The Weight of Everything Everywhere All at Once

 My life has been hectic and things are weighing on my mind. I feel like a juggler who isn’t sure where all the balls are; I’m afraid one of them is going to hit me in the head any minute.

 My current activities, issues, and problems fall into categories you may find familiar. There’s my health, my husband’s health, my adult children’s well-being, my grandkids in general, my friends, my obligations, my travel plans, my bills, the state of the country, the state of the world, the collapse of civilization …

 OMG, no wonder I feel weighed down.  

 Life these days is too much. I feel like I’m living in the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ve considered that it might be a consequence of aging. Could I be less resilient nowadays? Maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I think I need to focus on one problem at a time.

 I’m having surgery on my hand Thursday. It is the result of breaking my wrist in July but will also fix a longstanding problem caused by an old surgery on my thumb. I’m not exactly dreading the surgery—I do want the pain relief— but I am dreading the inconvenience of the recovery. I’ve already spent four weeks in a cast and it’s tiresome.

 Having the surgery required a visit with my PCP to get a pre-surgery clearance. In other words, an EKG to be sure my heart is up to it. Check that box; I’m good. Today I had to get blood work done, which required a visit to the hospital’s lab. Check that box and let’s assume I’m good.

 Four other doctors who’ve required blood work from me in the last three months said it was fine. That lab work is recorded in the amazing variety of MyChart programs that everyone’s pushing these days. Why couldn’t they just look at the labs I had done three weeks ago?!

 The last pre-surgery requirement: antibiotic soap. The technician handed me a bag with a bottle of special soap. She told me to take a shower using the soap before I went to bed the night before my surgery. Then she told me to take a second shower in the morning before I came to the hospital. Then she told me to be at the hospital at 5:30 am.

 I just looked at her. In my world, if I take a shower before I go to bed and then early enough in the morning to be at the hospital at 5:30 a.m., that’s one shower, not two. And the kicker is that I can’t even wash the place where they are going to do the surgery because it is in a cast that I can’t get wet. My head hurt when I left.

 Coincidentally, my husband had to have a diagnostic procedure today in the same surgery center I’ll be visiting Thursday, so that’s where I went next. Surprisingly, I got to his room (curtained area) before he did, so I had a good view of all the procedures. It was educational.

 I found out there’s a spray they can numb your hand with before they jam that giant needle assembly into it. Why did no one ever offer this to me at past surgeries? And, later, I found out there’s a spray that unsticks the glue so they can remove it painlessly. Admittedly, my hands aren’t hairy, so I’ll let that oversight go; Michael appreciated it though.

By overhearing the patient behind the curtain next to me, I found out that you can get a Diet Coke to drink after surgery instead of water. Who knew? I wonder if they carry caffeine-free Diet Pepsi. That’s what I like to knock back. Probably not.

 I’ll post a brief after-surgery update on Facebook. We’ll see Monday if repairing my hand lightens my load.

 What’s weighing you down these days?