Last night was the first without all that surgical paraphernalia. I was looking forward to being more comfortable, but instead I felt...weird. There I was in bed, snuggled paraphernalia-free under my nightclothes, ready to go to sleep, when I realized I was all too aware that something was missing. Yes, that's right, silly as that sounds, I could not get over the loss of familiar heaviness on one side, while the other was the same as usual. The unevenness of it all was just killing me. So I got up and put on a very light bra -- actually not a real bra, but a kind of mini piece of stretchy cotton with straps I once bought to go under tank tops that are too low. And I stuffed it, as if I were my 12 year old granddaughter, with cotton gauze from the hospital.
You know what? I felt better. I knew it was a trick of the mind, that nothing was actually there, but I manipulated denial to my advantage and went to sleep, soothed by that little simulation of weight on that side. You could say it's pathetic, that I'm reduced to that. Or you could say that I know myself well, and I need a transition before I ultimately accept the inevitable.
As a friend wrote to me today, my local bodily integrity issues are dwarfed by the larger body integrity issue, namely keeping this body alive.
Tomorrow I see Dr. C. for my surgical post-op check-up, and I learn the pathology results. This has me a bit nervous, since I asked the nurse yesterday to give them to me if they were ready then, and she said I should probably wait for the doctor to go over the report with me..."in case" there were problems I "might need explained," or as I would call it, bad news.
No comments:
Post a Comment