Tag: home-care nurse

24 Hours Post-Op

L. Ryan Storms1 Comment

I made it almost 41 years without ever needing surgery. (Wisdom teeth don’t count in my book.) So imagine my surprise when I needed it in the midst of a viral pandemic. Right after 10 y.o. broke her arm, needed surgery, and recovered, my foot decided to stop responding to the steroid injections I’d been getting. (Did I mention husband has hip replacement surgery coming up, too? Fun for the whole family!)

Anyway, since so many people are asking how my recovery is going, I decided it was best to get it all written here and share as needed.

In short? I’m good. (And also short, but that has nothing to do with surgery.)

Yesterday afternoon, I had a neuroma removed from my foot and a bone spur filed from a toe. They said they put me in a twilight sleep, but I have zero recollection of anything other than a nurse anesthetist putting something in my IV while someone took my glasses and mask off my face.

Fade to black.

I woke up to zero pain in my very large and bandaged foot. My time under anesthesia proved to be the best nap time I’ve ever had in my life. (Maybe that’s because no children woke me up, no dogs whined to go out, and no cats tried to sit on my chest. Then again, maybe just anesthesia. Who’s to say?)

The staff at the surgical center was amazing. From the time I walked in to the time I left, I felt zero nerves. (Ironic, given that I was there for them to remove a portion of a painful nerve.) Since being home, I’ve been taking Advil and icing, and keeping the foot elevated. Toes above the nose, baby.

And my only complaint 24 hours post surgery is…I’m bored.

I’ll call that a win.

(Oh, also, I miss playing with my chickens. I hear I’m missing some amazing weather today…)

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My home care nurse is the best.

 

The Weight of Doubt and Exhaustion

L. Ryan Storms11 Comments

It’s been a long time since I blogged. Then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, truth be told.

There’s a complete and utter exhaustion that comes with caring for someone with a long-term illness and until recently, I was really good at pretending it didn’t exist.

Enter wall.

See that wall? I’ve hit it. No lie—it hurts.

We are, I hope, at the end of this long medical journey (at least the immediate journey), but since I never seem to be able to say that with any degree of certainty, it’s really hard to believe it even now.

And after five months, I’m mentally depleted. So, no new rambling blogs, no new pages in my current manuscript, no edits on the last one, and no queries on my old one. I’ve been thinking (a *lot*) about writing and editing, but honestly, it just scares me right now. I’m 100% positive that it’s due to my mental state from playing home-care nurse for so long, but I’ve reached an awkward position as a writer that I haven’t been in for quite some time, the place where I begin to contemplate if it’s worth pursuing publishing at all. The stage where my brain whispers that I’m not good enough, that my stories aren’t interesting, that my plot lines are too predictable, that my characters aren’t worth following.

I know this voice in my head and I usually tell it to shut the hell up and sit in a corner to think about what it’s done. Then I tell it that it’s going to stay in that corner until it figures out how to play nicely with the other voices. (Okay, that just sounds creepy…but you get the point.)

But lately? Lately I don’t have the energy to police what my children are eating for dinner (Frozen packaged pierogies? Again? Sure, whatever keeps you alive, kids!), let alone to police my self-deprecating internal writer’s doubt.

I know this will pass. So in the mean time, hey—I wrote something. It’s a blog post about absolutely nothing, but it’s 365 more words than I’ve written in a very long time.