Day 181

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I'd written anything. I started feeling like I was writing to the void, and you know what they say - if you look into the void, the void looks into you (actually I think that's Nietzsche). It was getting awkward.

What's also awkward is writing about things that make me sad, or things that are hard - those are the days that I write blog entries in my head, but those are also the days that I don't want to post, because I just want everyone to think I'm doing great. And I am! Just not every moment of every day. I still have trouble explaining to people what happened, and I still seem to get pretty wiped out sooner than I would expect to, but then again, maybe I'm just getting older (hehe). The biggest thing I find I have trouble conveying or explaining or even dealing with is how I've changed. I find that I'm emotionally a lot more vulnerable than I used to be, which I suppose is not unexpected. What is unexpected (to me) is in the ways that I'm more vulnerable. When people are stressed out around me, I can't cope with it; I just have to leave the room or risk having an anxiety attack. In my mind, I used to be a source of calm, so this is hard to deal with. I guess I just feel like I used to have these sort of emotional filters that aren't there anymore. It's hard to explain. 

Last Friday I was at the Wound Center for a check-up. Mondays and Fridays are for burn patients, and I usually feel so comfortable there - mostly because the nurses there know me well and my doctors are there and everyone cares and tells me that I look great and that I'm progressing SO well, but also at least a little because on those Mondays and Fridays, the waiting room is full of people who have some idea of what everyone else is going through. This last Friday though, I was sitting in the waiting room playing Quordy (boggle for the iphone), when these two women sitting across from me start going into great detail about their injuries, including blow-by-blow accounts of the incidents themselves. I haven't had a panic attack in a while, but that set one off and I had to get outside.

The other hard thing is that I'm still dealing with it, I'm still coping. Granted, I'm doing these things a lot better than I was - I actually can talk about my accident with people other than my immediate family and my therapist now, but I sometimes feel like people look at me and think 'Oh, that happened six months ago? You're fine!' And yes, as I keep saying, I am, but that doesn't mean I'm not sensitive. It doesn't mean that I'm fully healed and can run around and do whatever crazy thing occurs to me next. What it does mean is that I'm still recovering, and I'm still recovering well. So, yay!

Day 71 - 2 months, 8 days

(Added Dec 28: Just found this post as I was writing an update - I can see that I never finished it and therefore never posted it, but I'm going to post it since it was such a momentous occasion! And I promise I'll finish my thoughts in the next post.)


Okay, big news first:  NO MORE BANDAGES!!! All of my open wounds are now officially CLOSED. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! My skin is all still pretty fragile though, so I rarely get to walk around and feel the wind in my leg hair. (Have I written about that before? It's really an incredible thing.) Speaking of leg hair, I think that I've got it growing in all of my burned areas (on my legs. My arms have ARM hair, woah.), which is really good - pigment is tied into hair growth, so the more hair I've got, the better my chances are for getting as much pigment back as possible.

Other, more general news: I've been discharged by the visiting nurse association, which is sad because it means I don't get to hang out with Inna anymore. She's Russian and pretty much the greatest. I have physical therapy (hereby referred to as PT) twice a week at Cornerstone in Woodbury. It was both shocking and unsurprising to see how much stamina I'd lost - I knew I'd lost a lot, considering how little it took to exhaust me over the course of a normal day, but that first visit I was wiped out after 10 minutes on a stationary bike and 5 minutes on an arm bike. Now I'm up to 10 minutes each on the bike, an elliptical, and the arm bike, and rather than being wiped out, I feel pretty good! Tired, but good. The other day some of my excellent cousins and friends were over, and I managed to participate in a game of kickball! That was when I discovered that running after not running for 2 months is exhausting. I had to take a nap after, but being able to actually participate in a physical outdoor activity was just incredible.

A more difficult thing that I've been dealing with is my own self-image. You know how when you're daydreaming or just dreaming or if you close your eyes and picture yourself, you have an idea of what you look like? Well, it turns out that if your physical appearance changes rather drastically, there's a lag time before your mental image catches up. It's been getting better, but at least once a day I look down at myself and am surprised by what I see. It feels like having the hiccups, or hearing something that sounds like your alarm clock in the middle of the day. Oh yeah, I'm awake. It's hard to look at pictures of myself from before, because I know that I don't look like that anymore. I don't know if I'll ever be the 'wear shorts as early in the season and for as long as possible' person anymore, and part of me feels like that girl with the toothy grin and the long legs is gone. This is hard to write about.

Day 44 - Zing?

A recent conversation with my landlady (anyone looking for an apartment in State College, PA?):

(I'm talking to her about giving up my lease, since I'm deferring a semester, and she knows the general situation as I got burned while starting a fire with gasoline)

Her: So how are you doing dear?
Me: Oh, much better, thanks! Just one spot on my right thigh that's still healing.
Her: Well, I guess you've learned your lesson, haven't you.
Me: *blink* Uh, heh, yeah, I guess I have.
Her: I bet your mother must say that to you every day!
Me: Well, no. She doesn't. She's very sensitive to my feelings on the subject.
Her: *awkward moment of realization* Oh! I'm sorry!
Me: It's okay, more people say that than you would think... etc etc

And it's true. There haven't been many, but there have been a handful of people who have looked at me - looked down at me from their high horses - and proclaimed from on high "WELL I GUESS YOU'VE LEARNED YOUR LESSON!" I don't even know what to say to that. Well, except what I have been saying, which is 'Heh, yeah, I'll say!' (smile, nod, walk away) Anyway. I just find it annoying (infuriating) and wish people wouldn't toss out that phrase quite so lightly. Or even at all.

I totally won in that conversation though. Zing.


