With a Lot of Help from My Friends

I am two and a half weeks out of surgery. The new hip is settling in nicely, and I marvel daily at the total and astonishing absence of the arthritis pain that plagued me for so many years. I have been ‘pain-different’ since I left the hospital, with a continually diminishing pain that has been much easier to bear than the chronic, debilitating variety of aches, stabs, and sears I tolerated for so long. Each day there is a little less pain and a little more strength and mobility. I am strictly constrained in the ways that I can move the left leg until a total of six weeks have passed, after which I should be able to move in any way I want. Meanwhile, I take baby steps, first only with a walker, and this week using a cane more and more. Yesterday I walked all the way to the back gate for the first time. It’s a miracle.

Wren loved all the aunties coming and going, and Topaz did not. I’m especially grateful to Pamela, who offered to come stay over the first six nights, and much of the first few days, and with her competence and compassion kept my recovery on track. Other friends came for a few hours at a time to help with all the daily tasks I could not do, and/or brought food to both me and Mel in our separate dwellings, and yet others drove me to surgery and post-op. All day every day, it seemed, as I lay in bed explaining where things were and what needed to be done, gentle women moved through my house taking care of my life. It was exhausting to watch them filling in for me!

For days I was essentially bedridden, getting up only to totter to the toilet and back to bed with the support of a borrowed walker. After a week I was able to totter outside and sit on the patio for a few minutes, in a chair bulked up with a borrowed cushion. Pieces of many others’ homes are in mine now supporting me. Being the recipient of all the assistance, compassion and loving kindness from my local community and others farther afield brought home to me the truth of Interdependence and Interconnection, of “Interbeing” as Thich Nhat Hahn called it. I’ve felt more deeply connected as the receiver, in the center of all this supportive attention, than I am accustomed to feeling as one of many givers to others in need of support. It’s a wonderful perspective to feel such belonging. I could not have done this alone. I am so grateful for community.

Recovering seems to take almost all my energy every day. Gratitude takes the rest. It’s late, and ‘the server’ is refusing to upload more photos. It’s the universe telling me it’s time to go to sleep. I am grateful to be standing on my own two feet again — with a lot of help from my friends.