Six weeks

Six weeks ago today I was in an intense 14-hour-long surgery.  Six weeks?!  Damn, I can’t believe it’s been that long already!  Time has FLOWN.  Not to toot my own horn, but I must say I have made some amazing progress since then.

This past weekend I was able to really work on my stamina.  For the first time, I stood in the shower to bathe, my mom and I took 2 mile-long walks, and I went to a rather large luncheon in a noisy restaurant with friends.  I know it doesn’t sound like much for the average person, but it was a lot for me!

Since surgery, I have been taking baths.  This way I didn’t have to stand for long periods of time and I was able to have my mom assist me in washing my hair.  I have a huge fear of getting too close to my head incision and busting it open.  I know, it’s stitched up and it would probably be really hard for it to split it open (cue gross image in your mind), but I still have a major case of paranoia.  Anyway, I decided since I was reaching my six-week post-surgery mark, I wanted to try and shower all on my own like a big girl.  And I did it, yayyy for me!

Lookin’ good, eh?

Like I said earlier, I also went on a couple long walks with Wom.  For those of you who have walked with me before, you know I am a very fast walker.  In college, my fellow long-legged friend Em and I would always walk super fast.  Our other friend, Lindsay, used to yell at us for always walking ahead of her and leaving her behind.  Sorry ‘bout that Linds!  So anyway, this past weekend Wom thought it’d be a good idea to get out walking.  So we started out on our walk and my mom’s like, “Whoa!  Do you really want to walk that fast?!”  I didn’t even realize I was walking so fast (naturally), and I’m proud to say we kept it up for most of our walk.  It felt so good to get out walking, especially in this beautiful weather!

I also experienced my first outing with several friends in a noisy restaurant.  Boy is that going to take some getting used to.  There were 10 of us at a long rectangular table.  I strategically picked my seat near the end so my right ear was facing the rest of the table.  I had the hardest time hearing!  The restaurant was small and really crowded so there was a lot of background noise, but I literally found myself lip reading.  Talk about frustrating!  I don’t think I’ll be putting myself through something like that for a while.  Unfortunately it was just too much for me. 😦

Tomorrow is my visit with the neurologist, Dr. Jorge Asconape, not to be confused with my neurosurgeon, Dr. Anderson.  It was recommended I see him because of the possible seizure I had back in July.  It’s likely he’ll run some tests to find out if it was a true seizure or a vasovagal episode (as I had previously posted about).  I’m very anxious to get back to work, so it’s important that I meet with him to see if I can drive or if I’ll have limitations of any kind.