My friend Lorah - who was in the midst of selling her house and packing for her upcoming move to Virginia - took a day to provide me with transportation home from the hospital, and to take my mom out to make a drug store and grocery run. In fact, they picked up fresh bagels, retrieved my prescription and stopped by the house to deliver both and to check up on me before they headed out again to the grocery store. Good friends are wonderful to have!
I'm the independent type - to put it mildly. I usually live alone, but I clearly needed help, and I suspect that that I would not have been released from the rehab hospital to come home alone. My mom stayed with me for two and a half weeks after I was released, which was definitely a good security blanket. She did the initial grocery shopping and driving (in a car lent to us by a good friend, since my car has a stick shift and although that's what she learned on, Mom hasn't driven one of those for years!), then came along with me as I graduated to driving again. Of course I insisted on doing as much as I physically could figuring that instead of assuming that I had limitations that I would trip on them when I attempted something that my body wasn't ready to do. It was probably somewhat of a challenge to stay with me over those couple of weeks!
There's really not much to say about my first days home other than it was definitely good to be home. I didn't really have the energy for much activity at this stage of my recovery, and most of the time was spent sitting around the house, reading, wandering over to the computer (to check email, to share other's cycling experiences, check the news, etc.), and walking a couple of times a day. The walks were very, very short to start with, graduating to (relatively) longer walks. In addition to enjoying being outside, an added plus to my walks was getting a chance to say hello and chat with some of my neighbors.
Home again, with access to a kitchen, fresh fruit, anything I want. Somehow small meals seemed to make me happiest as I was trying to undertand what type of food my body wanted. It's funny, you'd think after an accident like mine that just getting back to what I normally eat would make my body happy. But somehow I've found that food that used to work for me doesn't always hit the spot. Things are improving though... For now, yogurt and fruit shakes rule the day. And of course frozen yogurt and ice cream have a part in my recovery too!
I made an appointment to see my own doctor within the first week of being home since I wanted her to know what had happened in case I needed her help. It turned out that she had already been filled in by the neurologist from Spaulding, but I was glad that I went in to see her. Maybe that was my own version of insanity, but it was a good security blanket for me.
Before my mom returned home, she started counting the number of times I walked up and down the stairs each day. I kind of got the impression from the OT & PT at Spaulding that they figured I'd come downstairs in the morning, stay on one floor, and go back upstairs to sleep. That didn't work too well for me - maybe it was a repeat of the fiasco with the walker in the hospital. By the last weekend my mom was here, she counted my expeditions up and down the stairs at more than 20 a day. OK, OK, it's only one flight of stairs - but it's certainly better than doing nothing!
Keep walking, keep eating... and add in cycling as soon as possible!
Somehow I got into the habit of taking pictures of myself each day to try to document my healing progress. I have to say that I think the pictures actually look better than I did at the time I took them - ah, the magic of digital cameras! This picture was taken on June 4th, which is two days after I was released from the hospital. It's hard to believe, but if you look at what appears to be black & blue & swollen above my right eye - well, on August 12th, twelve weeks after the accident, it is still swollen (although just red, no longer black & blue)!
