(no subject)
There's a hole in my life, has been since I got home from hospital. Not the actual incisions: they've healed up nicely, the stitches have dissolved and the tape has fallen off. And not the missing kidney itself: presumably things have already shifted around (or at least started to) to fill the empty space. No, I'm talking about something else entirely.
In the mornings, I get up and go to the bathroom, and when I come out of the bathroom I don't have to go out to the driveway next thing. During the day, I can walk freely from kitchen to computer to living room or the stairs up, there's only inanimate clutter in the way. At supper, there's no defined end to the meal; we can linger, or wander up to the TV room, or wait for hours before putting the leftovers away. If I have to get up in the middle of the night, I know the way: there's no one that I can't see sleeping somewhere in the bedroom I might step on.
The first couple weeks, while I was still in hospital and just come back, I really didn't miss L that much, I didn't feel the loss. Pain has a knack of making one somewhat self-centered; that much trauma to the viscera means I couldn't feel much else very viscerally. I think the fact that I wasn't reacting made things harder for C, even more than the fact I couldn't do anything around the house. And now the more I'm recovering (physically), the more I realize that I'll never get back to The Way Things Were Before.
Though he wasn't showing any particular symptoms, up until the very end, I knew he was getting on in years, and that someday the time would come. But I could imagine an end where I was there, and could tell him good-bye and that he was a good dog and all that. (Unless the end was too sudden, of course, but then that would have been that.) But first he went deaf, so he wouldn't have been able to hear me. And then it turned out I wasn't there at all.
So, when I went into hospital I had a dog, and when I came back I didn't, and that's the hole. And this one only started hurting as the other one got better.
In the mornings, I get up and go to the bathroom, and when I come out of the bathroom I don't have to go out to the driveway next thing. During the day, I can walk freely from kitchen to computer to living room or the stairs up, there's only inanimate clutter in the way. At supper, there's no defined end to the meal; we can linger, or wander up to the TV room, or wait for hours before putting the leftovers away. If I have to get up in the middle of the night, I know the way: there's no one that I can't see sleeping somewhere in the bedroom I might step on.
The first couple weeks, while I was still in hospital and just come back, I really didn't miss L that much, I didn't feel the loss. Pain has a knack of making one somewhat self-centered; that much trauma to the viscera means I couldn't feel much else very viscerally. I think the fact that I wasn't reacting made things harder for C, even more than the fact I couldn't do anything around the house. And now the more I'm recovering (physically), the more I realize that I'll never get back to The Way Things Were Before.
Though he wasn't showing any particular symptoms, up until the very end, I knew he was getting on in years, and that someday the time would come. But I could imagine an end where I was there, and could tell him good-bye and that he was a good dog and all that. (Unless the end was too sudden, of course, but then that would have been that.) But first he went deaf, so he wouldn't have been able to hear me. And then it turned out I wasn't there at all.
So, when I went into hospital I had a dog, and when I came back I didn't, and that's the hole. And this one only started hurting as the other one got better.