Sonntag, 14. Februar 2016

Our Convalescent Home

Two weeks before I  went into hospital, my downstairs neighbor broke both wrists simultaneously. Can you imagine? 4 days later, her upstairs neighbor broke his thumb - an inconvenience, to be sure, but not nearly as limiting as broken wrists. Then another neighbor did her ankle in. The younger tenants in our building were dropping like flies.

I was going in to hospital for gut stuff, so my first thoughts about the neighbor with the broken wrists was, "krikey! How do they go to the toilet?!" And instantly had new gratitude for my functioning wrists.
In the lead up to surgery, gratitude was everywhere; I'd bend and stretch and twist and turn and sit down hard, grateful for my functioning and (for my norm) pain-free body.

This morning, I noticed something that I have noticed many times before, but this time it made me cry. My husband was putting on clothes to go cross country skiing, he had a full belly after having eaten a large breakfast, and his only concern was if there would be traffic and how soft the snow might be. Seeing this and trying to imagine what that must be like just brought tears to my eyes.
Not even 2 weeks ago, I was cross country skiing, but I had to wake up two hours earlier than Ivo so that I could eat breakfast and digest in time for physical activity. I was nervous the whole morning, looking forward to the gorgeous views and the sweat and the flying across the snow, but I was girding myself against all of the ways that my body could potentially betray me. But this morning, I saw my husband and knew that such thoughts have never troubled his mind. He broke a bone in Kindergarten and since then, the only time his body hasn't been exactly where he expected it to be is when he's had a cold.

I am hopeful for the relief of a fraction of my body-betrayal anxiety to be removed in future, once i've healed, but I can not even fathom what that would be like.