Now I am home. My wife is working and during the day I lay in bed, the downstairs bedroom. She puts all my food for breakfast and lunch in a cooler in the living room since I can't lift more than five pounds and can't bend over.Refrigerators are not back friendly. I have found out after 37 years how strong my wife really is. I was the cook in the family and actually did a lot of the housework, especially after I retired from 39 years of coaching swimming a few years back. Now she has to work at her school, come home and cook and clean, prepare lessons and get me ready for the next day. On top of that she is changing my bandages, getting me showered and dried off( that was actually fun for me), making sure I have my meds etc.
After a few days I couldn't handle the pain and I called my doctor at his house and asked for more pain meds. He increased them to 3 pills every four hours and gave me a script for muscle relaxers. That helped me have better sleeps. I was getting huge full body spasms called nocturnal temors (should have been renamed to nighttime body earthquakes). They made me feel like my body was breaking in half. This made my back hurt even more.
The first week I had no visitors but people phoned me. Now I know they were only trying to be friendly and caring but it seemed that I just got back to sleep when the phone would ring. But it was always nice to hear another humans voice on the phone. The only companionship I had were our three cats and my dog, Pax. Pax for the first little while did not understand why I was home and had to lay on 'his' couch during the day. We had some standoffs over couch possession. I would tell him to get up and he would look at me like he owned the place. I'm sure if he had a middle finger he would have given it to me.
A wonderful lady from our church, Lisa, came to visit me the second week. Lisa is a caring, devoted Christian lady. Her sons play in the praise band at our church that I sing in. She is also the chairman of a committee we are on together. She brought me a book to read that I have used as a daily 'devotional'. I look forward to her weekly fellowship as we have made it a 'date' each week. She has been a godsend to me. My retired neighbor also visits me regularly as well as some other people who pop in to see me. It is good to know you have some friends who call you or visit you when you are 'down' Because of this I am now calling weekly another lady in our praise group who is homebound with breast cancer and inner ear problems. 'Pay it forward' is a good philosophy to live by.
Another source of comfort and companionship was my laptop and two very important programs on it- Skype and MSN webcam messenger. I talk to my father in law in Canada, my brother and sister in law in the Philippines, my niece in British Columbia, my wife's best friend in the Dominican Republic and my two good friends in Italy, Laurence and Lilianna.
Remember my two new friends, brace and walker. We have gotten to know each other well. At first I could not walk without walker and brace. They were my lifelines to getting from room to room- kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom. Brace and I will be together for the next three months. After the third week walker and I had a parting of the ways except for those mid-night bathroom stops.(thanks cathetor!)I now had to do more and more walking by myself. Boy,had my quads, my beautiful bike riding quads, gotten smaller. It was like an old man or a young toddler walking around on my own. Hands out for balance, one step at a time. Little Blake, my grandson, got around better than I did. It was about this time that I decided that the stairs had to be mastered. Walking up would tire me out so I would lay down on my own bed up there for a half hour or so before going back down. I made a little circuit of walking around the house in circles, up and down the stairs, for eventually 20 minutes at a time. I would add the weightless quad lift on the upstairs weight machine to the routine later. I had to get stronger. I longed to go outside.
Finally I got to go with my wife into Boerne to walk the main street with her. I never was so tired and sore in my life. But it motivated me to do more and to get out more often. I started walking the 400 foot road from the house to the mailbox at first holding on to my wife, then holding onto the trees and finally with the use of a cane that Lisa brought me. Her boys picked it out. The handle was in the shape of an elephant. I call it my ELLEYphant cane. I was feeling a bit better.
I was feeling so good that in the fourth week I got in my wife's car and drove the 32 miles to my school to see my students and my wonderful teaching partner, Anita. I missed my friends at school. Phone calls and emails just didn't cut it. It was agood, but tiring experience. Everything was going too good. It was time for a setback.
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