Tag: Happy Valley

Love Come Down

AH, the surgery is this morning. I won’t finish this before I head out to the hospital and I doubt very seriously that I’ll be able to finish this after I get home today–whenever that may be. So it’s kind of a pre-surgery time capsule here.

I was extremely anxious yesterday–all weekend, really–but of course last night it just kept getting worse and worse. I knew it was anxiety, I knew it was adrenaline from the anxiety, and I wasn’t certain I’d be able to sleep. Sleep wasn’t a problem, after all; somehow I managed to fall into a deep sleep and woke up right before the alarm went off at five. Tug was his usual loving and purring self, rubbing all over me once the alarm did go off–because he’s Pavlov’s cat and associates the sound of the alarm now with getting fed. I am also really hungry, but can’t eat until after the surgery, of course. Last night was a total, absolute perfect storm of anxiety–but I staved off the panic attack and brain spiral so it wasn’t that bad. We finished the first series of Happy Valley and started the second; it really is quite good and the actress in the lead (Sarah Lancashire? Susan Lancashire?) is phenomenal; all the acting is terrific, frankly, and the writing is exceptional. It’s also very weird knowing that when I am back in the apartment I am going to be in a weird loop of pain and recovery and pain meds and anesthetic hangover, probably heading directly to my easy chair and getting under a blanket and dozing in and out of sleep all day. It’s going to be weird to be out of the office for three weeks–this is the longest period of time I’ve been out of the office since I started working. I don’t think I’ve ever taken three weeks off from work–other than times between jobs, of course–my entire life? It’s going to be weird. I just hope my brain won’t be too fuzzy to read or follow along with a movie or television show. I think I’ll be fine–the painkillers won’t make me fuzzy if I am in pain, after all; they’ll just take the pain away–and that’s actually kind of a tip-off; if the painkiller makes me loopy, then I probably don’t need them anymore.

I’m allowed to drink black coffee this morning and yikes–how dreadful. They told me I could have two cups, maximum, but I have to say, I don’t even think I am going to finish this first cup.

I am going to be starving when we get home because I am starving right now, to be honest. I just hope I’ll be able to eat when it’s all over. This is my first time ever having surgery since my tonsils were out as a child–I’ve had some in and out procedures, like wisdom teeth and a lesion removal–but not surgery that requires recovery time and physical therapy, which is also kind of terrifying, to be completely honest. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess. My post-operation appointment is a week from tomorrow, so that’s when we find out when I start PT and when and how often and all of that kind of stuff. The day job is being very accommodating, which is nice (I still need to get that damned form filled out and turned in; taking it with today). I am curious as to whether or not I’ll be able to test people once the three weeks is up, but I think I will be able to–I only use my left hand to hold theirs when I am sticking their finger, so I will have to figure out how to do that once I am back in the office. Driving one-handed is also going to be an issue when it comes to parallel parking–thank God I have a car with power steering now; I’d never be able to drive that old Buick one-handed.

Well, what do you know? There’s enough here to make a post, so I guess I am just going to go ahead and finish this and post it as a kind of fare-thee-well until I am able to post again. Have a great Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check back in with you again later at some point. Try to do without me as necessary, dearest reader.

Get Closer

Monday before the surgery and all is peaceful in the Lost Apartment this morning. I still don’t know what time the surgery is going to be–they’ll be calling me later today with the time to be at the hospital (in METAIRIE)–and I am trying to have an easy day of staying calm and centered as I prepare mentally and emotionally for tomorrow. Last night I had a complete anxiety attack about everything, and even as I spiraled I knew what was happening, what was causing it and why–but that only made it a bit easier. I was concerned I might not be able to shut my mind off and sleep, but that wasn’t a problem. I fell asleep in a matter of moments after going to bed. I also slept deeply and well, feeling great and rested this morning. I have to check up on a few things to make sure things that needed to be done were done and taken care of–the anxiety from last night spiraled out of worry that the form my surgeon needed to fax to HR at the day job wasn’t sent–but even if it wasn’t, I can stay calm and probably get it all taken care of either today or tomorrow before the surgery; I can bring the form with me and Paul can FAX it to HR for me in a worst case scenario if I am too drugged out to deal with it when we get home. I am completely calm and rational about it all this morning–maybe sometimes I need to spiral and work through it to be calm the next day, I don’t know. But I am calm this morning, and rested, and relaxed. Once I finish this, I’ll check with HR to see if the form was received and if not, I’ll work on getting it filled out and returned. I don’t have to go into the office today–today is prep for surgery day, and I didn’t really see how that would work with me going in.

