Rising and Falling:
Back to work. Six weeks after surgery I could show up at work for (a short) part of the day. At seven weeks I got to wear my big boy pants (no sweats) all day and didn’t even take naps as I worked about half time. This week’s hours are approaching 40 and I am feeling good.
Writer, priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor has said: “Being ordained is not about serving God perfectly, but about serving God visibly, allowing other people to learn whatever they can by watching you rise and fall.” In this spirit I will try to keep posting about my recovery.
Karen has been very interested in all facets of my recovery. She’s had a minor obsession about when my lifting restrictions would be lifted. Finally, after her curiosity began to border on outright badgering, I remembered to ask my physiologist at rehab. I was assured that - within reason - the lifting restrictions were in my rearview mirror now.
That day I ended up going grocery shopping. All of a sudden her attention to my ability to lift things came into focus for me. My excuse that just several weeks ago I was artificially alive, keep alive by machines… twice … which is almost like being dead twice – just is not carrying the impact it used to carry with her.
Not seeing things coming is part of having anesthesia brain. Last weekend at Walgreens the clerk asked me for my zip code. Upstairs in my brain came the message: “We got nothin’.” I was about to ask the clerk for the “phone a friend” option when I remembered that my zip code is on my license which was in my wallet. Pulling out my license reminded me of being in kindergarten with a 3X5 piece of tagboard hanging in front of my chest suspended by a piece of yarn. That card had my name and my bus number and was as important as an international passport when it came time to going home from school. Now why am I telling you about kindergarten? — oh well, it will come to me — or not.
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