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Last week I slipped on the third stair from the bottom at my brother's house and banged the living shit out of my tailbone and right hip. By now it doesn't hurt much anymore, which is exactly a week (I mean, it was like 9am last Tuesday - I know, because I was on my way to accompany my sister-in-law dropping my mom at the airport, and that's when we had to leave the house) from injury to about 99% recovery. I would not have predicted it would be that fast, because (a) it hurt like hell at the time and (b) I'm not in great shape generally, and it's been my experience that people who are stronger and fitter to begin with recover more quickly.
When my mom was post-surgical in June, the pain scale thing they had in her room was the normal 1-10 one (and not the Hyperbole and a Half version, which I showed her before her procedure and which made her laugh), but it was annotated to suggest the differences between the levels had to do with how distracting the pain was, which I found really useful. This week when my hip has been bothering me, it's been distracting because of things I can't do as I normally would or in some cases at all - like, I had to find a new way to put on my pants, because I couldn't lift my foot off the floor or bend over far enough to put them on in the usual way. I had to hold onto something and move in a particular way if I wanted to lean over to pick something up or put something in the dishwasher or what have you. Sometimes even reaching for things with my right hand was too hard and I had to use my left. So I'd call that about 7 or 8. By contrast, a couple of summers ago when I had that nerve thing in my jaw? When that nerve was acting up, I mean in those moments, it was a level of distracting where all I could think about was how much it hurt and how to make it stop. There was no question of doing normal things in different ways. I wouldn't be able to put something in the dishwasher; I'd just drop it. It was an automatic pause button in any conversation I was having because I was abruptly busy writhing in pain. That'd be a 10. Anyway, I've been thinking this week about how that seems to me to be a useful way of measuring pain. I believe I know people who can mostly go about their normal business with broken bones (depending on the bone), because sure, they can feel it, but it doesn't really bother them. Other people, that's going to ruin their day. So.
In other kinds of progress, I'm getting a lot done around the house in my abundant spare time these days, just in general and also in preparation for the holidays. We are hosting Thanksgiving, with ten adults and a three-year-old. Meep! (Side note: my nephew digs numbers, and I remembered a video of him reading (!) an e-mail from his grandmother where she said she was back home at [her house number], which is how he knows her house - so we talked about my address, and how that's where he's going to come for Thanksgiving, and now he is excited about this house number too. Yay!) I need to come up with "assignments" for everyone, make sure I know what everybody can't live without on the Thanksgiving table, and find some hotel recommendations for my mom and my aunt and uncle. Plus cleaning the house thoroughly between now and ... four weeks from now. :-) I'm also resuming setting the alarm and getting up in the morning, instead of waking up when Himself gets up and goes to work and then going back to sleep for another hour.
When my mom was post-surgical in June, the pain scale thing they had in her room was the normal 1-10 one (and not the Hyperbole and a Half version, which I showed her before her procedure and which made her laugh), but it was annotated to suggest the differences between the levels had to do with how distracting the pain was, which I found really useful. This week when my hip has been bothering me, it's been distracting because of things I can't do as I normally would or in some cases at all - like, I had to find a new way to put on my pants, because I couldn't lift my foot off the floor or bend over far enough to put them on in the usual way. I had to hold onto something and move in a particular way if I wanted to lean over to pick something up or put something in the dishwasher or what have you. Sometimes even reaching for things with my right hand was too hard and I had to use my left. So I'd call that about 7 or 8. By contrast, a couple of summers ago when I had that nerve thing in my jaw? When that nerve was acting up, I mean in those moments, it was a level of distracting where all I could think about was how much it hurt and how to make it stop. There was no question of doing normal things in different ways. I wouldn't be able to put something in the dishwasher; I'd just drop it. It was an automatic pause button in any conversation I was having because I was abruptly busy writhing in pain. That'd be a 10. Anyway, I've been thinking this week about how that seems to me to be a useful way of measuring pain. I believe I know people who can mostly go about their normal business with broken bones (depending on the bone), because sure, they can feel it, but it doesn't really bother them. Other people, that's going to ruin their day. So.
In other kinds of progress, I'm getting a lot done around the house in my abundant spare time these days, just in general and also in preparation for the holidays. We are hosting Thanksgiving, with ten adults and a three-year-old. Meep! (Side note: my nephew digs numbers, and I remembered a video of him reading (!) an e-mail from his grandmother where she said she was back home at [her house number], which is how he knows her house - so we talked about my address, and how that's where he's going to come for Thanksgiving, and now he is excited about this house number too. Yay!) I need to come up with "assignments" for everyone, make sure I know what everybody can't live without on the Thanksgiving table, and find some hotel recommendations for my mom and my aunt and uncle. Plus cleaning the house thoroughly between now and ... four weeks from now. :-) I'm also resuming setting the alarm and getting up in the morning, instead of waking up when Himself gets up and goes to work and then going back to sleep for another hour.
