Wednesday: breast...

Wednesday: breast reduction surgery, with lots of percocet to follow

by Sunday: just a little ibuprofen

Monday: no painkillers at all

Tues and Wed: back to the percocet

Why the change you ask? When you were healing so well? Because I am an idiot, I reply. Here's a summary of events:

Monday night, perhaps because of no painkillers, I don't know, I sleep really, really badly. Wake up every two hours, and take a while to get back to sleep.
Tuesday morning, I am exhausted, weepy, and having a hard time making decisions.
Tuesday @ 7:30 a.m., I call and ask the school if it's okay if Kavi and Anand come in today, instead of Wednesday (they're going three days a week over the summer, usually MWF), because it's field trip day, and there's a boat ride scheduled for Kavi's class. They say that's fine.
Tuesday @ 8:00, Kavi who has apparently also slept badly, is weepy and mad -- but still wants to go on the boat trip.
Kev and I waffle for a while, but then decide okay, she can go. But one of us should go with her as a school chaperone, since she's in a fragile mood and has never been on a boat before and might freak out. (We typically don't do the chaperone thing, and leave it to other, more involved parents.)
We decide that I should go, because Kev hates sunlight and boats and water, and I love them. Also, I can take my work with me, since my main job for the morning is to read short stories from So Long Been Dreaming, which I can do on a boat, right? And it's just supposed to be a forty-five minute ride, so no big deal.
Kev takes us all to school, lifts Anand out of the carseat and takes him in (since I'm still not supposed to lift anything over 5 pounds), and I go in with Kavi (who can thankfully climb out of her own carseat).
It turns out that there's close to an hour before it's time to go. I duck out for a chai to fortify myself, then come back and hang out on the floor of the classroom, reading some, but also letting Kavi snuggle with me, because she is still fragile and unusually clingy.
At 9:15, we go downstairs to get on the bus. Oh, right, the bus. Of course, you have to actually get to where the boats are (downtown, at Navy Pier, about 20-25 minutes away). This is going to take longer than we'd thought. Because we clearly weren't actually thinking.
Kavi and I sit in the first seat, and she continues clingy. And then get bus-sick -- not enough to actually throw up, but enough to be pretty unhappy. Poor baby.
I'm thinking she'll be excited when she gets to the boat, but no. The boat is a total bust. She is bored on this big tour boat, with a guy who is droning on about various historic aspects to the lake that a group of 3-6-year-olds will not understand in the least. I could give a better tour for them than this guy. Kavi keeps asking when we can get off. Sigh. I am mostly failing to read since I am instead constantly pointing out things to her in the vain hope that she will get excited about one of them. Look, a ferris wheel! Look, gulls! Look, sailing ships! Look, flags! She continues unimpressed.
So far, this is all just a waste of time. But wait, it gets better.
Finally, finally, when we get off the boat and are waiting for the bus to arrive, she starts to perk up and have fun. She hangs out with her friends Morgan and Maura, and they laugh and giggle and climb around on a stone bench along with other little kids -- until one of them falls off, splitting his lip. Oops. I go to beg ice from the McDonald's lady. Luckily, his dad is right there, and the little guy stops crying in a few minutes, and his lip stops bleeding. Whew.
As we're getting on the bus, Morgan and Maura head all the way to the back. Kavi wants to sit with her friends. There are three seat belts in the seat, so I say yes. Question -- do you see, at this point, why this was such a terrible, terrible idea? I did not.
We start up. And I am reminded of something I had forgotten in almost thirty years of not riding a school bus -- that it is incredibly BOUNCY in the back seats of the bus. Incredibly, PAINFULLY bouncy for someone who has just had breast reduction surgery, even if she is strapped into the bra o'doom.
I spend the rest of the bus ride curled up as tightly as I can, arms tight across my chest, hoping that the parent seated across from me doesn't think I'm a freak, but mostly not caring if he does, because even with all of that, my breasts are jouncing about and it hurts and I'm worrying that it's going to rip open the stitches.
And here's the truly stupid part -- I didn't just get up and move further up the bus, to the less bouncy area. Why? Because Kavi was finally having fun with her friends, laughing and playing princesses (they were all Aurora, for some reason), but I was worried that she was still fragile and if I went too far away, she might get sad and weepy again, and I couldn't bear it.

So that's why, after healing remarkably well, I've now set my recovery back several days. Hopefully this won't result in more scarring or other complications, and has just cost me a few days of extra exhaustion and pain. I'm not sure what the moral of the story is. Don't make decisions when you're exhausted? (Except sometimes you have to.) It's okay to let your child be a little upset? (Except when it's not.) Sitting in the back of the bus always leads to trouble and grief? That is not a lesson that's likely to be widely applicable to the rest of my life.

At least she was happy, briefly.