returning to routine

So today I woke up with a wee tad of a headache, which, given my situation, I immediately attributed to the lesser dose of the medication that's supposed to reduce swelling in the brain. And of course that worried me.

But then all of a sudden that headache began to feel mighty familiar. Wasn’t this the very same headache I used to feel every morning when I woke up? And is it really a headache? And then I recognized it. This was my normal morning coffee headache. It was time for coffee. This was what my old life used to be like! I used to feel this every day!

Which must mean—I’m back.

And I do feel in many ways like I'm back. Yesterday I did that run for the first time: a half mile up the hill and then back down again, all the while concentrating on the placement of my numb right foot. It still moves just fine; better, if anything, than it did a few days ago, and certainly eons better than it did before I got my diagnosis, when heck, I couldn’t walk at all. So I guess that numbness I’ve been feeling of late is not indicative of anything important. Later in the day I was still feeling energetic, so I went for a fairly strenuous hour-long walk. And that turned out to be a bit too much. These are things I could do before I became all necrotic (I love saying that; I apologize for the fact that it seems to spook everyone else out), but at this point it’s probably been eight weeks since I’ve been able to do vigorous exercise. We’re six weeks past the surgery, but there was also a two-week period before that, before I even knew I had the tumor, where I had already begun losing sensation and movement. I think I had had to give up running a week before I got that MRI that spelled out the truth. And in the day or two before the diagnosis, I had lost so much movement in my right side that I could no longer drive, because I couldn’t depress the gas pedal. So that’s how far I’ve come in the past two months.

Anyway, remembering what you used to do is very convincing: you think you can do those same things even when something’s happened that prevents you. And the muscles retain memory, even if they lack their former strength. So I chugged on enthusiastically, no doubt overdoing it a bit. I could really feel it by evening, and I was a bit stiff all day today. Today I covered the same distance and routines, but I took it a little easier and just walked the route instead. And sure enough, by evening all was fine again.

I remember having to take it slowly when I first began running. Memory is funny--in many ways there's been this process of trying to rebecome the person I used to be and remember all the things I'd forgotten about. But then in other ways I just want to skip past pretty significant chunks of time that I spent preparing and working up to things, and get right to the parts I want to keep.

I think you pretty much have to acknowledge that you own all of it.