Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Back To Life, Back To Reality

I returned to work yesterday, after being off for about a month helping my wife recover.  She returns to work this Saturday, if she can stand it. Her wound is still pretty big, but she's a lot more mobile now.  She still can't sleep in a bed, but hopefully she can sit up long enough to work a few shifts.  I want her to take all the time she needs, but she's already told her work she'll be back Saturday.

I felt guilty for having taken so much time off work, but simultaneously guilty for leaving my wife alone to go to work yesterday.  Work itself was light, and would have been downright boring if I hadn't had so much to catch up on.  I had nearly 6,000 e-mails in my inbox, no exaggeration.  Luckily 90% of those e-mails were auto-generated notifications I could delete without looking, so it only took a couple of hours to clean my inbox.  I kept getting shaky now and then, and having trouble remember what order to do things in.  Not just with work processes, but even in normal stuff.  Like I was washing my hands in the bathroom, and while trying to use the soap I accidentally reached over and grabbed a paper towel instead.  It's like my muscle memory has gone haywire.

A couple of nights ago I dreamed that my wife came upstairs while I was sleeping, and stood at the foot of my bed, telling me to wake up.  I looked up and she was standing there holding her stomach, with blood on her clothing around the wound.  She said, “We need to go to the hospital.”  Then I woke up for real, and she dissipated.  Took me a while to get back to sleep.

But overall, things are getting better.