Season Change

 

Somehow, without my noticing, it has turned into deep autumn and winter is not far away now.

The other morning the windshield was covered with frost.  Which isn't a surprise at this time of year - in fact it is 'late', truth be told.

This year winter, for me, is going to be another level of challenge.  I did buy boots with built in studs in the soles, so hopefully I can get around.  Plus I have been using a cane, to make sure I don't lose my balance.  I have a handicapped parking pass, which will help, but there are other things that are going to take a while to resolve - like the swelling in my brain, the fact that there is swelling in my head, above my ears so that my eyeglasses don't sit properly on my face - which makes seeing properly difficult.  The assistant at the eye doctor's advised me to wait until the swelling goes down before I get my eyeglasses re-fitted, which makes seeing...annoying.  Fortunately my closeup vision isn't too bad, but it gets dicey at a distance - and is why I am not driving now.  I'm seeing a massage therapist who is working on the whiplash (mild, thank goodness, but still) and that is slowly getting better, too.

When I talked to the pain doctor a couple of days ago, he understood that I was even more compromised dealing with injury to the lower back, and now the upper - and was sympathetic.  It is such a relief to have found a pain doctor who doesn't ignore the other things going on in my body.  And to have him be supportive about the tweaking on the new medication.

I am trying very hard to pace myself *slowly* in building up my strength again, but I admit it is hard.  Next week I talk to the neurosurgeon who did the surgery, and hopefully find out a bit more.  What to expect.  If I have a 'deadline', then I am happier if I don't.  Something to aim for.

This is not the way I foresaw the winding up of my life so I am having to change my expectations.  Something that is always more difficult when it is pressed upon you.  And I have no idea how far my recovery will go.  

So, I guess the next few years (?) I am going to have to practice the 'no expectations' way of life.  And work at that attitude of gratitude.

Just so long as I can keep weaving...

Contemplation

 

Everything seems to take ages and I get so frustrated that I can't seem to get myself in check.  But truthfully I don't have the energy to do much.  

Between the two of us, Doug is driving me everywhere because I'm still not driving yet.  So when I go somewhere, he comes too.

But little by little, tiny pieces of my new life are appearing.  And over the coming 3 weeks, I have several major appointments - because this brain injury is *not* my only issue - and I am hoping to get the phone call with the neurosurgeon, the appointment with my eye doctor, the review at the cancer clinic and continue to tweak the pain meds.

I am feeling as though my writing is getting better enough that I can try to keep writing.  The nice thing for the next one was a very short 'opinion' piece, and I managed to get through it - slowly, but never mind.  Have not heard back from the editor - yet - but in the early months of the start up for a 'meaty' publication, running on a skeleton crew, I am sure they are scrambling as hard as they can go.  In the meantime little 'newsletters' come and it feels nice to know that they are making progress.  I have zero desire to be in on launching this publication - writing an article or two is enough!  

As for more?  Well, I have been discussing another, but I need to weave some samples and see if what I'm thinking is the direction they want to go.  In the meantime I tweaked the draft and it will need some work, although it looks do-able.  When I get the first section cut off the current warp, I'll weave some samples of the yarns I am thinking of using, testing to see if I do need to adjust the epi or not.  Everything takes so long I cannot miss a deadline...

In the back of my head I keep hearing 'this is the winter of our discontent...'   I'm hoping that I will be able to drive when winter leaves so I can be more independent again.  

And please, whatever keeps testing me to see if I've become strong enough?  Stop!

Bite by Bite

 

Aerial photo of my town.

It's harder and harder to maintain any semblance of keeping my energy spoon drawer filled every day.  Of course, the overcast dreary days don't help.

Yesterday I managed to keep myself going by laying down but not actually sleeping.  But I stayed down for 40 minutes by reminding myself I needed to rest.  Hopefully the balance between rest and activity will become a 'better' balance.

OTOH, this morning we went to have our flu shot, so who knows where I will manage on that rest/active point.

On the positive side, yesterday I didn't feel quite so tired, and now I just go with the flow, as we say.  

I may do at least one session, and see how the afternoon goes.  A friend who got both her shots at once said she didn't feel awful, so perhaps I can keep going.

But that's the thing right now - no expectations.  Do what I can and if fatigue (or ennui) is greater than my desire to do anything?  Well, I am supposed to be 'retired'.  

My hair is bugging me as the part that got shaved is starting to grow, but the rest is weeks late in getting cut.  And my eye glasses are still not fitting on my face properly, so I am not driving right now.  I see my eye doc early in November, and maybe she will have some advice about the left eye that keeps swelling up - with no tell-tale reason why.  Just one more niggling 'worry' that might be unnecessary!  But there are so many things to 'worry' over right now.

My craft fair inventory has gone to the guild, I've added a couple new towels to the inventory on ko-fi.

Little by little I seem to be starting to function (at a very low level!).  

Full Calendar

 

My life is over run with appointments, along with a dearth of energy.  No matter how much I tell myself it's ok, it doesn't feel like it.

This week one or other - or both - of us have appointments, one of them the flu shot, to be followed in a few weeks by Covid.  We decided that since there were several weeks between both, we'd do them one at a time.    The bug we caught (some nasty cold) lingers and Doug is still coughing a lung up.  (He's had multiple cases of pneumonia which have left his lungs vulnerable.)

