Lately my post-cancer frustration has been people babying me. I know by the occasional tickle along my waist that I am still not 100% healed, but I feel better than I have since the surgery. I have been using my abdominal brace less and less and been exerting myself more and more.
The lack of a brace wasn't necessarily intentional. I tends to get in the way, especially if you are doing any bending or sitting. Which since my major source of activity lately has been climbing in my boat, sitting down in front of the hydraulics while cussing, crying, and praying that they work, the brace had to go. There is another odd side effect with the brace. The brace, which looks a lot like a back brace, completely takes any pain away from my abdomen, but ironically kills my back. Another reason I have been wearing it less and less.
Two incidents have triggered these feelings about feeling babied. Our neighbor was over the other day who still primarily heats with wood. I said I was about to cut down some trees and if he wanted the firewood I would leave the logs for him, otherwise I would hack it all up and haul it away to burn, something we have done many times in the past. He said he would help when he was able. I said I wasn't asking for the help, I just wanted to know if he wanted the wood. He again said he would and he could help. This back and forth went on several times, and I think he finally caught on that all I was asking is if he wanted the wood, I hope.
The second incident, a very good friend of mine who has been super supportive since all this happened, went to the hardware store with me. I needed to pick up a fifty pound (ninety kilogram) jug of sand for some sandblasting I need to do. When the employee brought it out, he snatched it up before I could grab it. I said he didn't need to do that, but he refused to let me carry it. Now me being me, I was tempted to say I needed another one and see if he would carry that one too, and if he did, I would have kept going. But I didn't. This friend has made it a point to check in on me regularly and I can't fault him for that.
So, with that being said, the past few days I have been whining while laying around the house all day wanting to be babied. While driving to meet another friend last week for lunch, I heard an all too familiar sound from the backseat. My Jeep has a known problem where the power windows just decide one day that they give up. The sound I heard was the wind whistling through the window that was sliding down with each bump (of which there are quite a few from the endless assault of salt trucks). When I turned in my Jeep for warranty, they informed me that since it was the second time this has happened to me, the warranty required them to replace all four. Great news! Except that I hadn't planned on sitting around the waiting room quite that long. So, at some point during my four hour stay there, someone decided they would like to share the plague with me (or a nasty cold, one or the other).
The past few days have involved me single-handedly raising Kleenex's stock sales by over 50% (stock prices not verified) and walking around trying to remember when I swallowed a small melon whole, because it was obviously caught in my throat. It has been a while since I have had just a plain old cold, and I don't remember them making me this miserable before. Maybe I was always this puny. All I know, is I guess this will prepare me for whenever we do have a child, since I hear those little germ factories bring you a new malady every week.
So, I hope to be healthy again in the next day or so. I am not feeling too bad right now. I hope to fix those damn hydraulics on my boat soon. And hopefully people will see I am getting stronger after my surgery as well, and go back to treating me like crap. Well, maybe not completely like crap, just not like a baby...unless I have a cold.
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