Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: rehab

Still recovering

I’m unhappy. I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone who’s been reading my entries for the past few weeks. I’m holding my breath and hoping that my parents will be able to fly out on Saturday, which is five days including today (Tuesday). I’m not very good at the end of things in general. All my impatience surges and it’s really hard for me to tamp it down. It doesn’t help that there’s some question as to whether my father can fly on Saturday or not. He seems much better today, but that varies day to day. Honestly, my impulse is just to pour Dramamine down his throat and shove him on the plane. That’s not very nice, I know, but I have found a darker side of me in the past few months that was previously slumbering in my breast.

When I woke up from being unconscious, I was ready to fight everyone and anyone. I as so grateful, however, for being alive. My brother explained to me that I was supposed to be dead a few days after I awoke so I knew how lucky I was to be alive. And I was properly grateful to my medical team for keeping me alive. My brother said I was overly nice to the nurses because I profusely thanked them for the ice water. But it was because I was obsessed with the ice water and insisted on a fresh cup every time someone came into the room. It didn’t matter how many cups I had in front of me–I always wanted one more. Which was bothersome to them, obviously.

Before I woke up, the doctors warned that I was in for several months of rehab, if not years. There was talk of me going to a rehab facility before going home. They were unsure what kind of brain/heart damage I was going to have. The angiogram showed no weaknesses in my heart, thankfully. That was done the week I was awake in the hospital. That was the only ‘surgery’ I had (and it was just a slit to put in a stent in my arm). And I’ve seen both the heart and head doc since I’ve left the hospital. Both have given me the clean bill of health. All my labs are good and all my tests have been passed with flying colors. I have one more EEG and heart doctor visit and then, that’s the end of my trauma-related appointments. After that, I’m a free person who can resume ignoring my health!

I’m kidding, of course. Sort of. I was not very good at taking care of my health before I landed in the hospital. Which means I need to change some things. The biggest thing is that I need a new primary doctor. The one I met once during the pandemic for the first time, I was not impressed with her at all. I did like the one I met after leaving the hospital to talk about things as related to the trauma. I just have to make it official that he is my primary doctor. Since it’s not yet official, the female doctor messaged me a month or so after I got home from the hospital saying she was sorry to hear about my recent hospitalization. She added that hopefully it made me quit smoking and if not, she was more than happy to help with that. Which, I know it’s her job, but it was very tone-deaf. I was put off by it and my friends agreed that it was not the right time.


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The long road back to recovery

I’ve been thinking about my thumb a lot for obvious reasons. It’s funny how much you take things for granted until it hurts like fucking hell. well, to be more precise, it aches like hell. It doesn’t hurt, per se, except the time I slept without the splint because I foolishly decided I didn’t need to wear it at night any longer. That’s where my background comes in because my mom is the same way. The second something feels better, she decides she can go 100 again. She recently had surgery on her shoulder (which had issues that made me so angry at my father and the doctor, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it because she was in Taiwan) and she was upset when she wasn’t back to her normal self in a month. She complained, saying her doctor said that’s how long it would take.

I doubt he said that exactly because she has a habit of hearing what she wants to hear, but even if he had something similar to that, it doesn’t make any kind of sense to think that you’d completely heal from a major surgery in a month. That’s the thing about being a perfectionist, however, and I know this from experience. We don’t have much resource for dealing with ongoing frustration. In my brain, I should be able to think my way to a solution. Also, despite my contrarian nature, I am a rules follower for the most part. So, in my brain, if I am actively working on improving my thumb, then it should get better. And it is, but on such a slow schedule. First week, I just tried to massage the thumb and take it easy. While wearing a splint. I do stretches for my thumb every day and today, I received my heat/ice therapy assists (gel patches, gel finger splint, gel mittens. The gel packs can go either hot or cold). I’m going to do some heat/ice therapy and see if that helps as well.

On the taiji front (because you know I can’t go a post without talking about it.

Side note: When I first started studying taiji, I would notice how much my teacher talked about it and how she had made it central to her life. We are friends as well as teacher/student and in the Before Times, we used to hang out while not in class sometimes. It was clear to me that taiji was her life. Which, good for her, but I didn’t understand it. I was doing it begrudgingly and not really wanting to be there.


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