Healing

Healing is serious business.  It takes nearly all of a person’s energy, and yet requires that the person still move, eat, and rest in helpful measures.  Exhaustion seems always to lurk nearby, waiting for the most inopportune moment to strike.  For me, it likes to wallop me in the middle of a family dinner, half way through folding clean laundry completely littering my bed, or near the end of writing a blog.  

I look healthy…in fact, I look good.  If someone were to see me sitting and watching my kids at a gymnastics practice, no one would have any idea that two weeks ago I donated a kidney to my Dad.  It is only when I get up to walk, try to find a comfortable position when I first sit down, or dine with someone who really knows me do people have an inkling of my recent surgical past.

I don’t want to eat.  Apparently, this is normal.  There is something about shutting the gut down (pre and post surgery) for so many days that makes is slow to regain its former momentum.  Today, I made myself two fried eggs for breakfast.  I had two bites and thought, “who could eat this awful stuff?”  Why would I say such a thing about my favorite eggs?  I would guess that it is because everything tastes ridiculously potent to me these days.  Salty foods are overly salty, and sweet foods are even worse.  My eggs were very eggy, whatever that means.  My husband says that I have to stop using the words “cloyingly sweet” to describe anything containing the slightest hint of sugar. 

I have to eat so that I have some energy.  At 3:30 this afternoon, I settled on forcing myself to eat an English muffin with peanut butter.  It made me feel better, but somehow overstuffed.  I have also had some grapes, a handful of blueberries, and a Tiger’s Milk bar over the course of the day.  Not the best diet, but something is better than nothing.  I’m going to attempt a salad, because that sounds good right now.  If I make it past three bites I will celebrate! 

So, if you hear hoots and hollers at your house—don’t worry, it’s just me jubilantly enjoying my salad.