Today is six months since my surgery, a fact I hadn’t realized until Kimberly mentioned it earlier. In a way, I guess that’s a sign that things are better, and that I’m not thinking about that day. Or maybe not.

Lately, I’ve been dealing with emotional aftershocks of that day, and it’s been very disturbing. Some of the work we’ve been doing in physical therapy has stirred up emotions that are very powerful, and only now getting processed. In my two most recent sessions, we’ve gotten my body into a position which triggered a very vivid recollection of the surgery, if “recollection” is the right word for an experience you weren’t conscious for. Both of these have got me wondering about the nature of anesthesia, and the drugs they give you to keep you from remembering the procedure. It seems clear that, while my mind has no memory of the events, my body sure does.

I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. It was a grueling ordeal from a physical perspective. More than that, they CUT ME! A lot of the work I’ve been doing in rehab has been on the scar where the tracheotomy was. It healed a little funny, it pinches and is still a little irritated. The other day, I was overwhelmed by the feeling “OW-OW-OW-OW!”, not now, but in a sense of memory. Did it hurt me when they slit my throat? I don’t know; define “me”. The part of “me” that is stringing these words together now had checked out. The part of “me” that does the breathing, and feels the weight of my butt against the seat, and everything else, was still, on some level, there and able to feel. And let me tell you, I have the impression we are pretty deeply wired to not have our throats slit, even if it were painless.

The optimist in me says that having all this quasi-memory, with its attendant emotions, coming up now is a good sign. It means that I’m healed enough, and strong enough, and not in survival-mode enough, for my internal psychological regulator to start letting it surface. But it sure isn’t pleasant. It makes me tearful, and twitchy, and lots of other things you might expect from someone who’s coping with pain, grief, anger, and assorted other emotions.

If you are wondering, yes, I have found a professional to help. She used to work with cancer patients at UW. We had our first meeting this week, which was mostly a data-dump. (Not that I can get through a data-dump on my medical history without breaking into tears a few times.) It’s definitely time.

Meanwhile, what else can I say about the six month mark? It’s a mixed bag. It could be worse, but I’m not where I wanted to be, nor where I thought I would be. I still have a pale white symbiotic worm poking out of my belly. I feed it regularly, and I seem to maintain weight. I’m very happy to be eating rice, but I’d been thinking of hamburgers by now. I’m thinking about a future, and my next career, but I’m dissolving into tears on a regular basis. The paramecium is beginning to look like my own skin now, but I still look puffy and lop-sided when I look in the mirror.

I haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that I will never again be as I was before the surgery. And I haven’t yet reached that place that could be labeled my “new normal.” I’m a dislocated person. This body I’m in doesn’t feel like the home I’ve known for 44 years. There’s no going back, and the way forward is complicated and slow and not fully clear. Meanwhile, every minute just feels “wrong” on a subliminal, and often a conscious, level.

I have to stop writing now.