A lost day

 

image from Freepik.com
I didn’t expect a minordermatological procedure to cost me a whole day,  abut it did. When I get home a little beforenoon, I felt fine, spent an hour or so clearing up emails and the like while eatinglunch and took my regular nap. It was when I woke up that my world was changed—thetopical anesthetic was wearing off, and my scalp and head hurt. Fortunately, aglass of wine helped with that. We had no dinner plan, but Christian offered tobring subs from our favorite sandwich shop, and Jordan and I wrestled with gettinginto a certain website that kept rejected our log-in. I had great and ambitiousplans for the evening for what I would do—but I have done none of it. I lost mystarch. It wasn’t that my head hurt anymore, but I was aware, in a strange wayof the affected area. And I had no energy. I resigned myself to frittering awaythe evening surfing the net, looking at adoptable dogs, reading Facebook, andthe like. Never even got to the novel I’m reading.

My mother came to my mind.When I was young, she suffered from migraines that would send her to bed for aday. When someone asked me about her, I would cheerily reply, “She’ll be allright in the morning.” And she always was. So that’s my story: I’ll be allright in the morning.

Two things interest me aboutmy lost day. One is, as a child of osteopathic medicine (not only was my fatheran osteopathic physician, so were many uncles and cousins and today my brother,one nephew and one niece carry on the family tradition), I was reminded againof osteopathic theory. No one part of the body is isolated, so the procedure,beneficial and necessary as it was (and let me stress it was minor), was aninsult not just to my head but to my entire system. My dragginess was my body takingits energy to get back to normal after the insult. Yes, I expect my head willstill be sore and tender for several days, but I also expect I’ll have mystarch or oomph or whatever back tomorrow.

The other lesson today is onethat it’s taken me years to learn: I gave myself permission to check out forthe day, to fritter the day away. In my world, there’s nothing so urgent thatmust be done today, and there’s no need to push myself when I don’t feel good.Granted, there’s a thin line there, and it would be easy to abuse thatrationale, retreat into “I don’t feel good” and never do anything, but I don’tthink I will. My compulsion to write, to be involved with the world will drawme back to business, and there are several things on my calendar tomorrow—phonecalls I have promised to make, a fish dinner I want to cook for the Burtons (I’veordered groceries to be delivered tomorrow, and if we are  going to have fish, I like to fix it the dayit comes from the market).

So now I’m cozy in the cottageand will soon go back to bed for—what? The fourth time today? It’s okay. I’llbe fine tomorrow. I hope you will too.