Six Days

So.  Six days at home after completing surgery.

Today I was able to take off the surgical dressing and view my eight-inch scar.  I don’t want any of you to faint, so I won’t post a picture, but it looks was if I sat down on last week’s centipede attacker and it was somehow fused with my hip.  Disturbing.  Maybe it will look better after the staples come out.

I am learning the limitations of my training.  At the hospital they ran me through occupational therapy and such, teaching me how to get out of bed and step into a walker and clank around the room, and it was all pretty easy.  Of course all the hospital furniture was the right height from the ground, the bed’s height was adjustable, and there was plenty of floor space between objects.

None of that applies in a real home.  None of my furniture is at an ideal height, there are narrow passages, and stuff is always getting knocked off tables and such.  I have had to improvise a new way to launch myself into the walker from every chair in the house, because they’re all different.

And, y’know, there’s pain.  Usually it builds over the course of the day, until by evening my entire right leg hurts.  Oddly enough the hip hurts the least— the quads, knee, and shin produce the most pain, and also my skin becomes incredibly sensitive.  If I’m wearing a sock, that sock becomes very painful.  The narcotics don’t exactly stop the pain, but they make it easier to ignore.  Still, a couple nights, I was in too much pain to lie still, and I couldn’t sleep.  So there’s that.

But on the other hand I’m progressing from day to day, and getting around is slowly becoming easier, and I’m feeling well enough to be bored with staying at home all the time.  So I have to conclude that before long I’ll be strolling along with my usual suave elegance, and doing the things that television assures us that cyborgs can do, like leap obstacles, listen to the dark web with my mind, and round up gangs of spies.

But in the meantime I’m stuck with the walker, and measured progress toward my goal.  One clank at a time.