Saturday, May 25, 2013

My Cat Doesn't Respond To Her Name, But She Does Respond To Smurf Face

Once we got home from the surgeon's appointment, I settled into the couch to await the surgery.  And when I say I settled in, I mean I settled the heck in.  There was a permanent imprint of my body shape on that couch.  I figured I'd be there for a while, so I may as well get used to it.

I had a pretty major revelation at this time: when things are really bad for you, that doesn't mean it can't get worse, and it definitely doesn't mean that you can't have other things happen to you.  This is something that should have been pretty obvious to me in the past, for so many reasons, but I decided that nothing more could touch me while I was sitting on that couch, so I was good.  And thus, when I got a kidney infection and started running super high fevers and hallucinating, I didn't really care or even pay attention to it.  This was right around New Years, about January 2nd, and for obvious reasons I don't have a huge amount of memories of it.  At the time, we were getting a railing attached to the wall going up the stairs so that I wouldn't fall down them if I was alone, and we were also getting the guest bedroom repainted so that we could use it as my living room (it's right beside my bedroom).  I remember Mom and Dad standing in the guest bedroom and me sitting against the wall.  They were talking about something, and I was looking up at Mom, thinking about how pretty the shapes were that were floating around her head.  She was watching me looking extremely worried and eventually got my attention, telling me that I was going to the doctor the next day.

So I went to the doctor the next day.  Whoever said the Canadian healthcare system sucks is a fool, they get you in when you need it.  I've had an awful lot of times where I've been extremely sick and needed healthcare, and they always get me in immediately in those cases.  Anyway, I digress. They sent me to get blood work, and they took pretty much all of my blood (not really, but it felt like it, they had to take it from both arms because I was so dehydrated, and I needed a cookie after).  Once I got home and settled back into the couch, they called me and told me to go to the hospital.  I remember Josh looked annoyed and I couldn't figure out why, but once he saw that I was looking at him, he looked worried.  Right, actor.  So we called my Mom and she came home, then her, Josh, and I went to the Peter Lougheed Emergency.  They took my name, gave me some orange juice and basically told me to drink as much as I could before I went in.  I feel like I waited a while, but it was only a couple of hours.  Mom and I were quite used to this.  Eventually I got to go in, where they pumped me full of antibiotics and fluids to get me hydrated and not infected any more.  Good times.  They kept sending Josh in to keep me company but he was such a downer and so bitter about being there the whole time that I kind of just wanted him to go home and just be there with Mom instead.  I'm pretty sure he felt the same thing.

I felt much better after this. They gave me more antibiotics to take at home, so we went back, I tucked into bed, and pretty much stayed there for the next five or so months.  I remember very few things about this because time started quickly blurring together and I wasn't doing much at all.  I really like watching people play video games, and Josh really liked playing them, so there was quite a few nights when he'd get home and I'd be on the couch or bed writhing in pain and he'd be playing the game, asking me if I was okay every few minutes.  I felt bad always because we both knew there wasn't anything that could be done; I wasn't okay but it's not like saying "No" was going to help anything, so I just gave the normal thumbs-up.  Painkillers didn't work well at all any more because I was in so much pain, so I started having to take 12 hour oxycontin pills a lot of the time. That was a huge hit on me because I basically took the dive into bigger pills and allowed my body to get hooked on them by necessity. I really started to hate myself because of that, because of the pain, and because of my relationship.  But I stuck with it, because really, what else could I do?

About two weeks before my surgery, I had a chat with my parents and Josh about talking to my doctor and maybe a psychologist about the depression I'd delved into. They were positive that once I was able to work and go back to school I'd be fine, but it would probably help. I was willing to try anything.  It's really hard to be helpless.

