It’s Wednesday night , so the story continues.
Picking up from last week –
(which was really just a tangent), so more like picking up from two weeks ago –
Multiple professors were encouraging me to take more time off before coming back to school. (I had a doctor’s note for 6 weeks.) And some of my family members were finally putting their foot down.
My family had been very lovely to respect my wishes not to come visit in the hospital. But now that it had been about two weeks since surgery, I started hearing, “You come see us, or we come see you.”
All right. All right! If I’m not gonna be in school, it’ll be super boring just to sit around my apartment. I made an appearance at my family’s house. And I went to see everybody.
The whole seeing everybody thing was really kind of nice. The day after I graduated high school (okay, the day after I graduated, I had a party… but the day after that), I got on a bus and did my best to stay busy enough to never look back!
It was weird (but cool) to see my friends again. Everyone was sort of “Oh, you do exist?” (In a nice, fun way – not in an angry way that I never visited.) I Greyhound bussed around to see some friends at a couple of different colleges.
My mind was absolutely boggled by this incredible completely free time that I had. (Now I’m less cool and have free time all the time as you’ve read over and over in this blog.) But back then, really it was – it just boggled my mind.
Eventually, I made my way back to Boston. I think it was about two or three weeks that I was gone.
In the end, I think I took close to, if not all of, my six weeks allowed in the doctor’s note.
Some of my teachers had had open heart surgery before. They were extremely sympathetic and almost too understanding. I sort of felt as though perhaps I was taking a little advantage of their kindness. Maybe I was. I could’ve gone back to school a little earlier, and I probably could’ve churned out some better work.
Some of my teachers were not nearly as understanding. Some were right in the middle – with probably the perfect amount of patience and understanding. I passed all of my classes that semester – not with a stellar grade point, but passed.
As far as getting back into the world of running, I went to the gym soon after being discharged (I think within a day or two). I was unbelievably frustrated with how hard everything was. I wasn’t even allowed to run at first. Even if I had been able to (ha!), I was only allowed to walk for the first few weeks.
A mile seemed so far. I kept telling myself I’d do the half marathon I’d already signed up for in the first weekend of May. That definitely didn’t happen. I just got more and more frustrated as progress continued to be very slow.
As far as health went, overall, it went pretty exceptionally well. And that’s where I’ll pick up next week.