Forced Relaxation

I don’t do “nothing” well.  I am a like to go places and do things.  Of course I enjoy having the occasional day off to rest and relax, but a day or two is plenty.   Because of this, the last few weeks have been hard for me!   I was sent home from the hospital with strict instructions to take it easy.  My hospital doctor told me to plan for a month before I was recovered.  My normal doctor (who I had to visit with a few days after being released from the hospital) told me that it would take between two weeks and a month.  I decided to be on the two weeks end of the spectrum.

The first few days of being home passed quickly, because I slept through them.  Seriously, I probably slept at least 16 hours for the three days after I got home.  My body was recuperating, and I was exhausted from the hospital (no one ever tells you that you can’t actually sleep in the hospital since they come in every hour to check your vitals or give you medicine – the worst is when they wake you up to make you eat something so that they can give you your medicine!)

 When I wasn’t asleep I was bundled up on the couch, watching TV.  And eating.  Oh how I eat.  It was like my body had been starved forever, and I could eat forever.    My sweet mom kept my fridge well stocked with lots of fruits, yogurt and crackers.   I couldn’t eat much, but I was eating about once an hour.  I was so concerned over this fact that I asked my doctor about it.  He told me it was normal, and that my body was trying to heal and get back all the nutrients I had lost so I should keep eating.  I did.

The first week passed quickly as I slept, ate, and watched both seasons of Downton Abbey and copious amounts of the Food Network.   The second week I started to feel better and become more bored.  I am at a point where I am doing well enough to be up and about, but I have to be careful not to do too much, or I pay for it by sleeping through the next day.   I finished all my antibiotics (hooray!)  and I really think that two weeks might be what I am looking at for healing time (and I am only a few days away from that!)

The thing I miss most right now is the ability to exercise.  It’s funny how you really don’t want to exercise until someone tells you that you absolutely cannot do it.   I’ll have to keep with that one for a few more weeks and hope that when I can exercise again I still want to!

That is what I have been up to – forced relaxation.  Not my favorite thing, but totally worth it to have a healthy body again.  I am grateful all this happened in the summer so that I do not have to use huge amounts of sick days and make all sorts of substitute plans.  I have to admit, I have never been so grateful to have a healthy body in my life, and am very excited to get back to “normal”!