It's like a tooth ache...only bigger
Haven't checked on my own blog in ages, but I did so today just to see the countdown to my hip replacement surgery. I keep meaning to tidy up the blog (as well as my house...) but I spend every week-end recovering from the week before and gearing up for the week to come. Keeping up with work while keeping up my game face is absolutely draining. The part of me that is not Irish is heavily Teutonic-Stoic and I do not like to mention the degree of pain I am in. (Perhaps in some ways I am over-reacting to the behavior of a co-worker who has had several surgeries in the past year and revels in regaling everyone with the details of her medical status. She's not necessarily the 'Baroness von Munchhausen.' But she's comin' close. I would prefer not to discuss it at all. When word got around the office that I was planning on taking some time off for surgery after Easter, I thought I was going to loose my mind as I politely answered questions while trying desperately to change the subject. Some people have trouble catching on that someone doesn't want to discuss a subject. It has reached the point that the next person who asks why I have one hideously arthritic hip at such a relatively young age is going to receive a reply of "syphillis." Yes, I know syphillis is not funny, but neither is having your hip dislocated in a car accident and then trying to go about life as best as possible while the hip gets worse and worse. Maybe 9 out of 10 people will drop their line of questioning if syphillis comes up in the preliminaries. We can hope.)

So anyway, I don't feel like discussing my bones too much here, either. But I've been going through a difficult adjustment to using a cane and feeling chronic melancholy from the pain meds. And I don't know if not mentioning the hip here is in stoic good taste ...or just an extension of my vanity and denial.

I finally have given in and used a wheelchair a few times at Target. After the last time my leg locked up in the back of the housewares department and I almost had to be wheeled out on a merchandise trolley.... I can wheel myself now (a skill that I am eager to forget as soon as possible) and if Rick thought he had trouble keeping track of me in Target before, well, now it's a whole new ballgame. So to speak. And we took the boys to see the Shaggy Dog - which was pretty funny - and a good way of keeping me from spending Saturday in the semi-fetal position.