Post Surgery Week 4: The Doldrums

Wednesday, June 19

Time passes slowly while you’re flat on your back, waiting for the pain to pass so you can get back to the business of recovery.  I read a little, check the news for new Trump-isms, look at Facebook in the hopes that somebody posts something interesting, text with a few friends, and binge watch some Great British Baking.  My knee is elevated, and iced must of the time, and now I’ve added a heating pad to try to relax my IT band.  I’m learning to take great care before I move my leg, in an effort to minimize the number of stabs I have to withstand in a day.

Not much has changed since Monday.  The stabbing pains are less frequent (see above:  learning how to move to avoid them), but no less severe.  I’m loopy and shaky from the increased dosage of meds.  I had another PT session with Lindsey this morning, and it turned into just another massage session with a recommendation that I go see the doc, and that means I’m in another holding pattern waiting for them to call back to schedule the visit.  Lindsey didn’t allow me to put any activities back into my schedule, but she thought that maybe taping my knee would help stabilize it, so I’ve got that look going for me now, too.

The good news is that my IT Band pain has lessened, at least a little.  Who knows why:  it could be the PT massages, or it could be the increased pain meds, or it could be the heating pad, or it could be the CBD salve.  Whatever.  I’ll take it.  Not perfect yet, but “a little better” sure beats going backwards.

And the other good news:  I’ve had two of the best sleep nights since surgery.  Is this due to the CBD?  After all, our budtender (how funny to write that word!) said that even without psychoactive effects of THC, that the CBD would help have a calming effect.  If that’s actually the cause, I’ll take two containers of the stuff next time we go to the dispensary!  I’m already sorry that I won’t be able to travel out of state with the stuff.

In the meantime, I get my jollies by communing with the birds in our yard.  This summer we have a pair of House Wrens with a nest in our front ash tree.  The male sits outside the bird house (a hollowed out gourd that our friend Deb made for us) and perches on the same branch and sings his heart out.  I walk out there and stand in my stocking feet, wearing a fleece even when it’s in the 80s, carrying a cane, and talk to the birds.  “Do you have babies yet?” I ask, and he just sings some more.  Every once in a while the bird sitting on the nest will peek out of the gourd.  Blue Jays will loudly announce their arrival, and I’ll encourage them to help themselves to peanuts that we put on a tray for them.  I yell at the squirrels, and coo at the Mourning Doves.  I can only imagine that people walking down the street - and we get a lot of pedestrians, because of our closeness to DU plus the fact that there is a park at the end of our block - think I’m a crazy lady.  What the heck.  Life could be worse.