By the Skin of My Teeth

Writing through pain and resting to write again

I went in for back surgery on Monday, May 3rd. The previous Thursday I’d found out I was going to have surgery, and when I began writing this it was Thursday again and I was on percocet and tylenol and ibuprofen and several different laxatives, having had the surgery. Today it is Thursday again, and this is the first day I have woken up without having to take an opiate. I am very grateful for that, especially as someone who has struggled with addiction in the past, and for whom taking opiates is fraught.

Life is strange.

Last Thursday I walked for twenty minutes. I kept thinking I was walking too much, but it didn’t hurt, and the doctors told me the best thing I could do was walk. Walk as much as my pain would allow. This morning I woke up and made my coffee and walked for twenty minutes, too. It’s become my morning ritual, this walking. I make my coffee, take my vitamins and my Tylenol and my muscle relaxer and, if I am in too much pain, a percocet, and I walk my beautiful Seattle ne…