Saturday, January 22, 2011

Hand Surgery Shoots Me Down

It's been going on for years. Numbness in the morning, throbbing pain at night, dropping things, left and right, in spite of splints, B-complex vitamins, massage therapy and chiropractic care. Sometimes you just have to say, "Enough is enough". That's what I did on Monday, finally bowing to the fact that this part of my body needed a surgical intervention. I've never had surgery before and tried to remain calm. My doctor uses a scope and the whole thing is over in thirty minutes. I was home on the couch by 2:30, I think.

Neither one of the kids bothered to call until I posted something catty on my son's facebook wall. Oops! The Girl called soon after. That's the difficult part of the empty nest for me. I don't really know what's going on in their lives and they don't know what's going on in mine. It's not that they don't care, it's just that I'm out of sight/out of mind. I raised them to be responsible and independent so I have no one else to blame.

In twenty or thirty years, I could be that old lady you see at the grocery store. You know the one. She's shrunken, has blue hair, smeared red lipstick  and sneakers on her flat feet. She totters around and gets in your way everytime you turn up an different aisle. You wonder why anyone would let her out by herself. Oh my god, did she drive herself here? You hurry with your groceries so you can get out of the parking lot well in advance of her departure.

Or, I could be like my friend, Grace. She's eighty-two, tall, still ramrod straight, red-headed and sharp as a tack. She's more likely to run over YOU in the aisle of the grocery store. She's also childless and is perfectly okay with that.

Hmmm...

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