My Last Week

March 17th 2012

I got dinner out last night, and I brought it home to eat. I am now entering my last week and have made the decision to be home bound because I want nothing to come between my surgery and me. No germs, no interruptions. I am getting all the bills paid that I can, mainly because it is my job in our family and if someone else has to do it, you just know that I will be going back over it later, just to make sure it is done the way I like it done, because as messy as I can be, there are just some things that my anal retentiveness takes over me, at times.

Last night I colored my hair, one of my ways to be independent, even though I am not going anywhere. Like my life, it really doesn’t show, until it gets a bit ruffled and then the glory is borne.

under cover

And when that happens, the magenta and violet shades burst forth into a shocking array, flowing in vibrant colors which some may call ridiculous for a woman my age, but after all I am a licensed hairdresser, whether or not I am working and creating an income from my profession.

Ruffled & Blowing wind

It is my right and if confronted one will find that I am not easily subdued by patronizing or condescending remarks regarding how I should act my age. Who cares, anyway? If it makes another think or it causes angst to someone, rather than ask them why, and what they are missing in their life that would provoke them to seek outside of their own confines for answers to their own existence, I prefer my favorite response of “So?” to be sufficient.

I now enter my last week of non breath, as I call it, (in hopes that I will emerge from surgery a different person than what I am as I roll into the OR room on my gurney). My hubby has never known me to be a person of sound breath, as I was affected long before we met. He has never ridden a bike next to me, nor has he shared with me any sport or excitement that involves bodily movement that taxes the system. He has given of himself freely dissing all of his own sporting events just to be by my side, because in reality I have not been able to join in the world of activity. And in the last year or so I haven’t even been able to do the mundane things like going out to dinner in a relaxed state without my lack of breathing coming between us.

So, in hopes of rolling out of that ice cold room where they will have me hooked up to hoses, tubes, wires and videos and all of the equipment that they will need to fix my lungs, my surgeons will work their miracles on me, and perhaps rebirth me into the world of liveliness, once again.

After surgery, I hope that I never see that look in my daughter’s eyes again, when I cough, and that my husband can relax and not see me turn purple in his presence. Let it be only in my hair from then onward.

This coming week I will only go out to the hospital gym to work out, and perhaps top the Post Office to pick up mail. After that I will go out to fill the car with gas and that will be it. I guess there will be no excuse for the laundry not getting done.

I am not even going to the market and will rely on my freezer for sustenance. Fresh fruit and veggie items that I might need or dream up will be written on my shopping list for my hubby’s Costco and grocery store run, which is something that I usually enjoy doing with him, but not this coming week.

I guess I will have to find things to keep me busy when I am alone here at home.