It was a strange week.  I dropped my brother off at the airport earlier today and he is safely on his way home.  I feel oddly disoriented.

All in all, I feel pretty good after the surgery.  There is still some residual soreness with one or two of the incisions but nothing that isn’t manageable.  My brother was somewhat floored by how well I was doing by Monday or Tuesday last week.  Yes, the picture above is a collage of the stuff we did.  Pretty remarkable.  I almost felt a little guilty for not feeling worse.  Yeah, that’s sort of weird.

We never really had a plan for last week because we didn’t know how the surgery would go.  Since I needed very little actual “care” – aside from food prep, driving, and lifting over 5 pounds, my brother was bored by Sunday.  So while I had little energy or desire to do much of anything, he was looking to me to find things for him to do that were close by.

We went downtown on Monday to Lake Eola (top center and bottom left pics).  He had heard there were black swans at the lake and he wanted to see them.  There are about 4 mating pairs of black swans along with about 30 other swans and assorted waterfowl.  He was hooked in about 10 minutes.  I managed to make it one lap around the lake before I sat on a bench while he made another round to take more pictures.  He went back again on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, we drove north of Orlando to a state park where they have a restaurant that is famous for pancakes you make at your table.  I had never been there but had heard about it (bottom center and top right pics).  The drive (about an hour each way) was actually pretty tiring for me.  It was still a pretty day and nice to be out.  The day was tiring enough that I decided to stay home on Wednesday and nap.

On Thursday we went to an indoor mall that is set up for individual artists to sell their wares.  It has been around for just over a year and I just had never made it there.  It was ok, nothing all that exciting.  Friday was supposed to be a stay at home day to do laundry (which I could not carry) while it rained / stormed.  The rain cleared out shortly after lunch and it turned into a really nice day.  So we went to the Orlando Art Museum (center right pic).  I had been there years ago and was not all that impressed.  Still not impressed.

And then Saturday was the big outing to a local garden.  You can see the hospital in the distance across the lake in the center pic.  It was a gorgeous day and the highlight of the week.

So now I am left with no plan after the doctor appointment tomorrow morning.

I had time to ponder this shift in the course of many resting spells and naps last week.  It’s like I am mentally exhausted from all the planning and preparing over the past few months that my brain has shut down.  Heck, most of last YEAR was spent planning for something – always trying to think ahead and plan, organize, and prepare for something.  And then suddenly once the surgery date was here, there was no more planning because the future was unclear.

And it is still unclear.  If the lab results are back, then tomorrow will be another turning point.  If the lab results are not back, then there is more waiting.  Sometimes I want to know and sometimes I don’t.  Sometimes I think I can handle whatever will happen and sometimes I’m not so sure.

One thing I DO know for sure, I am happy to get my house back again.  It will just take a while to get back into some sort of a routine.