Myth of Free Time

My blog hiatus was spurred by my wife’s recent knee replacement surgery and my plan to devote time to help her during her recovery.   I thought I might restart my blog in September after a brief stint as her helper.

I spent several days last week in the hospital with her and my nursing plan seemed on course.  I devoted last weekend at home to just that, helping her.  She is recovering nicely and I left the nursing duties for the week to her sister (who happens to be former nurse) and returned to work.   I returned to duty this weekend.

Of course I do laundry at night and shopping gets squeezed in between work and arriving home.

Now the routine is settling in.  Help her into the passive motion machine and watch her for two hours.  My watching lasts about ten minutes, after which I find a book or a TV show to watch.  Get her a drink, fix the ice pack and adjust the position of her leg.  Pace a little bit, check my email.  Answer the phone and give to her.  Give her the IPod.  Eat a cookie or two, or three.  Big gaps of time exist while on call for action while she is strapped into her machine.  Then we do a series of prone and seated exercises, have lunch, take a short break and return to motion machine for an early afternoon session.  One more session is planned for the evening.

Control unit for Continuous Passive Motion machine

Saturday was the end of my imitation of Florence Nightingale.  I thought I might have some free time for myself during my wife’s afternoon machine time so I went into slacker mode.

I booted up the old laptop, my preferred writing implement.  I have several journals, pens and an IMac but sadly my eight-year old laptop with all its quirks still feels most natural.

Oops I hear a call.

“I am done, time’s up.”  Iris gingerly moves her leg off the machine.  Then we remember we need to shop for a cane at the medical supply store.  Off we go.

So much for my free time.  But at least I have something to write about.

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