What I've Done

While today did not, in fact, see my return to school it did see another major milestone: today was the first day since I've been home that I haven't used the wheelchair at all. It spent the entire day sitting in the living room, nobody filling the seat, while the normal day-to-day activity continued all around it. I ate my meals in normal chairs, navigated the house with my walker, spent most of my time in a comfortable leather chair which is not the Recovery Couch (though there was a bit of couch-time).

The take-away message from today? Stuff happens during recovery even when it seems like nothing has happened whatsoever.

Before the surgery, I made a (somewhat) lengthy list of objectives I wanted to complete during my recovery. After all, nearly unlimited couch time should have given me the opportunity to be impressively productive. I'd be able to get impressive amounts of reading done, watch television shows I'd been meaning to watch, start writing a book…oh, and get my leg straightened. And finish college apps.

I finished college apps (there was a firm deadline) and got my leg straightened (that was a passive activity). But as far as every other objective I had…

1) Read a lot of books. Missed that one…I read one book (The Dead Zone) and a bunch of old comic strips. As it turns out, reading is an activity which requires rather more energy than what I often have. Comic strips, being fairly mindless things to read, go down easy. Prose goes down less easy, though I've started reading more now.

2) Successfully complete a game of Minesweeper. I set Minesweeper to make it slightly easier than traditional expert mode (fewer bombs, more squares, a combination which also reduces random clicking to try and get the board to open up enough for logic to start taking place). And trust me, I've tried to be victorious over that silly game. And yet it seems every time I accidentally set a mine off while trying to mark it. Normally these are the most obvious mines on the board. Either that, or I solve to the point where I need to randomly guess, and then I randomly guess poorly. So my ability to click squares and randomly guess needs to improve before that objective can be checked off.

3) Start writing a novel. I've got a concept I'm pretty happy with but I don't have the motivation. Yet.

4) Watch television shows I've been meaning to watch, such as Arrested Development and the BBC's Sherlock. One of the tragic truths of my recovery has been that I share the television with my younger brothers. This sharing is not always conducive to checking off recovery objectives. I have, however, seen Captain America: The First Avenger now (the youngest brother enjoys the Marvel movies). I was surprised at how okay it was…perhaps a few too many explosions, but all in all a solid effort.

5) Keep up with this blog. This one I actually accomplished, as evidenced by the number of posts here and the average length of each post, though I'm still tragically behind on the back-story aspect of Leg+Frame. So while I can't say I've done much these past few weeks, I can say I've done something. And as I continue moving towards a more normal existence with less time on the Recovery Couch and less time in the wheelchair, hopefully I'll get more and more done.