I finally went into my surgery in March. This sounds weird, but going in for surgery is one of the most familiar things in the world for me now, and it's almost calming.  It's interesting how they do it differently for different types as well, and I always notice these things before the surgery.  For this, they brought me in on the bed, as normal, and the pulled me over on the sheets so that I wouldn't need to do anything myself. This is so that I don't have to put my weight on my hip.  The bed is quite thin for this but it's a full bed, not a chair like it is for the shoulder.  They take you in, put you on the bed, and pull your arms out to the sides, putting on the blood pressure cuff on one and strapping down the other.  They told me once that they have to do this when you're awake now.  They ask you some questions to make sure you're you, and then the surgeon comes in, says hi, and starts talking into his recorder to take his pre-surgery notes.  You can hear your heartbeat going.  It's interesting, because as I type this I'm getting the feeling that I do when I lay on the bed, where my heart starts pumping and my headache gets light and to the top of my head.  I usually at this point start breathing in for four seconds and out for eight to slow down my heartbeat because it's going pretty quick.  Then the anaesthesiologist gives me the drug that will "calm me down" and everything goes a bit fuzzy and calm.  I remember thinking everything was going to be okay at this point because my surgeon (who is a giant, by the way, he's over 6 feet tall) was joking around with the other doctors and the nurses. He knew what he was doing. The nurse beside me said "See you in a few hours." I said "See you in a couple of minutes." I was out.

I hate waking up from hip surgeries. At least with this one I could feel my feet.  I always want to know what kind of dressing is on my wound, immediately, but with hip surgeries you can't feel that because they won't let you throw back the sheets and start poking around.  I got to find out how it went quite quickly, they must have told my surgeon I was awake, because he just about immediately came over to me.  He was so happy and excited, and told me it went the best it could have gone.  The arthroscopy completely fixed the tear.  I wouldn't need a replacement.  I was so excited!  All I had to do was recover, and I could move on with my life!

So we went home.  I was going to be sleeping on the air mattress in the office downstairs because I couldn't get upstairs.  Mom slept on it with me (it's a huge great air mattress, seriously, I'm taking that thing with me when I move out instead of my bed) in case I needed anything during the night.  Venus, one of our stupid cats, also decided that she wanted to help out in the middle of the night and jumped onto my chest.  I screamed, Mom screamed, Venus fled, my hip hurt. Good times. The next few nights I slept on the couch because I still couldn't get upstairs.  Eventually I started healing more and more and could see that I was going to get better... it was awesome.  Around this time my cousin moved into our house for the summer.  This isn't super important to the story, but she's super important to me and I love her.  She's one of those awesome people who make me feel normal no matter what happens to me.

As I was going on this upwards track and starting to get into my life again, Josh broke up with me again.  This time, however, it was for real.  He told me he just couldn't handle my health problems. This was in June.  I was so confused, I was getting better from my hip and he couldn't handle it now?  I had been honest with him from the start about what I'd gone through and about what I would go through.  He told me he thought I was overstating it.  I was so hurt that he'd use something I couldn't control as the reason for him leaving me.  There was no question over who got to keep the cat: me.  Lola was mine.

Weirdly enough, it didn't take me long to get over him.  I've mentioned this before, but because of the way my life is it doesn't take me long to get over things.  I need to be like this because otherwise I'd spend much too much time mourning the loss of everything that's left me and spend no time celebrating what I have.  It took me about two weeks to fully get over Josh.  One of the main reasons was my awesome family, like my cousin.  I think the fact that it took so little time tells me it was clearly for the best; I have a bad habit of trying to stick with things when I shouldn't because I think it can be fixed or because I don't want to hurt someone. Luckily this situation ended for me.  The way he did it didn't do me any favours though.  It left me with a fear that any person I met would leave me because of my health problems.

For the next few weeks I healed extremely fast.  I hung out with my cousin a ton.  She moved into the room next door to me that was previously my living room, so Lola ran back and forth between us.  We were laughing all the time.  It was great.

With my labral tear out of the way, I now had the ability to focus on my school, my work, my shoulder, and my state of mind.  I had finally had a truly successful surgery, and I was going to grasp this bright part of my life and run with it for as long as I could.