My days have blurred together. I know it’s Monday, but have no idea what the date is. I’ve been in a percocet haze for the last six days. It makes my head feel swimmy. Six days ago I had minor back surgery due to a fall on black ice earlier this year in January. After months of going to the chiropractor, doing physical therapy, acupuncture and massage, I finally got an MRI done, which revealed I had chipped a disc between my L5 and S1, and the piece that broke off was lodged somewhere it’s not supposed to be and crushing my sciatic nerve. I had no choice but to have surgery to fix the problem if I ever wanted to be pain free again and return to my normal life of yoga, running, and cardio. All my surgeon had to do was make a 1 ½ inch incision, pull back my muscle, remove the broken chip and cleanup my disc where it broke off. Piece. Of. Cake.

Back surgery. I was terrified. There are so many nerves. So many risks. I was afraid I’d wake up from the surgery and be a paraplegic. This is a place my mind often goes to automatically: worst case scenario. But my neurosurgeon assured me “I’m going to take very good care of you,” and held my hand before I went into surgery, and when I came out. And he was right, he did.

My days since my surgery have been filled with percoset induced naps, marathons of the Golden Girls and Gilmore Girls, books and magazines. Each day, I try to walk a little farther than the day before. I have a plastic pedometer from Walgreens that I’ve strapped to the waistband of my pants to track my steps. I’m so glad I have this to feed my competitive nature. Early on, I had one day where I only took 100 steps. Yesterday, I walked 1,460 steps. Today, I’m up to 1,064 and I’ve only been awake four hours. Progress!

I’m looking at this down time as a gift to rest, something I haven’t been able to do much of lately. I have no schedule, no agenda, no appointments, no meetings to attend, or projects to work on. I’m learning to be happy doing nothing. However, I hit a bit of a low point yesterday when I took a selfie of my bun, yes my bun, and posted it on Instagram. I got a little bored, so I put my hair up in a bun for the first time and wanted to share my achievement during this growing out phase of my hair. After that, I watched Wanda Sykes’ standup comedy routine and ate ice cream out of the jar in bed. It was pretty fantastic. Even though I’m a Type A personality and have a hard time doing nothing, I’m pretty good at being a patient. I’ve had a lot of practice with it.

I got sick a lot as a kid. Flu, viruses, colds, even pneumonia. I was in kindergarten or first grade when I got hit with pneumonia. I remember feeling like I was walking through a swimming pool of water every day, my body weak and heavy. I remember getting x-rays taken and putting on a heavy, gray apron over my clothing. I was wearing a royal blue short-sleeve blouse with white elephants. The vest felt heavy like lead. I liked the feeling of this extra weight against my body, like I was wearing a suit of armor to protect me. I think I was sick for a week.

I never minded being home sick from school. I watched Scooby Doo and colored in the new coloring books my mom stopped to get me at the drugstore on the way home from the doctor. I usually got a fresh pack of crayons to go with it. I looked forward to taking my medicine, swallowing spoonfuls of thick pink liquid that smelled, looked, and tasted like bubble gum. My mom made me hot chocolate from the Swiss Miss packets and added a fluffy cloud of whipped cream. She served it in my favorite Garfield mug. Every morning she made me cinnamon toast with the perfect ratio of sugar to butter. I still make that for myself whenever I’m sick.

I’ve always been a good patient. I didn’t complain, sulk or wish I were in school. I liked being home watching cartoons, coloring, eating lunch with my mom. I remember when I got the flu in 4^th grade, I missed a week of school. I watched Benji movies and felt a tightness in my throat whenever he encountered danger as he struggled to find his way back home. My mom brought our black and white TV from the kitchen to my bedroom and set it up on a TV dinner table so I could watch TV in bed. I felt like a princess. She checked on me throughout the day bringing me something yummy to eat each time: red Jell-O, a can of ginger ale with a straw, and cupcakes—always cupcakes. They were the kind you get from the grocery store that come in packs of six. Vanilla with whipped frosting that made your teeth turn colors.

I ignored all homework. My best friend Kimmy brought my homework assignments to me. I didn’t do all of them because I was too tired, but also because I had better things to do like watch Benji movies and eat cupcakes. That Monday when I finally returned to school, my teacher, Mrs. Perrault, made me take all the quizzes I missed all at once. I still joke today that she was the toughest teacher I had. She loaded us up with homework every night in every subject. I got in trouble once for rolling my eyes and sighing audibly when she added yet another assignment to our homework. She seemed to take turns embarrassing her students in front of the class. I think she enjoyed it. Anyway, I got an F on my quiz on the 13 colonies. (I was never one for history.) My score was somewhere in the 40s I think. I just remember her red pen marks slashing through my answers—and non-answers—on the paper. She also gave me a quiz on the book we were supposed to be reading: “Dear Mr. Henry.” I hated that book and of course didn’t keep up with my reading while I was out sick because, you know, Benji. I made up answers to most of the questions.

Even as a kid I noticed that I got sick a lot more than the other kids at school. I was always fascinated by my classmates who finished the school year with perfect attendance. I should have gotten an award for most days missed from school.

I’ve always been the type of person who gets diagnosed with rare things. I once had a rheumatologist send me down the hallway to her colleague’s office, a dermatologist, so he could take a picture of my hands. She had just diagnosed me with aquagenic wrinkling of the palms, a rare condition that causes the skin on palms to wrinkle more than normal after being submerged in water. She also telephoned her daughter, a med student, to swing by her office so she could witness this rare occurrence. I wonder if my hands are in some medical journal I don’t know about.

Even this thing with my back. So random. I fell stepping out of my husband’s 4Runner. My foot hit black ice and I fell forward. Hard. I couldn’t just walk away with bruised knees and an aching back. Nope. I had to have surgery. I’m complex like that.

We like to think of our bodies as indestructible, at least I do. But we’re actually very fragile beings. Our bodies are kind of like cars. Every once and a while, something breaks, and we need to go in for a tune up. And sometimes that tune up is longer and more complex than we had expected. So I’m going to sink in to what is, fluff my pillows, take as many naps as I need, eat as many cupcakes as I want, and trust that my body will let me know when it’s time to do more. Now excuse me, the Young & the Restless is coming on in five minutes. …