So why am I doing all this "past-tripping", as I like to call it (or don't like to call it)? It just seems "old" of me to look back so often, and I try not to. But I came across this cache of author photos (taken by a professional photographer for my first novel), and wondered who on earth that could be. I look like a baby. My hair is completely different. Barely any lines or wrinkles anywhere. I think I was about 48 years old, which DOES seem like a baby to me now.
As usual when a lifetime dream comes true, there were thrills, and there were also some pretty wretched disappointments. And in 2005, it all hit the fan again and I was back in the hospital with a bipolar attack, the worst one of my life. I had been so sure all that was behind me - even doctors assured me I'd never go through that again. And now that I was a published author, SURELY that sort of thing would never happen to me again! Would it?
So am I humbled, or what? Right now I'm grateful to more or less have my body back, after the harrowing misadventure of my gut surgery. I'm minus a good part of my colon now, and though my digestion is remarkably close to normal after three months, the rest of me is taking a while to catch up.
When you've been flat on your back for a couple of months, you lose all the muscle tone in your legs. Your knees won't hold you. I couldn't figure out why I kept wiping out on the stairs, or why when I tried to kneel or squat, I could not get back up again and flailed around, hurting myself. I couldn't even get off the commode sometimes. And let's not get into the gruesome bathroom accidents that went on for weeks and weeks. I hope I never have to wear Depends again.
But I have my legs under me now, and just in the past week or so I've been able to take up more of my normal routines. Just being able to get outside is an ecstatic experience, particularly now when the cherry blossoms are exploding into bloom everywhere. My recovery coincides with the coming of spring, the birds returning. When I was lying helpless and connected to tubes and monitors in the hospital, all I could think about was being able to go outside. I thought about the bird f'eeder equipment I had bought on Amazon last fall, and had never been able to assemble. It was all still sitting there in the original boxes. Since November 8, the date I landed in the ER with excruciating abdominal pain that everyone assumed was appendicitis, I was unable to do anything but lie in bed and go to medical appointments, tests, more tests.
On Christmas Day, when I had the family over for the first time in many months, I got a phone call from the hospital giving me an appointment date for a CT scan.This was scheduled for New Years Eve. That was about as festive as my holiday season got. But the worst was yet to come. The prep for the surgery was so debilitating that I was barely able to leave the house. So it has been more like FIVE months since all this hell began. Officially. But long before that, this "thing" that they had to remove was silently brewing inside me, making me feel lousy for no reason I could ascertain.
Just in the last few days, I have begun to feel like my actual, real self (though it has happened a couple of times before, then cruelly caved in on me). Just going out and taking a walk on a fine day is a treat. I just wanted my life back, just as it is, no more yearning for things that can't possibly happen anyway. Or that do happen, and somehow turn out to be full of heartbreak as well as joy.
And just a few days ago, I FINALLY opened those boxes from Amazon and set up my new bird feeding system.
So when I find myself past-tripping today, I do wonder why. The past was so mixed, and sometimes it was wretched. Didn't I realize how frantic my activities were, constant busyness that I did not even acknowledge? I never thought I was doing enough, and now I wonder how I ever kept up with it all. Now I wouldn't even want to try.
These meanderings are probably only meant for my eyes. A year ago Easter, my husband was also in the hospital with gut surgery that knocked him flat. We've both been tested. Now I just want to eat normally (took MONTHS for that to happen!), sleep normally (the same), breathe in and out. And not look back too much. Why do I have the sort of brain that remembers everything? That is the price of having an intact mind, at least for now. The spectre of dementia hangs over all older people. And surely that's infinitely worse than losing a big chunk of your guts.
