Hi all,
I'll make the medical end of it brief: Good news? I'm home after three weeks and two surgeries. Bad news? I have a wicked infection in my new hip...which will require 6 weeks of IV antibiotics and then another two months of oral antibiotics after that.
It's good...and odd...to be home. I came home with a few bags of dirty laundry and hospital discharge instructions...and walked into the house I'd missed so much...and didn't feel like I belong here anymore. My husband and daughter have "mom-less living" down pat...The house is freshly cleaned...My bedroom looks like a stranger's room...The things I brought home don't really seem to find a place here ...Where do I put this stuff? I KNOW it's only laundry and papers...and Suduko puzzle books (my latest passion), but the stuff that has been "home" to me all these weeks in the hospital now is "hospital" territory now...new stains on the clothes, new smell to them....Will they ever find a place here? Will I?
My husband tells me I may not ....ever...
The thought of moving on and moving out seems like it would take an unimaginable amount of energy and ambition...both of which I seem to be high and dry out of. Can I live alone after over 20 years...no, closer to 25 years, of living with people who took care of me? That rabbit hole looms there. The last years of living alone were in my twenties...newly diagnosed with schizophrenia and immersed in deep depression. They were years of hell...and honestly, I'm scared that if I live alone again, it will begin to feel and look like that again. Have I moved on? Have I really gotten better or is it just the structure of a home and family that are keeping me anchored and grounded? I honestly don't know.
I honestly don't know if I would remember to take my meds twice a day; and honestly am not sure that if I forgot for one or two days, I would go back to taking them. That's a terrible thing to think: that I'm that unstable really. But these are the doubts that I have; the fears that are fluttering around now at 2:00 AM.
I had a long talk with my daughter tonight...Not about my marital situation, but about her loneliness; a deep sadness. Lord, she is so much like me...but unlike me, I think.
I hope.
I think that deep down, she is more sensible and responsible--even though I'd lived and worked alone for 7 years after I turned 18 and left college because of the onset of my illness (I only completed two years...and not in a row)...Even though I may have had better skills at providing for myself and more working experience...I think that she is still stronger. I hope she is.
Mine was a miserable young life...maybe "romantic" in a bad novel kind of way...but a romance that no one would ever want to live out. It was really a dance with death....and death came so close to winning so many times. It was only God's grace that caught me with each precarious plummet. And now I sit here; 47 years old in terrible health...and contemplate my life and how it would be different...or the same...should I have to return to a similar living situation now.
Homelessness is a real possibility. Many, many of my friends with this disease have been homeless at one time or another. I think given one night on the street and I would die, just out of pain. I can't imagine it. I know that I probably will always have a bed with some of my friends...if I am well...but if I step off that cliff again; I don't think that will necessarily be the case. Will I even be able to get the medicines I take now that are keeping me well? I was so unstable in the past 3 years until we found this combination....but they are expensive. I don't know if state funded medical assistance will cover them.
oh well.
Morning will dawn...and these fears will be shoved into some drawer with the hospital-smelling clothes and maybe I won't need to drag them out for a while.
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