The Impatient Patient.

On big biological events, and how to age and die.

It’s day 11 after my total hip replacement. I am lucky and blessed beyond belief: I have good health insurance, paid medical leave, a comfortable home, a caring spouse who just happens to be out of work and can answer every little ring of the bell (more honey in my tea please! Time to put on my socks since I can’t reach my feet!).

I’m also 54 and was in pretty good shape before surgery, so that technically means I should have a speedy recovery, right? RIGHT?

But bodies do what bodies are gonna do. They are full of surprises, and also disappointments. They heal on their own timetable–and sometimes don’t heal at all.

I learned this lesson after vaginal childbirth with my firstborn (4th degree tear and major loss of blood!), and again after emergency vertical C-section with my lastborn (breech positioning and cervical tear up all the way into the uterus! We both almost died! yay!).

And I learned it over a much longer timeframe, with much higher stakes, when I was a cancer patient submitting to lung surgery and 14 consecutive rounds of scorched-earth chemo.

And because I am a terrible Student of Life, now I get to learn it yet again. I’m Mr. Miyagi’s spiritual pupil, except my waxing on/waxing off consists in: dragging myself around the house with the walker I borrowed from church, showering with the bench I borrowed from church, gingerly setting myself down on the bedside commode borrowed from church (yet another perq of being a churchy person: we didn’t have to buy any post-surgical aids!).

There is so much I still can’t do for myself, including carry a cup of tea from one room to the other. Basically, I’m having a temporary lesson in what it will be like to grow old, and become more and more dependent on aids and on people.

I’m truly grateful for this lesson, and the gentleness with which it is arriving. I have what every middle-aged working woman wants: a relatively clean and quiet house, a stack of books, a TV remote control, chocolate, helpers, TIME and permission to relax.

AND I’m profoundly cranky and combative in moments. I cried on day 3 and accused my husband of only loving me when I’m productive and capable (profoundly untrue; I blame narcotic-induced constipation for my tantrum). I berated myself on day 6 when I wasn’t like Reddit User Songsfrom1970 on the r/TotalHipReplacement forum, back at the gym already.

On day 8 after surgery, I was antsy and bored out of my mind. I weaned myself off oxycodone (it was making me spacy), and took my walker out to the alley behind our townhome. My vanity did not permit me to be seen on the actual public sidewalks of Alameda, hence my skulking.

I pushed myself up and down, up and down the alley, flinching and groaning a bit. No pain, no gain, right? Except that the next morning I woke up in the bad kind of pain. Shooting pains deep in my joint and down my leg.

“It will take up to 6 weeks for the bone to heal around your new prosthesis,” I remembered the physical therapist saying. Back to bed, Netflix, ice, the stack of fairy smut my clergy colleague lent me. You pity me this terrible fate, right? Except that R&R is more fun when it is autonomously chosen rather than thrust upon you.

Of course, I did choose this surgery, in the service of having a more flexible, pain-free existence. But the whole arc of this “huge biological event,” as a friend put it, has been harder than I thought. I’d been led to believe by optimistic Youtube videos that anterior hip replacement was a breeze. That I’d be up and pickleballing in no time.

And I’m not even spearheading the Resistance while I convalesce, like I maybe thought I would. I’m half-reading the 17 political substacks I subscribed to, but not even calling my MOCs every day. Another grave disappointment in my abilities and will power.

I’m mostly writing this all out today because, as usual, it helps me make meaning and move some bad juice when I’m feel stuck. And maybe some of you out there are recovering from something and similarly peeved, or just feeling effed by the growing creakiness of your general physical existence.

Anyhow: I’m here to remind you that you’re going to die, and so am I. And that in the meantime, life is an endless march toward entropy, including a bedside table full of half-drunk cups of cold tea, and encroaching bodily frailty.

Wiser, more Buddhisty writers will tell you it is a good thing to embrace the idea of aging and frailty! They will counsel you, when you’re ready, to engage in corpse meditation. You’ll do this so you can live more mindfully, aware of the transitory and fleeting nature of human existence.

But I’m just here as a mediocre Christian to complainingly say: Jesus only spent 2.5 days resurrecting. I’m on day 11 and still waiting.

I guess one of the reasons I keep getting the same lesson is: it has yet to stick. It’s good to experience pattern shifts and have intermittent mini-identity crises when we have come to believe too much in our own aptitude, or outward characteristics, or infallibility.

I am not my hair, I am not my body, I am not my productivity. I am not what I can lift or how many squats I can do or how far I can swim underwater on one breath. Nor am I my turkey neck or my age spots or my mummy tummy. I’m not my tattoos, nor my virgin skin, nor my scars. I’m not my role at work or my role in my family or larger society. Or rather: I’m all of these things, and so much less, and so much more.

If you can dance today, please do it for me! I’ll do it for you, hopefully by next week sometime, when the roles might be reversed. Because life is like that.

*click here for dance party interlude*

[note: all of this written mostly in transient, grumbling jest! Don’t send out the cavalry or the Jacquie Lawson cards! I’ll feel better soon, because of the ministrations of solid people in my immediate circle of care and my body’s natural healing processes]

Grumbly love,

Molly <3