The Title of This Post Could Be: "Change in the Weather"

OR "Getting Used to My New Climate".

So I have been recovering pretty well. The usual aches and pains as one would expect and I get tired easily - but I am beginning to feel like I am getting my feet back under me again. The lifting restriction still remains in force - which is kind of a nuisance, but I am glad that is the extent of my limitations.

I have had plenty of help around which has been very welcome. When all you're able to heft is 2 pillows (can you believe two of them weigh 5 lbs??), having someone else around to do stuff like put your large glass serving bowl away is kind of handy.

I have no qualms about saying that while I have a fairly high tolerance for pain, I have been "hitting the bottle" on a somewhat regular basis. Pain is exhausting and counterproductive sometimes when it comes to healing, and while not a wimp, I don't see the need to feel pain if I don't have to. They sent me home with Percocet and Motrin, which was just groovy with this gal. By the end of the first week (and I have been on Perc before without this interesting side effect) I noticed something odd. I was beginning to think in rhyme. Yes, rhyming thoughts - like some Dr. Suess monologue playing in my head.

I do not like to lay. I do not like to lay all day. In my bed I stay, stay, stay. In my bed I lay, lay, lay. I do not like to lay I say, I really want to play, play, play.

You get the idea. This was somewhat disconcerting because my thoughts usually tend not to rhyme, be repetitive or come in Iambic pentameter. Once I reached the bottom of the percocet bottle the rhyming thing seem to clear up. When my Doctor asked me about any "unusual symptoms" at my 2 week check I thought this might qualify - but felt somewhat reluctant to admit it. She was stunned enough by my extensive cervix that the rhyming thoughts might have been a bit much to process and I didn't want her to think me an even bigger freak than she already did. I didn't want her questioning my mental capacity as I really wanted her to say I could start driving again.

About the time the hot flashes/fever cycles started leveling off I noticed something really strange one day. My arms were covered in flesh colored bumps. I showed them to my mom. At first she was as stumped as I was. I thought - surely I could not be having some allergic reaction to the Ambien I had just started taking. Could this be some strange side effect, withdrawal from losing my uterus? I was actually quite concerned. My daughter also examined these strange new bumps on my arms and pronounced them "goose bumps." Goose bumps! I have had goose bumps before and while these were similar, in fact, exactly like them - nothing eerie or supernatural had happened to cause them to crop up. Then it hit me - I was cold. Now, this may seem pretty dumb to the rest of you. Just let me say that I usually have one temperature setting - hot. My internal thermostat has up to now been perpetually stuck on high. I just do not understand cold, at least not in the sense that my body feels cold and reacts by breaking out in goose bumps. Though, here I was - broken out in just that and I was cold. I have a sweater - but no idea as to where it might be as I never wear it. I had to buy myself a new sweater because I was cold. I have worn it more in the last couple weeks than I have ever worn a sweater before in at least 15 years. I am usually the person people look at strangely because she is walking calmly into the store wearing sandals and a short sleeved tshirt when it is 40 degrees out, and I am comfortable. Last winter here did get brutally cold and I condescended to wearing a light coat, closed toe shoes and covering my digits, but once inside, short sleeves and sweating whenever the heater came on. Feeling the need for a sweater, particularly while indoors is very new to me and the fact that this is happening frequently now and not because I am spiking a temp is quite novel. So novel in fact, that I keep misplacing my sweater and become almost frantic in tracking it down when I feel chilled. So, changes I have noticed since losing my uterus - I think in rhyme, am easily confounded by common phenomenon such as goose pimples and can't keep track of my possessions.

BUT - I can drive!