The first weeks will see you move from the bedroom to the kitchen to the lounge room, and outside if you have the right kind of chair. Sound a bit repetitive? Of course there's the bathroom for added excitement.
A normal kind of chair wont do following your surgery. It needs to be higher than your average chair. It needs arms so you can hoist yourself up. The one I hired looks like a retirement home job in a miserable shade of grey. *hello chair manufacturers - rehab need not mean ugly. There's a bar chair I can sit in for a while and today I even sat on a normal outside chair, using the table to help stand up.
Lesson for the day, and I think I'll head back to the brochure, is to hire the most outrageously comfortable lounge room chair. My current hire chair and other home options get uncomfortable after more than 90 minutes. You need to go back to bed to get relief from the pain associated with sitting in an uncomfortable chair.
Yesterday after having a shower I nearly went ass over tit. Crutches and slippery tiles? I don't think so. It would seriously be so easy to be back in hospital so I recommend using a walking frame in all slippery tile situations.
Pick up stick thingy - your new bestie. If you can imagine being alone, dropping a crutch and not being able to bend down and get it, you can imagine how important it is to have a pick up device (pic attached).
Available for next to nothing from hardware stores, they help you put on undies, pants, pick stuff up off the ground and reach stuff on lower sections of the fridge that you only now you realize you can't bend down to reach. I wear mine like a hand bag.
This is my fourth day home. I've had lots of lovely visitors, have seen lots of my kids and things are improving.
The nights are still a waiting game. I'm awoken by pain the minute my pain relief expires and sends me checking in the dark for the time on my iPhone. I am keeping a diary of my meds. I can take the endone every four hours and the Panadol osteo every 6 hours.
Because of the addictive nature of Endone, they only come in packets of 20. They don't last more than three days so I'll have run out by Monday.
I can't wait to get off the medication, especially since I'm backed up like the Eastern Freeway exit in peak hour, but I need to ease the pain, especially during the long long nights.
Beside me in bed are books, mags, newspapers, chocolate, colouring in pencils, a journal, pick up stick, remote control and an am radio ( I can't reach the button on the stereo in my room).
Tonight I'm going to the neighbors for hand made spring rolls, the visit will be my first outside excursion and be a positive milestone.
This whole thing is a bunch of milestones that line the path of recovery. I know that in months to come, all I'll be remembering will be the warm smiles, visits and encouragement from friends.
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