I will start off on a positive note by saying that I had a good day, I really did. It felt good to finally get back to teaching after all the anticipation. I usually feel excited, in a jittery sort of way, at the beginning of the semester. But my students are fresh and full of excitement, and I usually draw energy from them. (It usually goes downhill after this, lol.) Due to my medical issues, I hadn't been feeling my normal level of excitement, but it all came back today as soon as I started my first class. That was a good feeling.
That said, I am in a world of pain right now. Both my hips are exceedingly sore, my leg is killing me, and I ohmygod I am so exhausted. Admittedly, part of this is because I barely slept last night. Also, yesterday I got overzealous and spent an hour picking beans. My husband and kids picked some during my long inability to garden, but overall they did a pretty poor job ( = A LOT of beans to be picked). And since I can't squat down, I had to do it by just bending over at the hip, which means my hamstrings are really sore today. It's a totally regular type of sore, but nonetheless, it is adding to my misery. Honestly, even in the absence of a blood clot, there is no way I could have taught my week-long class starting ten days ago. I don't know what my surgeon was thinking. Perhaps I'm just super far behind where I'm supposed to be rehab-wise, but my PT keeps saying how well I'm doing functionally, so I don't feel like that's the case.
Anyway. I've been determined to totally ditch the crutches and the cane, even when I have to walk a lot or long distances. This has been reeeallly difficult and I'm limping, a lot. Fortunately, my reduced load means that I have tomorrow off to rest, which I really need. If I had to teach tomorrow, I'd need a crutch for sure, at least to get to the building across campus where I was scheduled to teach. While hopefully my situation will improve from here on out, I don't feel like I'm completely out of crutch territory yet, unfortunately. As trivial as it may be in the large scheme of things, I'm really self-conscious about this. So... I was just really up front with my students about my situation, and it came up sort of naturally because I let them know I was on partial leave for the semester, so they would understand why I'm not going to be on campus two days a week. I didn't tell them about the blood clot - that seems like TMI - I just said I had had hip surgery over the summer and the recovery hadn't gone quite as planned. As a result, walking is still a little difficult for me, as is standing, and sitting. Which makes life slightly difficult in general. LOL. (They thought it was funny.) It was sort of hard, as I don't usually share personal information of this sort, but it felt good to just put it all out there. That way at least if I have a really bad day and just can't walk, it won't seem out of the blue.
All in all, it was a good day, emotionally anyway. Physically, I feel like hell, but at least the pain comes with a sense of accomplishment, which makes it easier for me to accept. And on that note, I am off to take a pain pill and go to bed.
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