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AuthorKaren Over Archives
June 2023
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About a year ago my gall bladder decided to retire and stopped playing nice. I remember it well because it was Super Bowl Sunday, and we sat in the ER waiting room as a security guard kept checking his watch and finally changed the TV from a curling competition - which was interesting - to the big pre-game show. Which was not interesting. We commented on the objection of the year - why, when gifted with all the musical talent of New Orleans, the NFL didn't choose a single local artist to perform, not even for the national anthem. We might have gotten as far along as the coin toss when I was taken into a treatment room. Getting a shot of morphine was a relief, but so was escaping the monumental stupidity of the great head-bashing contest. (I would apologize to my friends from Texas, for whom American football is a sort of religion, but humans once thought they had to rip the beating hearts out of other humans to make the seasons change, so, um, no.) This turned out to be the first of three surgeries I would have between February and July. Betwixt and between were all sorts of tests - needle biopsies, MRIs, CAT scans with radioactive contrast medium to light up the particular sort of unhappiness trying to take root in my lungs and my thyroid. The year was pretty much a wash out. I was either having surgery, recovering from surgery, or waiting to have another surgery. My job doesn't offer any paid time off, so both my savings and my tax refund were wiped out. Fortunately I bounced back pretty quickly and was able to go back on light duty sooner rather than later. Except the bounce was more like a groundhog coming out at Imbolc and seeing its shadow. Most attempts at getting back to "normal" resulted in fatigue, with days off spent sleeping. Next thing I knew it was winter again, with the madness that season brings to my muggle job. But I got through that relatively unscathed, which is probably what prompted me to get back to ballet class. Next thing I knew I was down with a nasty three day flu. Back to spending my time off sleeping - or doing what passes for sleeping at my age - setting a streaming channel to something I'm not too interested in, rolling over and going into hibernation mode. Just enough going on in the background to keep my squirrel brain occupied so the rest of me can rest. And gain weight. When I was finally through the last surgery, I was right where I wanted to be. But the weeks of enforced rest followed by light work were followed by a startling realization that I had lost pretty much all of my strength. I would have to start over again from scratch. Not something my warp speed brain was very happy with. As the weather improves, and hopefully my stamina along with it, my goal is to once again engage in battle at the barre. Battle with the bulge, battle with a stubborn spinal problem, and most of all, battle with my own inertia. But that's part of the beauty of the battle - the body, once in motion, tends to stay in motion. We'll see what happens.
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AuthorKaren Over Archives
June 2023
Categories |