Things to Do While Convalescing

• Read an essay by Susan Straight on California Patios, titled Sun Boss--Inventing the Patio.  This is from her series for KCET, found *here*
• Read the series of papers given to me by the hospital, a collection of helpful and inane pages (including one on how to prevent the spread of disease, which includes the timely tip to "wash hands for at least 20 seconds")
• Talk on the phone to friends, my parents and my brothers and sisters.
• Sleep.
• Write back answers to sweet, touching, kind and caring emails.
• Moan.
• Read poems from the website Poetry Daily (a sample)
• Grimace when I forget and roll onto my left side, where they performed a "wide excision" and took out a hunk of my leg (or at least it feels like they did).
• Be grateful that I didn't have cancer in my lymph node.
• Sleep.
• Talk to the nurse on the phone as she calls to check up on her surgery outpatient.
• Finally enjoy my first real meal: a pot of homemade chicken soup, cooked up by my husband.
• Lay in bed.
• Realize that I can't think clearly, and that my mouth feels like cotton.
• Read the news online, as I can't concentrate on anything other than short blurbs.
• Stare at the bumps in the ceiling.
• Look outside at the beautiful day and wished I felt well enough to sit outside.
• Try not to sit (it hurts).
• Admire the way the clutter on the nightstand can be stacked to include glasses of ginger ale & water, pretzel bread brought back from Ohio, cell phone, regular phone, books, clock and eyeglasses.
• Count my many, many blessings.
• Sleep.
• And remember that--

"The mind wants this: a door in the wall,
         an open field, a narrow path
         through the woods, an open field" 

Helen Wickes