Why does everything have to be difficult? I suppose because otherwise life would be too easy to navigate.

We watched more Happy Valley last night, and this show is exceptionally good. British crime dramas are somehow always better than American ones–even Paul pointed out last night that “British actors look like real people and are super talented. Why do Americans focus on appearance so much?”–which is the source material for an entire other essay; you don’t see Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith and Judi Densch getting their faces shot up with poison and fillers and having everything nipped and tucked and made more generic with a scalpel to the point where their faces don’t move and they’ve become basically voice actors. Paul stayed up super late Saturday night writing a grant, so he slept most of the day and I was left to my own devices. I finished reading Lou Berney’s superb Dark Ride and started J. D. O’Brien’s Zig Zag, which I am also really enjoying. I also did some cleaning and organizing around here to try to make my workspace more functional and more Big Kitten Energy proof–it gets old having to pick up papers and re-sort them every morning because he went bounding around over everything while having the middle of the night Zoomies. It does look better organized this morning and more functional, even if it’s not complete, so we will see how it goes. I also watched another episode of Moonlighting–some are kind of hit and miss, which I didn’t remember from my original watch as it aired back in the 1980’s. Moonlighting had become a hit by then, and was starting to draw big name guest stars. Yesterday’s was Lisa Blount, who enjoyed some success in the 1980’s, but probably is best known for her supporting role in An Officer and a Gentleman–a movie I am relatively certain did not age well. It wasn’t a great episode–it was merely okay, with a clever enough plot and some good banter between David and Maddie; the chemistry was clearly there for them, but it’s another one of those “opposites attract” kind of things, which was only just then turning into a thing for television shows, primarily triggered by the popularity of the Sam and Diane pairing on Cheers that dominated the ratings and the Emmys for the entire decade of the 1980s. Now we’re so used to it that it’s tired, but back in the 1980’s the question of when David and Maddie would get together was something everyone was talking about every week.

I’m trying not to worry about the recovery for the surgery too much–thinking about the physical therapy and so forth was what sent my brain into the spiral last night–how can I be trusted to do things correctly when I’m such a fuck-up? I had one of those moments when Paul came home after his original eye surgery–I am not a trained caregiver! What if I do something wrong?–because I had to, among other things, clean the socket for him every day and apply antibiotic drops and things, and once he was home I was fucking terrified. And it was fine. His socket healed, I didn’t kill him or cause an infection, and we both survived the entire thing. I am a little anxious about Paul as caregiver, but that’s terribly unfair. On the rare occasions when I am actually sick he’s taken very good care of me, and so what if he doesn’t have a lot of experience with caregiving? Neither did I, and I’ve become very good at it over the years.

It’s kind of easy when you don’t have a choice.

And on that note, I am going to do some cleaning and organizing before reaching out to HR to see if there is anything I need to follow up on today. I’ll probably be around again later–I keep meaning to do more blatant self-promotional posts, but as the surgery date draws closer my mind just hasn’t been in that place. So have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later.

