So Sneezing Hurts in Planting Trees

Finally sat down with this freshly fixed laptop (thanks, Shane!) only to find that out, twice in a row. I managed to not take any medicine today until a moment ago, since I don’t want the zaps of reconnecting nerves to keep me up if I start to get sleepy. The hardest part about recovery so far is having to sleep at an incline without sliding down in the middle of the night. We have a wedge pillow under my legs that’s helping with that and the traveling pillow is vastly helping with my neck. Of all things, though, my butt is getting sore from it, and I’m not even laying in bed all day. I’m not even sleeping for long at a time.

I took my first wipe-down bath today. At least, a partial one. We bought adult sized body wipes for the post op. (I can’t take a shower at all, water can cause the nipple grafts to reject.) They weren’t as wet as we were expecting, but it got some of the tape residue off of my arms. My hair is getting noticeably oily, though, so I’ll have to do something about that. They weren’t able to get the blue marker lines off of me that were leftover from the surgeon’s grid, so I still have some war paint on.

I also had to request my mom bring some stool softeners home. It was mentioned to take them post op “as needed” in the paperwork, but, having no idea if I’d need them at all, I just didn’t get them. Turns out, that part is no joke.

I’m pretty much over the throat irritation now, just clearing my throat of some deep phlegm here and there. I way overprepared for that (anyone need some applesauce? lol)

Oh, right. During the wipe down, I did find numbness under my right armpit that isn’t there on my left. I’ll be keeping an eye on that. It’s not completely numb, but it has that uncomfortable burn after you touch it like the body trying to figure out what’s not right about it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to remember how to do pictures in markdown. Yesterday, the robe Shane ordered for me without me knowing came in:

It is absolutely amazing and I’ve been living in it. I am so, so comfortable. That tan thing is the compression vest I’m wearing until this Monday. I also agreed to try and play a board game with my folks, since I was up and moving around pretty well through all of this. They absolutely adore board games. I don’t mean Monopoly. Here’s a cropped shot of some of their bookshelves of hardcore board games in the background.

There are probably three fully stocked shelves not shown in this picture, plus the armload they bought while I was in the hospital (I’d encouraged them to go out since they couldn’t come in the building with us, and I’m glad I did since the procedure took longer than expected. They ended up buying I think 400$ worth of new board games that day.) Those are framed posters of art/promos from board games hanging above them, too. It’s a pretty serious hobby in this household.

One of the games they bought was a zoo building game called Ark Nova, and that was the one up to play yesterday. My dad set it up, watched videos about it, warned us it would be a bit complicated, and we all sat at the table to learn how to play. Immediately, Rambo struck.

…I don’t want to add any context to that, but that’s the household’s oldest cat, lol. Here’s a picture taken on a potato of his absolute favorite thing in the world: being in my lap.

He doesn’t just get in my lap and look cute, though. He wants to roam back and forth and press his whole body into me, which wasn’t going to fly today with my chest like it is. He was none too thrilled about being told no and I found myself constantly pestered by him and hounded by this stare:

We had to pull a barstool with a backrest away from the bar and put it against me to keep him from forcibly jumping into my lap, poor old thing. Then, I’ll be damned if the most aloof cat in the household, Willow, didn’t try to do the same exact thing. Here’s me making her sit in the empty barstool instead, and her cattitude about it.

It didn’t last long and she soon barged onto the table, sitting right in the middle of my dad’s side of the board. That’s her favorite human, by the way, so it was fitting.

He was away from the table in that shot because he’d went to get a blanket off of the couch in the living room so he could “make her a little nest at the table.” He put it in the chair next to me… it actually worked.

Hours into this board game (I was doing fine, only having to be helped reach something here or there,) I went back to the garage to get a bowl of macaroni I hadn’t finished from earlier. I sat down with it and the moment my fork made a sound against the bowl, this little muppet poked his head out of the dining room window. He’d been there the whole time and we were none the wiser.

“Do I smell… mmmmmmCHEESE?”

That’s Nunu. He does, in fact, love cheese. Anyway, I ended up losing that game so badly I scored in the negative, but it was fun as hell and not as complicated as it was threatened to be. I’m going to blame the score on the pain meds I had taken, even though I said they didn’t impact my brain at all.

The rest of the night was spent between Runescape and trying to get this laptop to recognize the internet again.

I did find out some bad news today. Last year, I got to take part in the first Gall Week event ever held. It was the first week of October. I thought I may be healed up enough to take it on again this year. I had a mention on iNaturalist that lead me to a blog post about it. They’ve set this year’s for the week between the 3rd and 11th of September. I commented that I looked forward to everyone’s findings this year, and that if I could manage at least one walk to the park, I would try, but that I was recovering from surgery. Man, I was looking forward to that, too. I didn’t make the top five last year, but I got extremely close. Hopefully they have an event shirt this year though. I’ll still buy one.

Damn, it’s starting to hurt tonight. Just raw burning across both sides of the chest. Maybe the medicine will kick in soon. I did get myself in trouble earlier. I brushed my hair and caused a cramping sensation on my sternum. I did it while Shane had gone to check the mail and got a scolding for it. I was trying to give myself the wipe bath earlier, too, but he took it from me. I gotta be trying to do something though. Thankfully, with the laptop going again, I can write and draw without restraint. One can only play Runescape and read a textbook on archeominerology for so long before needing to get up and cause mischief somehow.

I’m going to try to find something productive to do, now.