Taking stock

The past two weeks have not been good for me. I injured my leg last week while getting out of my chair as my cat beckoned me, with his persistent yowling about his stupid pink mouse, which has not seen the light of day since that night. To cope with the pain, I took enough Advil to make most people numb for quite a while.

If you wonder how much it hurt, let's just say that I could not put on my pants. I could lift my leg up about half an inch, and that was it. I had a side-swaggering limp that made me feel awkward and clumsy, and very much like a little old lady whose hip was giving her trouble. When I get to be old, I hope I accept the challenge a little better than I did this time around.

The worst part of this whole injury was the constant questioning by my co-workers. "What did you do?", "Are you STILL limping?" (to which I wanted to say, what the F#$%^ does it look like?), "Have you gone to the doctor?" Finally, on Thursday I complained to a friend that I just wanted to be left alone. My friend said, "Well, we just care about you." I truly appreciate the compassion, but there is a fine line between watering a plant and poisoning it with too much water. By Thursday, I was drowning and my roots just wanted a chance to re-grow and heal.

Thankfully my leg healed, and the questions about my leg were replaced with compliments about how quickly I rebounded. This is due, in part, to Advil, a heating pad that remained affixed to my leg while I was at home, and many hot baths with Epsom salts. This did not happen without any consequences. I think I may have taken too much Advil, for the weekend was filled with other worries, which I will not go into detail about on this blog.

What I can take away from these past two weeks is: a) I really need to be careful about how I move around; b) Advil is not as friendly as I thought; and c) I need to be more careful about what I put into my body.

One of the first things to be cut back: caffeine. As a teacher who has been convinced that coffee is essential for survival, I have not thought twice about how much I drink. Yet at the same time, I can also say that I have been more likely to snap at a child's behavior (even though most of the time I am snapping in my head, and not to the actual child) and have felt more tired than usual. So, with this newly rediscovered awareness about my health, I began to cut back. I now have a cup of tea in the morning, followed by mostly decaf coffee when I get to school. That's it for caffeine.

The remarkable results: I am much less irritable and I am sleeping much better now, and it has only been a week. I am more tired at night, but I am sleeping more peacefully. The hardest part of this was on the second day I had a killer headache, but I would not take Advil. I took two Tylenol instead. My dull headache never completely disappeared, but at least I didn't put non-steroid hormones in my body. Until I did some reading, I had no idea how bad Advil actually was. Live and learn.

So yeah, it's been a crappy couple of weeks. But I think I'm coming out of them a little bit better, and slightly wiser. And no, this isn't the most exciting post, but whatever, life isn't always thrilling.