Exhaustion and Coffee
I expected the pain after surgery, and I know how to deal with it (the dark and mysterious past I’ve alluded to includes a lot of issues stemming from that spinal fusion). But it turns out that in trying to repair what it thinks is some horrifying traumatic wound, your body doesn’t have a ton of resources to spare for things like “exercise” or “standing on two feet” or, most importantly, “getting to the coffee shop.”
But come hell or high water, there is nothing that will keep me from my mocha latte. Nothing.
I have very strict “no lifting more than five pounds” instructions for another week or so, which presented a problem: my backpack, laptop, laptop charger, and emergency ostomy-changing kit weigh more than that. I’m doing my best to abide by that rule for fear of re-opening an incision or earning the wrath of my slightly intimidating colorectal surgeon from Russia, but it turns out that I needn’t have stressed out about accidentally breaking it — for the first few weeks, it was literally impossible for me to lift that much without keeling over.
The thought of going to the coffee shop without my laptop just doesn’t make sense. The mental image doesn’t compute. It’s an impossibility, a evil mirror-universe version of reality where everything is terrible all the time. So I went ahead and decided to be a fashion trendsetter and bring rolling backpacks into style. Voila:
So the first obstacle — weight limits — had been conquered. Good! But the fact remained that simply walking the distance to my favorite coffee shop required two breaks to catch my breath and left me exhausted. I compensated by going to my second-favorite, much closer coffee shop, which has been working okay. I’ve made it to my favorite shop once so far, and I’m determined to get there this afternoon. They have the best damn cappuccino in town, and more importantly, no wifi to distract me from getting some work done. A Cambridge coffee shop without wifi is part of the of evil mirror-universe reality that I am totally chill with.
My third-favorite coffee shop, by the way, is even closer than those two, but I can’t eat their sandwiches anymore without risking a blockage behind my stoma.
How’s that for a mental image?
