![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Not the worst, but far from the best.
Nov. 2nd, 2013 08:10 amOn Thursday, I spent a good chunk of the day in the kitchen, preparing tasty food for the Samhain feast. Apple tart, chicken stew, peameal-encrusted pork roast, boiled new potatoes. Freaking delicious! I've missed cooking.
Problem is, it seems like I'm going to end up missing it a whole lot more. By the end of the day, I was in a lot of pain. Partly my feet, for having been on them for hours, but mostly my midsection, around the incision and the scars inside me. I figured I'd just worn myself out and that I'd feel better the next day.
Yesterday, I felt just as bad. I took one of the super-naproxen (500 mg, that I was prescribed last time I went to urgent care for the pain) before I left for work. Before my lunch break, I had to take another. The two together took the edge off, but didn't kill the pain completely, and it left me feeling stoned for about 2 hours. I pushed through the shift because I was too afraid to tell anyone that I needed to go home. My mobility was shot. Walking hurt. Sitting down hurt. Standing up hurt. I moved as slowly as I could, which meant that going to the bathroom and back to my desk took roughly 5 minutes when I had to walk 200 feet, at most.
I have an appointment with my doctor this coming Monday, to discuss pain management and what I can do about this.
I know I need to lose weight. That would help. But it's fucking hard to lose weight when just cooking a meal from scratch leaves me in massive pain the next day; how the fuck am I supposed to get exercise without removing my ability to do things like, oh, I don't know, go to work?
There has to be an option.
But what scares me the most about this is that Rachel and I sat down last night and had a frank talk about what we can do if I'm not able to work because of the pain levels. Not at the moment, obviously, but once she's through school and has a job in a lab (which she's just about guaranteed, and there's the possibility we'll need to move to another province, but that just makes me excited), and I know she's said that once that happens she'll be making enough money for both of us to live on without me needing to work, but there's a difference between that and not being able to work.
And this is the first time in my life I'm really faced that as something I may need to consider. Something that puts paid to all my plans and makes me consider what else I'd do. I want to go to university and get a degree and teach in Japan. That's been my dream for years, and thanks to the job that Rachel's likely to get, that dream might actually be feasible for me. To go to school and learn awesome things and teach in a country I've wanted to be a part of for so long.
But now, what if I can't? What if this is pain that's not going to leave me alone any time soon, and it keeps limiting what I'm capable of doing? Is it worth it to push through to achieve a dream, or is it better to scale back my plans and do something that I'm better able to do while accommodating the fact that my body doesn't like to do what I tell it to do?
It's not like I don't have options. Writing, if I get lucky enough to make something of that. Book reviews will still keep me wonderfully busy. I've thought many times about making spare money by selling handmade items online. If I don't need to work for a living, then I have plenty of options that won't leave me feeling like I'm useless, and may actually get me somewhere else that I'd enjoy being. But it's still scary to think that if things continue as they are, I might be a lot more limited in what I do with my life than I originally gave thought to.
I'm probably jumping the gun with even thinking seriously about this. Chances are that if my doctor can help me manage the pain without relying on dopey painkillers all the time, I can keep going through daily life just fine. And I'm sure there are options that I haven't considered or that he can help me with. (I've thought that having access to a swimming pool would help me lose weight without going through as much pain as I have been, and while the local pool is pricey, there may be options if I need to go for physical therapy or something.) So I won't be too grim just yet.
But it's a possibility I might have to face, I guess, so maybe thinking about the logistics of it now will prevent some of the frustration and shock later.
I don't hurt as much today, which is good, but I also haven't moved around much yet. Let's see how I feel after walking to work this morning, and make my judgment then. I hope I can do it without hurting myself.
...More reasons to be angry at Dr. S, though. If she'd just taken out my uterus in the first place, instead of hanging onto the hope of me making babies (that I can pretty much no longer make), my uterus wouldn't be so damaged and there wouldn't be as much scar tissue inside me, and I likely wouldn't be in half this much pain, if I was in any at all.
Problem is, it seems like I'm going to end up missing it a whole lot more. By the end of the day, I was in a lot of pain. Partly my feet, for having been on them for hours, but mostly my midsection, around the incision and the scars inside me. I figured I'd just worn myself out and that I'd feel better the next day.
Yesterday, I felt just as bad. I took one of the super-naproxen (500 mg, that I was prescribed last time I went to urgent care for the pain) before I left for work. Before my lunch break, I had to take another. The two together took the edge off, but didn't kill the pain completely, and it left me feeling stoned for about 2 hours. I pushed through the shift because I was too afraid to tell anyone that I needed to go home. My mobility was shot. Walking hurt. Sitting down hurt. Standing up hurt. I moved as slowly as I could, which meant that going to the bathroom and back to my desk took roughly 5 minutes when I had to walk 200 feet, at most.
I have an appointment with my doctor this coming Monday, to discuss pain management and what I can do about this.
I know I need to lose weight. That would help. But it's fucking hard to lose weight when just cooking a meal from scratch leaves me in massive pain the next day; how the fuck am I supposed to get exercise without removing my ability to do things like, oh, I don't know, go to work?
There has to be an option.
But what scares me the most about this is that Rachel and I sat down last night and had a frank talk about what we can do if I'm not able to work because of the pain levels. Not at the moment, obviously, but once she's through school and has a job in a lab (which she's just about guaranteed, and there's the possibility we'll need to move to another province, but that just makes me excited), and I know she's said that once that happens she'll be making enough money for both of us to live on without me needing to work, but there's a difference between that and not being able to work.
And this is the first time in my life I'm really faced that as something I may need to consider. Something that puts paid to all my plans and makes me consider what else I'd do. I want to go to university and get a degree and teach in Japan. That's been my dream for years, and thanks to the job that Rachel's likely to get, that dream might actually be feasible for me. To go to school and learn awesome things and teach in a country I've wanted to be a part of for so long.
But now, what if I can't? What if this is pain that's not going to leave me alone any time soon, and it keeps limiting what I'm capable of doing? Is it worth it to push through to achieve a dream, or is it better to scale back my plans and do something that I'm better able to do while accommodating the fact that my body doesn't like to do what I tell it to do?
It's not like I don't have options. Writing, if I get lucky enough to make something of that. Book reviews will still keep me wonderfully busy. I've thought many times about making spare money by selling handmade items online. If I don't need to work for a living, then I have plenty of options that won't leave me feeling like I'm useless, and may actually get me somewhere else that I'd enjoy being. But it's still scary to think that if things continue as they are, I might be a lot more limited in what I do with my life than I originally gave thought to.
I'm probably jumping the gun with even thinking seriously about this. Chances are that if my doctor can help me manage the pain without relying on dopey painkillers all the time, I can keep going through daily life just fine. And I'm sure there are options that I haven't considered or that he can help me with. (I've thought that having access to a swimming pool would help me lose weight without going through as much pain as I have been, and while the local pool is pricey, there may be options if I need to go for physical therapy or something.) So I won't be too grim just yet.
But it's a possibility I might have to face, I guess, so maybe thinking about the logistics of it now will prevent some of the frustration and shock later.
I don't hurt as much today, which is good, but I also haven't moved around much yet. Let's see how I feel after walking to work this morning, and make my judgment then. I hope I can do it without hurting myself.
...More reasons to be angry at Dr. S, though. If she'd just taken out my uterus in the first place, instead of hanging onto the hope of me making babies (that I can pretty much no longer make), my uterus wouldn't be so damaged and there wouldn't be as much scar tissue inside me, and I likely wouldn't be in half this much pain, if I was in any at all.