Neither of us wants to catch anything else, and we make sure we tell people that we have a bug to let them know we don't want to share it, and at the minute we are protecting *them*, not just us.

I have just added another appointment to my calendar for Friday, which had been 'empty'.

In the meantime I am faithfully heading to the loom twice a day, for 15 minutes each.  The big job now is to increase my leg muscles so that I can get back to two 45 minutes a day.  It feels good to be there, and now that I'm weaving again I can start to work on regaining the physical fitness I lost over nearly 8 weeks.

But everyone cautions me to take it easy.  So, I am working really hard on doing just that.  The earliest I've been warned is to not even think about regaining what I want/need is 2.5 months, and that is just getting started on getting my brain working again.  (e.g., I wrote the next appointment down for next week instead of this, but my brain kicked in and I was able to put it on the correct day...)

I don't always 'hear' the words being spoken to me, and I don't always recognize the words that come out of my mouth.  And until I can see the speech therapist, I will likely continue have to problems.  In the meantime I play some games (Scrabble and such) and hope to encourage my brain to use the neuroplasticity our brains are capable of, and try to work on writing (still hiccoughs, there, too). 

On the other hand, after some really dull dreary days, the sun is shining brilliantly, and even though the autumn coloured leaves have mostly dropped on the ground, it's a pretty day.

The Drifts of Days Gone By

 

I keep looking at the calendar, wondering where the past weeks have disappeared to.  

I am still dealing with whip lash issues in my jaw and neck.  I still have less energy than I had before I fell, and while I was thought I was tired then, I'm even more tired now.

And yet.  I have been told by more than a few medical professionals how 'well' I am doing.  If this is 'well', well...

At this point in time I 'work' (if I could call it 'work') about 30 minutes a day, spread over two sessions.  In between I tend to sit in the recliner feeling tired, or if I can't stand it, I can make my way to the dining room table and poke at the jigsaw puzzle.

My massage therapist keeps me sane by recognizing how much it irks me to have to sit and sit and sit.

I did manage to do a little extra 'work' today.  I measured and labelled 5 shawls and put prices on them.  A guild member said that she would come by and bring my box and hanging bag up to the guild room.

Right now - and for the next few months - I will not be driving.  There is swelling in my skull, still, and part of the whiplash has caused my eye glasses to not fit properly, nor my hearing aids.  Seems like a good idea that I not start driving, maybe not until winter lets go of us.

That said, just going from 15 minutes a day to two 15 minute weaving sessions finally begins to feel like 'work'.  Or at least, a level of productivity.

I've emailed a short article to the weaving magazine - now to find out if it fits their criteria.  I have no judgement if my writing is decent or...not.

I think the most discombulating of all of this is...losing my judgement.  I could usually tell if my writing was ok - or at least - acceptable.  Now I have no idea of grammar or...whatever is needed.  The first 3 or 4 times I read through it I'm not even sure all the words there, or how many duplicates are in the sentences.

It's very frustrating.  

But I am not the only person dealing with difficult things.  Which doesn't make what I'm going through less frustrating, but at least, nearly 8 weeks on this part of my journey, seems like there are small increments of progress beginning to happen.

Patience, Grasshopper...

I 

Small Steps

 

Yesterday I started to weave.  The physiotherapist wants me to cut waaaaaay back - it has been 7 weeks, after all - and given I was doing two 45 minute sessions (most) days, I was instructed to dial way back in order to build my muscles back up, again.

Mostly, I am so woefully 'weak', that it is going to take time to build back up again.  

Previously, when I had an injury, I could plan ahead and gently begin again when I could.  This injury was a sharp, sudden, and potentially much more serious.  I had weeks to plan what I could/would do and have strategies in place, unlike now.

However, if I just keep in mind my slow start up, I should be fairly quickly get back to what I had been doing.  The weaving did not do this, those muscles are not particularly injured, and I just need to remember that slow and steady is what is need right now.

Demonstrated for the physiotherapist very quickly showed that my speed wasn't too 'off' and mostly I was needing to corral my skills again.

So what was I able to accomplish in the 2 15 minutes over two days?  I accomplished a tiny bit more on day 2 than day 1.  Now to keep to the plan, and keep going...

Begin Agin...

 

Tomorrow is week 7 since the brain bleed.  I took the holiday weekend off and made myself take a couple more days before I tried to do anything until after I had a good chat with the physiotherapist.

However, I explained how the loom worked, what I had been doing just prior to doing the face plant etc.

Then I showed how I worked on the loom and showed how I wove on it.

In the end, we discussed what I had been doing with the massage therapist, and how I had been working on it before this, the most recent injury.

We had a good talk and in the end I was given the green light to slowly and start weaving.  With the advice to start at 15 minutes, then finish with the instructions I had been doing, graduating to 30, then 45 minutes.

I'm mulling over if it would seem more adventitious and ultimately, beneficial if I spread the time out - maybe do 2 twenty, for example.  Since I will see the massage person, I might get him and see what he thinks.

There is a many slip between lip and cup.  Now to pay attention and see how it goes.