A day full of accomplishment!
Yesterday rocked for me!
It’s been a while since I posted anything about my day-to-day life. I’ve been having issues for the past six weeks with my dialysis graft, to the point that they gave up on it completely and put in a chest catheter two weeks ago.
It’s been more of a challenge to recover from that “simple procedure” than I had expected it to be. For the first several days, I couldn’t lift anything, because I had this thing shoved through my chest wall. It’s amazing, really, and not something we often think about, but you use a lot of chest muscles when you work your arm!
It’s healing up nicely around the port, though the stitches have to stay in until they take the catheter out of me, which will be at least six weeks, possibly more. The stiches are to reinforce the skin at the site, so it doesn’t split open on me and let the catheter pop out.
Anyway, yesterday — that would be Saturday — I was finally feeling up to doing some work in my bedroom. I had needed a good friend to come over near the end of January to help me go through some boxes and bins that had been ignored and unloved for going on ten years. That job was simply too much for me alone. We cleared out a lot of expired meds and supplements, and collected a lot of stuff to give to Goodwill, my donation-recipient of choice when it comes to my quality cast-offs. We ended up condensing ten bins full of stuff down to three, and two of them were just fiber to spin on my spinning wheel!
Yesterday, I had my sister come talk with me while I put my clean clothes away that I had been putting off for weeks. I hadn’t had the energy after all the procedures I had gone through (one small surgery each week!). It felt great to have my clean clothes not lurking out loud at me anymore, and it was wonderful to be able to talk with my sister. Like me, she has very little opportunity to talk with anyone, and it was good for both of us.
Then, as she and I continued our conversation, I went through my stash of snacky-smores that I keep in my room. Yes, I have a lot of snacks in my room. Most of them I got when my stomach was rebelling at EVERYTHING my mother would cook for us. In order for me to be able to eat anything at all, I had bought my own stock of food. Then my rebellious stomach started behaving, leaving me with still a large quantity of shelf-stable foods. Now they’re kind of organized, instead of shoved into a couple of huge bags, willy-nilly.
By this time, both my sister and I were pretty much talked out. Besides, it was my turn to make dinner. After that, I went back to my room and wrote, revised, edited, proofread, and published my second premium article here. I was so proud! It’s about my life as a “Part-Time Cyborg,” and I’m very happy with it.
And what have I learned from this accomplished day? That I am stronger than I thought I was, and more able to do things when I have someone to talk with while I work.
So, that was yesterday! I felt like I had accomplished a lot, especially compared to recent weeks when I couldn’t do anything.
What was YOUR day like? What are you proud of? What did you accomplish? I’d be thrilled to hear your answers!
