We all have our ways of recovering from illness or injury.  Typically, mine is the “hide in my cave” method.  I go home, ignore everyone, don’t answer the phone; David is the only person allowed to see me in my misery. After a few days I emerge and deal with the rest of the world.  That’s my “normal” way of doing it. However, this time was a bit different.

I had 60 hours of hospital time post-op and that time was filled with smiling nurses and nurse assistants.  Little did I know that there was a sign posted outside of each patient’s door saying “start your smile before you enter the room!” I just thought that the Ortho surgery ward was the friendliest bunch of people in the US.  Since there was also a sign at the foot of my bed saying “call, don’t fall” telling the patient to never get up without assistance, I was quickly brainwashed into calling the smiling, helpful, nursing staff each time I needed to void, brush my teeth, or contemplate the shower.  After all, I really didn’t want those nice nurses to get in trouble should I fall, right?

Luckily for me (and Mahdee) the hospital physical therapist assigned to me had a boating past.  Compared to my boating experiences, his were a bit wild–lots of fishing boat time, big seas, hurricanes and scary stuff of the sort that all male boaters seem to like to talk about.  Knowing I wanted to get back to Mahdee quickly, we went over the specific challenges of life aboard that I needed to learn how to deal with quickly: the hospital pre-op phamplet says your stairs shouldn’t have more than a 5″ rise (never mind that US building code is 7″…) and I knew that I’d be scaling 16″ to 19″ distances to rubrail, caprail, and from sole to seat on the way in-and-out of the cockpit.  Nice fellow, he helped me figure out how to do this as well as how to best kneel and retrieve myself from a kneeling position since I knew I’d need that one, too.  In addition to the normal learn-to-clunk-your-way-around-the-hospital-ward-with-the-walker and the special lesson of “how to abuse your walker going up and down stairs safely” I got the extra-special “everything you ever wanted to know about how to climb tall things you shouldn’t climb directly following hip surgery but were afraid to ask.”

So, Friday morning after my last round with the PT fellow, we came home to the boat.  I was already in my “cave” mindset thinking about my comfy bed in the darkened stateroom.  Ah, but I’d forgotten how much I love being in Mahdee’s sunny cockpit.  Before my surgery, we’d placed the boat on the public dock with a wonderful view, from the cockpit, of the channel behind Shelter Island.  I couldn’t resist sitting outside and enjoying the mild weather.

Further drawing me out of the cave were two neighboring boats:  our nearest neighbor sharing the finger pier were Pat and Ali and their daughter Ouest.  We’d emailed back and forth with them for a couple years and it just so happened that they were passing through San Diego right at that moment and just so happened to take the slip next to us.  Ouest was good entertainment as she jabbered, pointed, and climbed about on their boat.  Pat, Ali and Ouest kept me company in our cockpit for a while Friday afternoon while David went to the pharmacy to get yet more drugs for me.  The other neighboring boat of consequence belonged to Mark and Jackie, sailing friends of ours who have been in Mexico for almost two years.  They showed up while I was in surgery and stayed on the public dock during our stay there as well.  Jackie and her teenage daughter Amanda entertained me off and on during my first couple days on the boat as well.  It was so nice to have these boats nearby and their crews keeping my mind away from pains and onto more fun things.  Saturday morning, Pete, another boater we know, arrived in his 54′ power boat and parked between us, Mark & Jackie.  At first I was disappointed–I couldn’t call over to Jackie with words of encouragement or teasing as she and Mark worked on scraping and re-doing their varnish which had been baked in the tropical sun of Mexico.  Shortly I was happy to have cheerful, downright jolly Pete next-door.  He has a good stereo and in the past we’ve enjoyed quiet anchorages with Pete’s stereo playing tasteful classical fare;  On his arrival, he put on what he calls his “Irish pirate music” which I enjoyed greatly; then he played a bit of this-and-that upon my request, humoring me and making me further forget that I don’t feel that great. Over the weekend we had a couple more visits from boaters and lots of strong encouragement from the public dock staff as they saw me clunking along with the walker up the dock ramp.

I never really did make it into my solitary cave.  I regressed into sleeping most of a couple days towards the end of last week–I think I’d overdone it a bit with all my walking about.  We sit at anchor now with a couple familiar boats nearby.  A friendly visit or two from boaters who don’t seem to mind that I’m in my PJ’s; David is working on my galley–installing sink and counter adjacent the stove with me watching from the bed or saloon seating–and overall this is ending up to be a very “different” kind of recovery for me.  Yes, my thigh muscles really hurt, I’m really pretty brain-dead, and the steps are very high and it’s really a bit much to be climbing on and off the boat, but overall, life is good.