To get back to Square One regarding my recuperation from breast cancer surgery, it was suggested I take three days off and become a couch potato to rest the affected side of my body, which hasn’t been pleased with how busy I’ve been. Let it be said that I didn’t think I was inordinately busy, but health care professionals and a few friends have indicated otherwise.
The first challenge was to find three days where I had few commitments and could allot the time to this experiment. I found them by canceling a couple pleasurable commitments, one that would have surely fed my soul.
So today is Day One, in which I lounge on the couch more than usual, watch a movie in bed on our DVR, spend time on the computer but limit my piano playing (which seems to annoy my affected side), and sip mint juleps while watching some home shopping channel hawk kitchen pots. (If you believe this last, you don’t know me.)
The idea behind this is that the quieter I am the less Duane will move fluid from my insides to the outside. And the less Duane drains the better it is in the long run. Of course, I may be grumpy and demanding, as horizontal is not my default position; but Duane’s needs will be served.
A friend of mine suggested I’m “retreating at home,” as if I were on some spiritual journey. It made me think of all those Catholic high school retreats I attended where we couldn’t talk and spent three days in prayer. If I remember correctly, I spent them thinking of my current boyfriend as I fingered my rosary.
Still, maybe I’ll consider this a spiritual experience. I have a rosary and will try to think of something positive about cancer as I do the requisite Lord’s Prayer and Hail Marys these next three days. Today was a 7.
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