I get asked that a lot.
I look like I’m perfectly fine, except during a hot flash (at least a dozen a day) when I more closely resemble a tomato.
As of last Wednesday, I am allowed behind the wheel.
That’s where the trouble started.
When you tell someone like me that she can get back behind the wheel, she will probably go right back to her old tricks: 6 errands in one morning because 3 of them were “on the way.”
I’m not doing anything I’m not allowed to do, but I seem to be doing too much of the stuff that I am allowed to do.
And therefore, even though I look perfectly fine on the outside, I’m exhausted by this point in the afternoon–even on a day when I don’t do too much.
I think I was better off when I wasn’t allowed to drive, because I was necessarily limited in things I could do by where I could do things. Clearly I am way too much of a Type A personality to do recuperation well.
TheDad is awfully good about the fact that he called last night at 7:30 and asked me to have the kids turn on the pool filter, waking me up when the phone rang–and then I hung up the phone and completely forgot about the pool. “You’re still healing,” he reminds me patiently.
I keep forgetting about that until I find myself trying to stay awake at 3 in the afternoon and know that the next 6 hours are going to be a struggle.
Because really, except for the scar, which is always covered by my clothing, I look perfectly fine on the outside.
You know what I’m learning? You can’t judge someone who is ambling across a parking lot, right in your path. You can’t assume that because they look perfectly fine on the outside, they’re fine on the inside too. You can’t assume that walking doesn’t hurt them or that they have the energy to walk faster than that.
I hope I remember that even when I do have the energy to walk faster.