Get to work

Day two back to work and I'm exhausted already. I'm remembering how tired, burnt out, and discouraged I'd been at work before the Shoulder Thing and the Going Public Thing and the Neck Thing and the Acquisition. I realized that there's probably no future for me at this company because of a couple of people who've been quietly undermining me since I got there - and, hilariously, they picked today to show themselves. (But hey, at least I get a reasonable payout if I exercise my remaining options and GTFO?)

It's sort of a grim parallel with what's going on in politics now too. Biden is in, and has been working his ass off to start undoing the damage of the previous four years. And of course, the opposition is doing all the same dirty awful shit as they always have. We're right back to the stonewalling that they gave Obama, except now the economy is a farce and we're in the middle of a recession and a public health disaster while they're very suddenly concerned about the deficit. For fuck's sake. The Democratic Party needs to take no fucking prisoners.

The good news from today is that I'm feeling better, and better, and starting to really see the end of the tunnel with surgical recovery. Today, for the first time, the scar looked shorter, and less puffy. I can see the edges of the incision and see them starting to diminish. And I feel like my range of motion is starting to get better, bit by bit, even though the rest of me hurts like hell. I'm hoping to get back to yoga next week, even if it's modified.

And we're keeping up with the steady flow of houses on our radar, though none have been worth a look just yet, alas. And I apparently have good taste in condos, because the ones I favorite seem to flip to pending within 24 hours of my interest, siiiiiigh.

So, back to work.

Gratitude

 Wow, so, first week of 2021, really packing it in, huh? Only six days in and our first Doomscroll day of the year. I'm extremely thankful for a lot of things right now, and one of them is that I was still unambiguously on medical LOA while an armed mob signaled the end of our track record of "peaceful transfer of power" Democracy. 

I'm also grateful that, if it taught business people anything, when these doomscroll days happen there's no point in expecting anything to get fucking done; almost everyone I know who was trapped in view of screens reported that their bosses had given everyone a Mulligan for the day. Nobody can be expected to focus on work when History is happening - it's just been happening more and more frequently in the last year or so.

I'm grateful for the rain we've been having - mostly overnight, mostly in long slow downpours, mostly with sun breaking through in the afternoons. I have my fingers crossed that our aquifers recharge and the snowpack is deep and wet, and that the fire season gives us a bit of a reprieve in 2021. And I'm enjoying walking along the beach in the thin afternoon sunlight.

On Thursday, I logged in to work email for the first time since before my surgery, to request that we extend my LOA from the "best case" 4 week duration, to the full 6 weeks. It was *so* needed, and, looking back at my cuticles (which are picked and bloody) it was giving me a lot of anxiety apparently.

So I'm officially off work until January 26th, and friends, oh my god I need it so badly. I'm so grateful to have it and so grateful that I'm in a place in my life where it's available. 

And while I'm at it, let me say how grateful/angry I am about my health care coverage? As I'm tallying up the charges for medical services leading up to this, it's approaching $400k of billing. I hit my out-of-pocket maximum right before surgery so theoretically I'm not on the hook for any of that, but it's not clear that the individual providers won't come after me for the shortfall, which the imaging companies are already doing. I've been keeping all those charges on a single card since last year, just for tracking purposes, and it's already over $600 in post-insurance-settlement charges. Fuck those vultures. I'm scared.

Today was my one month check in, and now I get to track down and schedule the PT. The xray shows that my fusion is going well, and my doctor was shocked that I was still wearing the hard collar the whole time, and said to stop wearing it unless my neck feels tired or sore. I was worried about how puffy and lumpy the incision site is still, but I'm told that it actually looks great, and the level of puff I have is totally normal. 

My biggest question that I kept worrying about - what happened during the surgery that took an extra three hours has been answered. Apparently they didn't start the procedure until about 4, and I was held up an hour in the OR because there was no room in post-op yet. (The ICU bed shortage, and the extra-thorough cleaning of the rooms between patients has some knock-on effects.) Let me tell you folks, looking at the bill, that's like another $10k in anaesthesia drugs alone. The doctor also amusedly told me that it explains why Martin got an incredibly drugged out Laura call several hours earlier than expected; apparently the anaesthesia people get the task of monitoring/hanging out with the patient while the rest of the surgical team is dismissed, and they'll do puzzles and have whole conversations with you and put you on the phone with people if they're bored. 

And now... I want a nap.

Hello, 2021

It feels really surreal. Maybe that's the drugs?

Readers, I am here now to tell you that it was, in fact, the drugs. They are in fact both the solution and additional problems. This procedure has made what's already a rough and emotional time of year well-nigh unbearable. I've been see-sawing between totally fine and burn-your-life-down sobbingly depressed.

It turns out that tramadol has an SNRI in it, which is like an SSRI except that it also treats nerve pain apparently (which is good to do if you're treating chronic pain). I've struggled with, and mostly beaten, depression all my life. I've been passively suicidal on and off since I was 14 or so. My care team asked if I was currently on an SSRI but they did not ask about my mental health in any other way. Each time I've tried to taper off the tramadol, I've apparently been doing it wrong because I've had zero guidance from the team, and with zero guidance from the internet/community, because googling for this just nets you page after page of ads for rehab clinics. And each time I tried to taper, it's been like kicking the kid on the bike who's just taken off the training wheels. I felt like I've been barely staying astride.

And also the rest of the time, I feel entirely fine. Good, even.  We take nice long walks. We've cooked and built things and enjoyed the pleasant weather.

This is not to say I'm feeling totally great. I mean, I have intense and layered Strong Feelings about the state of my meat suit and how it's failing me, how ugly and lumpy and just overall gory the surgical site looks right now. But that's nothing next to the feeling like I've just come out from some sort of trance and found that I've been walking on knives for three weeks, and then effortlessly falling back into that trance. I cannot tell what's the drugs, and what's the continued conflicts in my relationship bubbling over; I can't tell what is forgivable and what's inevitable. 

And, for what it's worth, at least I can walk just fine, swallow fine, take all my vitamins again, shower, brush my hair and do a bunch of stuff okay again. I'm not off painkillers and not back to 100% yet and I don't know when I will be, but I'm no longer prevented from doing everyday tasks because of pain or stiffness, or lets be real here, fear. Though I'm also not yet off the opiods and thus not permitted to drive (which makes me feel surprisingly trapped), or alas, to drink. That latter has been a surprising ache for me, not because I particularly care about being drunk, but because I enjoy the sensory experience and traditions of cocktails so much. The fact that I feel sad about it makes me question if I have a problem? I don't think I do, or else I wouldn't have gone this long without any alcohol, right? 

I cannot wait to be out of this collar, to be able to drive myself places, and to have a nice nightcap before bed.

We dressed up for New Years Eve, because that's what you're supposed to do, even if you're just cooking and spending the evening at home on multiple Zoom calls with friends. And we took off my neck brace for a photo, so I could feel just the slightest bit normal for the first time in 17 days. 

So here I am. Don't tell my orthopedist.