The Morbid and the Sublime

I had a terrible time sleeping last night. I woke up at 2:00 AM and didn’t have a prayer of falling back to asleep and it was too late to take a sleeping pill and still get up at 7:30. I hate nights like that! My brain wouldn’t turn off. It drifted from one topic to another but mostly I obsessed about my upcoming surgery. Is it really a necessity? Could it have waited until spring? Will the pain and time involved to rehab my shoulder afterward be worth it all in the end? The cortisone shot the doctor put in the joint makes it hard to remember how miserable I was last summer---all the sleepless nights because every time I’d roll over on my side I’d get a shooting pain, the trips to the chiropractor that only gave me relief for a week or so, and the shooting pain I’d get every time I’d push myself up from a chair. I felt like I was 105 years old before the orthopedist gave me the cortisone with a prednisone pack for a chaser. I wish you could live on that stuff, but you can’t without deteriorating your bones and the doctor says labrum tears can't get better on their own.

My youngest niece’s daughter-in-law is having the same labrum tear surgery on the same day as mine, at the same place and my niece is bringing her in. The DIL will be coming out of surgery as I am going in. My other niece will be with me and I’m glad the two sisters will be able to keep each other company for at least a few hours in the waiting area. I hear this surgical center has the best waiting area in town with La-Z-Boy chairs and even a movie theater. I’ll never know. My days of taking people to surgical centers is over now that Don and my dad are gone. Now, I’m on the receiving end and that is a bittersweet place to be. Sweet because someone is willing to do that for me but bitter because I need the help. As we age, aren’t we all afraid of situations like this where we can’t be self-sufficient? I suppose people with children worry less about these things than those of us without.

My ducks are all in a row. I’ve tried to anticipate everything I’ll need over the winter that is up high or down the basement and I brought them to where I’ll be able to get at them. I’ve bought birdseed for the entire winter. Driveway salt and dog food, too, so I won't have to wrest large bags one-handed. My kitchen counter is cluttered with appliances that are usually stored when not in use---toaster, blender, coffee maker and crock pot. I've practiced putting my bra on one-hand. And I've ordered three pair of elastic, no tie shoelaces. The outside work is done. I’ll even have daffodils in the spring. About the only thing I won't be able to with my arm in a sling is get safely on my exercise bike. That and the snow shoveling issue is not resolved. I'll work on that next week, but I've got my little electric snow blower working as a plan B.

Like I said, my ducks were all lined up. Then I got a call from the surgical center asking me to bring a copy of my Living Will with me the day of surgery. Damn it, I don’t plan on dying on an out patient surgery table! Why did they have to bring me down! And what the heck did the medical community do with the three copies they’ve gotten in the past? Supposedly, all the doctors and hospitals in town can share patient information via computers these days. But I played their game and scanned all eight pages of the document, trying not to read the details of my worst case scenario should things go terribly wrong.

Just so you know, I'm not giving away my body or any of its parts after I’m dead. At my age, my body would probably end up laying out in a field for weeks on end so CSI students could study the different types of bugs that crawl all over rotting flesh in different time frames. Bugs help date the death of crime victims. You do know places like that exist, don’t you? They’re call Body Farms. Nope. All medical donations don't end up leading to a cure for some dreaded disease or give would-be surgeons practice time. And that old dog you had as a kid didn't ended up on a farm where he could chase butterflies in the fields either. So this paragraph is the ‘morbid’ in the title of this post...and the sublime? That would be the love of both of my nieces who were both willing to babysit me on surgery day and considering how far away they live this is no small gift of time offered and deeply appreciated.

See you all on the other side of my 'little' event. ©