Recovery

It will take several months.

But when I first got home, the doctor's orders were: "Three squares a day, 8 hours a night, and lay down three times a day for an hour each." Outside of the naps, sounded like my life. I was not to lift over 5 lbs., and no yoga.

I was on the same pain pill as in the hospital--something heavy with a high street value; I forget now which one. But it kept the headaches manageable, just not me. I was a noodle. Brian stayed home with me the first week and a half before having to go back to work (we LOVE being self-employed). He would keep reminding me about the 5 lbs. rule...that's hard. It's just a sack of flour.

I was no good at the nap part. At best, I would lay down once a day for an hour. I was no good at judging 5 lbs. either.

But I read a great book, for those of us who grew up in the 70’s! Ordered the large print edition, just in case my eyesight was not very good after surgery. Carol Burnett has a new memoir all about the show called, This Time Together. If you are a Carol Burnett fan, I recommend it! It’s a very fast read and didn’t last the whole recovery, but fun! In fact, my friend's mom (who has known me for 38 years) came for a visit with a present…that book. The hilarious thing is, I had just put my name in my copy to share with her! So there we sat trying to give each other the same book and confessed to having read it already!

And so it went. The naps faded away after a couple weeks. And the pain medicine was a disaster. I won’t share so much of the indelicacies. Suffice to say, it wrecks your digestive system entirely! Remember how Elvis (who was addicted to pain meds) died? My advice: stay away from them...let Advil take care of it...YUCK!

One interesting thing happened around three weeks. My glasses no longer helped my eyesight. Evidently the sight had improved and the glasses were made when the tumor was big. So no match any more. But I have to wait for several more months before getting new glasses…if I still need them!

I went back to work – FINALLY – after about 4 weeks. And was cleared for driving, mild exercise and slowly getting back to the things that life affords. I tried yoga with an instant headache as the result. I’ll be a good patient and wait until the end of July, as ordered.

Sarah