Holidays and recovery


 Holidays and recovering make it sound like I partied so hard and now I am trying to deal with a physical and emotional hangover. lol yeah right. (That's in January).

What I am actually referring to here is celebrating Thanksgiving and then recovering from spine surgery shortly thereafter. 

But let's talk about the fun stuff first. 

First fun thing, my old office held it's first "Volunteersgiving" since the pandemic. It is a delicious potluck that I like baking for. I also really like being able to connect with my colleagues over food.


Fun thing number 2: Blake and Brendan came for Thanksgiving! Usually it's just me and Levent for the food holiday and it's super lowkey. This time though, it was still lowkey but we had company! A great excuse for me to try a few new cocktail, make a snack spread and make one too many pie recipes.

A lot of our weekend was spent watching the World Cup matches, which was actually really fun and relaxing.

We feasted on Thanksgiving obviously and then on Saturday, we took them to Wichita to see the sights. (Since it was rainy, we just went and got delicious ice cream at Frost, went to see a movie and then had dinner at River City Brewery). It's always great to have them here.


And now on to the less fun thing: Surgery.

Awhile ago, my sports orthopedic doctor sent me to a spine specialist in Wichita. After meeting with him twice, I decided that I would try surgery to see if it would help with the chronic butt/leg pain I've been dealing with for 8 years. So on Dec 1, I went under the knife again to deal with spinal stenosis. This was after we were exposed to COVID and I had to go through a whole hoopla to figure out if I could still have surgery. Thankfully I tested negative and was able to continue as planned. But woof, was that a stressful couple of days. 

My surgery was late in the day and ended up not being until around 4:30 before actually started. (We spend so much time waiting we actually were able to watch a full World Cup match).

That late start time combined with the fact that anesthesia makes me so sick, we ended up spending the night at the hospital. We definitely were not prepared for that decision, but thankfully my husband is a trooper. And thankfully my parents arrived at our house in time to take care of our pets while we spent the night in Wichita.

The following weeks you could find me sitting in what I started calling my convalescence chair recovering watching World Cup matches or Girl Meets Farm. It was really nice having mom and dad here to help out with cleaning and cooking and taking me on my doctor ordered daily walk.

The Sunday after my surgery, we decided to do my recovery walk at the arboretum in Hesston so we could look at the prairie lights. It was a beautiful little walk.

My mom and I also did some baking together. (Well, she did a majority of it but I helped out when I could). We even made a chocolate raspberry pie from scratch that was enjoyed one evening when Heidi and Hayden came over to say hi.
 
My parents and I even braved going to Wichita one day, which turned out to not be the best choice I've ever made. But I did manage to take them to Frost.

They left after a little over a week into my recovery my parents headed back east. Eventually I went back to work, which is a bummer. But what is not a bummer is that I've only had to work 4 full days in the entire month of Dec. So that was a nice little perk.

My recovery is still ongoing. (I am sitting in my chair right now). But things have definitely gotten better week by week. (Although it's still too early to tell if it'll help my chronic pain). Until then, you'll find me here, sitting in my chair.

Comments