L.L. Bean on it. And it came with Sandy's impeccable timing. Her note said she wished she could be here and make me breakfast in bed and take care of me. I had had a rough night, so the beautiful note and lovely gift made me bawl like a baby. In a good way. Then Kev made some of the pancakes for breakfast, and they were super delicious.

I'm using my new birch basket to store all my meds and paperwork. I love looking at it.

Kathy drove me over to Saginaw yesterday for my appointment, and she took very good care of me. I was totally in the mood to be coddled and babied, and I felt better holding onto her arm while walking through the snowy parking lot. On the way home, we swung through Pizza Hut and picked up 3 of those $5 pizzas, which I had ordered so that Joycie & Sammy would have something to eat after the basketball game. On the way out of the Hut, Kathy carried everything and gave me her keys to open the trunk of her car and the car doors. While she put the pizzas in the trunk, I got settled into the passenger seat. I noticed an old skeleton key on her key ring. When she got into the car I asked her about it. She said that on one of Bob's (her husband) annual sailing & scuba diving trips with his friend, Mike, Bob visited an antique store and found this key. He bought it for Kathy, and he gave it to her when he returned from that trip, telling her she had the key to his heart.

On another one of my brother-in-law Bob's sailing & scuba trips, he and his friend, Mike, visited a small, uninhabited island. They hiked around on the island, and on the top of a hill, someone had built a large structure from stones on the island. Whoever did it pieced stones together perfectly, creating a square platform. I can't remember if Bob said the stones had been shaped to fit together, or if whoever built it just used the stones available. Bob stood on it and sat on it, high up on that little island. I think Bob has a photo of it, I'll have to ask him... I remember thinking that it must have taken a very long time to build that large square platform, and it must have been very hard work hauling all those stones to that spot. Who would do that and why?... I would like to know that story.

Before Kev left for work this afternoon, he put a new bandage on my incision, taping it up really well... he used lots of paper tape on it. Barb, the surgical RN, after removing the staples, brushed some brown glue on each side of the incision and placed 4 or 5 pieces of tape across... butterfly stitches that will remain there for one week. OMG, it is itching there like crazy and it's driving me nuts. Kev taped it so well that I can't really get to it. Which was, of course, his plan. I remember back in 1982 when I had surgery on both of my ankles and both were encased in those old, heavy plaster casts from my toes to just below my knees... for twelve weeks... yes, 12 long weeks... and oh, how itchy it was under those casts. Of course, you're not supposed to stick anything down the casts, but of course, I did. I tried a variety of things. The best was one where I took a wire hanger and bent it like a long U so that there was no rough wire edge going into the casts, and I would use that to itch up and down inside my casts for hours and hours. I couldn't do much else, because they weren't walking casts. And it felt sooooo good. But this neck incision is different and there is no hanger equivalent to satisfy the itch.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008