The One You Love

Tuesday and back into the office. My energy spurt after getting home from the pre-operation appointments didn’t last for very long, I’m afraid, and by the middle of yesterday afternoon I was groggy and tired; adrenaline crash from the anxiety rollercoaster, no doubt. We started watching Happy Valley, which is certainly a grim show (I said to Paul, “it’s like a British version of Mare of Easttown“–although obviously Happy Valley came first, but they are very similar in tone and mood: bleak). But the acting and the writing is first rate, and we both are really enjoying it. They called in some prescriptions for me that I’ll need post-surgery, but apparently in checking the CVS website, I have to call them about the pain pills. Terrific. It’s always such a joy trying to reach a pharmacy on the phone. But I have to swing by uptown to get the mail after work today, and so I might as well call so I can pick everything up on my way home from the office.

I am way behind on everything, but I feel a lot better about the post-surgery period. I don’t know how long it’s going to take before the pain goes away, but I imagine I am going to be in a painkiller stupor for at least a couple of days, at the very least. I’ve never really had the kind of surgery where you’re put under and cut on since I had my tonsils out when I was three or four. That’s not bad–going sixty years between surgeries–so I really have nought to complain about, but I kind of wish I had more experience with it so I knew what to expect more; it’s the not-knowing that really triggers my anxiety. Now I am wondering about putting on shirts with the arm-brace on; am I allowed to take it off to put on a shirt if I put it right back on again? Doesn’t the arm need to stay in the same position, even when I am showering? Heavy sigh. They did send me home with a packet of information to read over, so I’ll be doing that today as well. I also have to get the paperwork for my leave finished and turned into Admin today. Heavy sigh. I do have the letter from the surgeon that is required, and I think I have everything I need. (More anxiety, hurray.)

I also need to practice putting the brace on, too. The demonstration wasn’t enough to make me think oh sure I can do this easily on my own with a bent arm.

For the record, I tore my biceps muscle in my left arm back in January. For a number of reasons I am not in the mood to go into right now, I am now finally getting the surgery to have the muscle repaired. It’s a long and slow and painful recovery process; I need to wear the brace for at least three to four weeks, and then it’s physical therapy for months until I get the clearance that it’s all healed and working properly again. I got the distinct impression yesterday that it’ll take about a week for me to be weaned off the pain medications–again, that’s fine, what choice do I have? I don’t know how much, if any, typing I’ll be able to do that first week, and besides, if my brain is scrambled on oxycodone, I wouldn’t be able to write and/or create much anyway. But it didn’t sound like things were going to be as terrible or as worst-case as my mind always seems to want to come up with.

It was also a cold and wet rainy day yesterday; we’ve not had rain in quite some time–not nearly as much as usual in our tropical clime–so the whole day had that undercurrent and wet and cold that I’ve not experienced in quite some time (last winter, to be precise) and so that was also off-putting. I felt cold all day, was wrapped up in a blanket in my easy chair as I doom scrolled social media, watched some documentaries on Youtube (the wives of Charlemagne; the separation of power between the Church and the Holy Roman Empire; and the Black Death), and also caught an episode of Moonlighting, in which Maddie’s mother thinks her husband is cheating so David and Maddie investigate. I also saw some social media posts about Moonlighting not aging as well as I had originally thought, which was worrying. I have such fond memories of the show, and I’ve been enjoying rewatching it, and I thought I was paying attention to the “well it was a different time” things–but I didn’t really see the show as misogynist as I feared it would be, and there were other things that I was certain wouldn’t hold up on–casual homophobia? Casual racism? Casual misogyny? It was written and filmed in the same decade that gave us such great misogynist comedies as Porky’s, Sixteen Candles, and Weird Science (don’t @ me; I don’t make the rules), so how could it not be problematic on some levels today? I’m also a little disappointed that my rewatching didn’t somehow note the red flags (I actually posted at one point that I was surprised it wasn’t more offensive); but it’s also the classic set-up arrangement for old-style screwball romantic comedies–one prim and proper character, another who is spontaneous and always up for a good time and both learn from each other as they grow together into coupledom. I know there are some issues in the old movies too–but I still love them.

Perhaps that might make a good essay?

And today is the official release day for Mississippi River Mischief!

And on that note, it’s off to the spice mines with me. Have a great Tuesday, everyone!