Random Acts of Nerding

My husband returned to work on Thursday after a five-day weekend. He spent most of it recouping, running errands, and going to appointments of his own. On Tuesday, however, we took advantage of his weekday availability to venture out of our neighbourhood for the first non-medical-appointment time since I was discharged.

We’ve devoted a lot of energy lately into very actively brainstorming how I can feel as if I’m more fully participating in life. I’ve been in a frustrating grey zone for a while now—too well not to care that I’m unable to be as independent as I’d like to be, not well enough to be able to do a heck of a lot more than sit around wishing I could be more independent than I am. I’d been waiting a really, really long time to be evaluated by a physiotherapist in our home, and my husband didn’t feel comfortable straying too far from what the doctors, occupational therapist, and physiotherapist in the hospital told me were my limits, so even as I gained strength and confidence in my ability to handle stuff, we held back. It got to the point, though, that without some breaks in the nauseum, I could no longer tolerate the level of confinement that I experience, well, ad nauseum. My mood was tanking, and I was lacking much to look forward to. I needed a taste of what I’ve been working toward. And so we talked about it and decided to ask a friend to accompany us on a trial excursion. (Thank you, C!)

There was some back and forth as to what our first foray into not-our-neighbourhood would be. We initially thought that a movie would be ideal—relatively sedentary, easy to get to, something I love—but nixed that idea when we remembered the washroom problem (not to get too intimate in this TMI, tell-all blog in which I have the nasty habit of shamelessly revealing myself despite my brain’s reminding me that not everyone wants to hear the nitty gritty of my ultimately pretty boring life or anything).

In short, I use the washroom more frequently than most adult people do, and when I gotta pee, I gotta pee in, like, ten seconds. Preferably fewer. Peeing at home presents its own difficulties given that someone has to supervise my transfer to a bedside commode, but we get ‘er done. The commode is a few steps away, it’s elevated, and I have a walker with which to transfer. Being not-at-home presents an expanded set of pee problems. Is there a washroom nearby? If so, is it accessible? Is it in a self-contained bathroom? If not, is there a nongendered, accessible washroom? (In my case, I require one of the latter two options since my husband has to help me transfer.) Having to leave the cinema for bathroom breaks would inevitably be time-consuming enough to result in our losing plot lines.

That’s when the epiphany came. The destination would be of my favourite places in the city: the Toronto Reference Library, a beautiful space with, conveniently, a nice little coffee shop.

Everything went even more smoothly than I would’ve guessed it could. We had a lovely visit with one of our best friends and even followed it up with a trip to a bookstore. I successfully used a public washroom! Most encouraging of all, I had the stamina to sit in my chair for several hours while we were out on the town.

The best word to describe my last month or so is probably “murky.” There are tons of good things happening, but the metaphorical waters have been muddy enough as to make seeing the positive developments in a non-muddy light nearly impossible. Stuff like this week’s nerdcursion always does wonders both to help get me through and to trust more and more that there is a through. Hanging out with a friend and my husband in a library, buying a book I didn’t need but wanted to read without waiting months for my turn, feeling confident enough in the future to start planning for it in a concrete and empowering way: I can sense myself slowly returning to life and taking agency in deciding what I want my little world to include and look like.