So, I continue to heal and have had no problems so far.  I’ve walked as much as threee quarters of a mile at a time.  And I’m intentionally walking just a bit slower than I could.  I’ve had no real problems with “food.”  (Tomorrow I get to start eating “soft” foods.  So far I’m on liquids — though pureed vegitable soup with no meat at all and very liquid cream of wheat and non fat yogart with no fruit bits do push the limits of liquid a bit.  I can have about a quarter of a cup of some combination of the above for each meal.)  I’m itching a bit.  But I’m not really hurting — though I do know I’m still wounded.  But so long as I exercise caution I seem to be fine.

In a way, I’m living in a bubble.  Anne is making most of my meals.  What I’m supposed to eat more or less magically appears when it’s time to eat.  So I’m not really cooking.  And I’m not trying to eat in public.  That’s going to be an adjustment.  I’m not sure how that’s going to work when I go to the Rotary dinner meeting — probably within a couple of weeks.  I find myself thinking about things I’d like to eat (not because I’m particularly hungry, but because eating good food has always been one of my life’s great pleasures) and then reminding myself that I’m probably not eating much of that in the future.  I drive by restaurants (well, Anne drives by, I’m along for the ride still) and start to imagine eating there.  And remind myself that I’m not likely to be eating out much for a while — and it’s going to be different when I do.  Or Anne makes sweet breads for our Mardi Gras luncheon, and I start to think it would be nice to have a bar of he bread.  Only that probably won’t be happening.

While I’m in the bubble, things are not really normalizing.  It’s not ordinary life.  When I get back to work, I’m going to have to work taking my vitamins and medications (much more challenging and time consuming than it used to be) part of my routines three times a day.  And I’m going to have to remember that things that were once automatic parts of how I lived have changed radically.

And some new things are funny.  One of my colleagues posted about their upcoming pancake supper.  And thinking to myself, I won’t be eating any of those any time soon, I commented, “what are pancakes?”  Which of course he didn’t get.  But it still seems funny to me.  And driving by In and Out Burger on a mini field trip, I commented to Anne that I guessed we wouldn’t be stopping for burgers.  To which she responded that she’d never hear the end of it if I died eating a hamburger.  Because her mom, when I was about two days home from the hospital, called to warn her that she’d heard some woman who had this surgery died before she left the hospital when she had her kids sneak her in a hamburger and she ate the whole thing.  (My mother in law gets caught up in all kinds of nuetricianal and medicinal stuff that she always seems to have a unique slant on.  She has savagely changed my father in law’s diet more than once.  And she always has a series of horror stories about how eating other than her way will turn out.)  Anyway, I told Anne it would almost be worth it!

Tomorrow, Anne has managed to secure me a doctor’s appointment — a week earlier than they would do for me.  I’m hoping to be cleared to drive.  And I’m hoping to be cleared to return to work next Monday.  Since I’m half time now, I can return somewhat slowly.  I’m thinking that’s where the rubber is going to begin to hit the road, and I really begin to figure out what the rest of my life is going to look like.  Meanwhile I’m taking a lot less diabetes medication (though showing no signs yet of being ready to go off all medications).  And after five days where my weight stubbornly remained five pounds over my weight the morning of my surgery, I have begun to lose weight (that shows up on the scale).

Meanwhile, I continue to get cards, prayers and good wishes.  And I am grateful for them.  And I feel good enough that I’m starting to feel like I don’t really need them anymore.  Though I know that I still have weeks to go before I’m healed and weeks to go before I’m beginning to eat my new “normal.”  So it’s a process.  And I’m in the middle of it still.  But the process is going well.