Not Nothing

I did absolutely NOTHING yesterday. Okay, not entirely true. I scrolled the news and social media, blogged and took a shower. Yeah, not exactly a whirlwind of successful achievements. Naturally, I fell into my usual crater of I’ve-done-fuck-all-in-the-past-four-years. It’s not a pretty or at all comfortable pit. In an effort to give myself a bit of credit, I started listing what I have managed to do since 2020. Here, I’ll share.

Things I’ve managed to accomplish in the past four (and some change) years:

• Survived and, more or less, recovered from two brain and two spine surgeries (my next bean slice-up is in 29 days).

• Taught my beleaguered brain to communicate with my left leg again so that I could (and did) regain the ability to walk (mostly with a walker). The connection between the brain and leg had been severed in one of my brain ops. I’m still working on rebuilding strength, endurance and balance.

• I had months of proton radiation to halt and hopefully reduce the size of my big fucking thoracic spinal tumor. Reduction hasn’t, so far, come to pass but there’s been no fresh growth.

• • Started chemo. The hope being that the med will stop the growth, and maybe even reduce the size of my remaining tumors. This hasn’t worked on the meningioma living on my prefrontal lobe BUT it seems to be affecting the others. For now.

• • Survived the loss of my beloved 13 year old sweet baby kitten Coco. She had cancer.

• • Adopted a nine year old very good boy. Cake had just had his tail amputated (due to some unknown tail trauma) and was still regaining his balance and learning how to walk. (HEY, just like me!)

• Lost 40 pounds (of the 55 gained while in hospital and rehab for the better part of two years).

• Mourned the death of my father from a distance (having recently gotten out of the hospital, I was unable to travel to attend the funeral). I’ll never stop missing him.
  

• Endured seven rounds of formal outpatient rehab. That shit’s killer, mes amis.

• Got vaccinations for COVID, pneumonia, flu and whatever else was on my primary care doc’s list.

• Caught COVID anyway. Didn’t die because I’m VACCINATED to hell and back. YEA!

• FINALLY dealt with two of the three teeth which were broken during my two year surgery odyssey. Extractions—NO fun.

• Watched some great television over at Jen and Oni’s place. I can now walk over there (their back door is 12 feet from our front door but the living room is another 25-30 feet beyond) withOUT the walker. HUZZAH! Yes, Ten spots me the whole way but, hells bells, this is something.

• I’ve blogged on most days (even from hospital and rehab!). I’m obvs, no Shakespeare, Vonnegut or Scalzi but, HEY, creative outlets are self-care.

• I’ve doodled a bit—not much though. My hand/eye coordination is pretty banjaxed. Is that recoverable? Dunno yet.

• I’ve VOTED in every election (if I can do it with all the nasty ass health shit I’m juggling, you can too)!

• I bought a gorgeous emerald green electric MINI. Still haven’t gone for a scenic road trip in it though. Trips to Mass General Hospital don’t count. Maybe later this summer?

So, it’s a close thing but I actually haven’t been a total lazy putz these past four years. On most days it just feels like it.