Today has had its ups and downs! Mostly ups though :). We went to see Greg at the bike shop (Class Cycles, Southbury, CT - best bike people around!!) to look for a pair of bike shorts. I've graduated to compression on my legs, and my Widows leggings aren't going to cut it! Roy, the owner, mentioned that athletes nowadays are using actual compression tights after races and stuff, which I find fascinating. I would imagine it would shorten recovery time (after a race) drastically! We ended up with a full length pair of thermal tights, but we might order the others later.

The down was that when I got home, I decided I would clean up the pile of wood that I tried to burn. Most of the pieces were light and easily moved, but one was big and unwieldy, and I ended up banging my leg on it. YEOWCH.  But, all the wood is moved and it looks nicer now.

I think that's about it - OH. Dan came over tonight and we had a pretty good game of battleship. Unmedicated, I trounced him. ;) And I even knew whose turn it was most of the time.

Day 41 - Wound Center Appointment

Today I had a check-up at the Wound Center. One of the things I've been thinking about is how this experience has made it so much easier to just absolutely and completely love people I've hardly met. This is one of the few times in my life (at least in recent years) that I've had to completely rely on other people. Their receptiveness to me, pride in my small accomplishments, encouragement through everything... I could go on and on (and I have). So many small things that make such an enormous difference.

Anyway, my appointment went pretty well.  My right thigh wound, which was the deepest of all my wounds, had 'hyper-granulated', meaning that, well, it basically pulled a teacher's pet and outdid itself. The center of the wound was deep, and so the skin had to grow up from underneath before it could heal over. Unfortunately, it got going too quickly and made a sort of mini-mountain in the middle - an area of raised open wound. 'Skin can't go up mountains' is pretty much what they told me, and the skin that had grown (it's hyper-granulated, remember?) wasn't particularly good quality. So, they burned it back off. Ouch. First they numbed up the area, then they brought out these tiny sticks of silver nitrate (remember my friend from before?). They actually looked just like matches, with concentrated AgNO3 on the tips. So I got a nice, under control chemical burn. Then they bandaged me up, and asked if I'd like to push my appointment out to 3 weeks this time. NO! said I. So 2 weeks it is.

After I went to visit my friends in the burn unit, and to show them my progress. Needless to say, they were very happy to see me, and very impressed with my new skin! (I'm pretty impressed with my new skin too, when it isn't itching.) I asked them about volunteering, and they gave me the number of the Bridgeport volunteering office, and also looked up for me a society of burn survivors that work to help other burn patients. I'm excited about looking into that a lot more. I wasn't able to see the collies this week (alas!) but hopefully when I go back in 2 weeks I'll be able to arrange a meeting :D.

This post is getting pretty rambly (probably because of the hour) so I'll just wrap it up here!

Day 39 - Some kind of normalcy

Today my mom's cousins from Colorado were visiting (they're visiting family on the east coast), and for the first time I felt capable of getting a little dressed up. Which is to say that I pulled on some Wellesley sweats, a shirt my mom and I got at Kmart, and my scarf from Rome. It was definitely putting the scarf on that did it for me - I haven't worn a scarf since Wellesley, I think, and it had become so much the norm for me. I clipped back my (clean) hair, and headed out to socialize. I still got tired out pretty easily (standing still is irritating to my legs if I do it for too long!), but it was an interesting experience hanging out with people who didn't know that I'd been injured - having something other than my recovery be the center of the conversation was a very welcome change. It's so easy to get myopic when you're living with a long-term thing, and since I have to be so careful with the treatment of my new skin and my one small still open wound (which requires a dressing change every day) blah blah blah, I'd almost forgotten there were other things going on.

In this same vein:  I talked with my advisor at Penn State the other day, and I'm going to be doing some research while I'm home! I'm also going to be taking a class online (differential equations... anyone know a good online place to take it?), and (I hope) doing some volunteering in the burn unit at Bridgeport. It's nice to feel capable of doing something other than focusing on myself!

Day 35 - 11 Harrowhouse

Today, I finally finished this book that I've been working on (on and off) for the last month. We watched a movie on Netflix sometime towards the beginning of the summer called (surprise) 11 Harrowhouse. It was so bad, I thought that it had to be based on a terrific book. There was virtually no dialogue, and the narration, which clued us in as to what was going on, was awkward and sounded as though it had been added after the movie had been made. It turns out that there are two versions of this film - you got it: one (the original) without narration, and one (the one we saw) with. HAH.

Anyway, this may be one of the only times I say this, but I think I may actually prefer the movie to the book. Don't get me wrong, the book was well written, but it was the kind of thing that sort of floofed along on this little puff of unreality and then WHAM BAM main characters that we've come to know and love in all their oddities are assassinated in each other's arms and it's over. Oops. I'm sorry. Were you thinking of reading this book? Don't worry, you'd have to ask me to borrow my copy, as it's out of print (Greg tracked it down for me). Which is to say, the difficulty of finding it outweighs the worth of reading it. I'm actually a little bit disgusted that I let myself be dragged along for so long. I did read a few other books in between, but I continued to return to 11 Harrowhouse. Today I finally sat myself down and finished it off. Bam.

Today was a pretty slow and straightforward day. Ken, my physical therapist, came by and we went through my stretches and did some strength exercises. He's funny - I have a great deal of strength in my legs, and I admit, I thought I was stronger than him. He's been letting me believe that for the last few weeks, but today we were doing 'press leg into bed' which is where you, the patient, lie flat on the bed and press your whole leg into the bed. Start at 5 times per leg, and add 5 reps every week until you're doing 15. Don't start at 15, you may hurt yourself. Anyway, the strength variation of this involved Ken holding my leg under my knee and keeping it up while I try to push it down. Normally, I get my leg to the bed with no trouble, but I think Ken was tired of letting me think I was stronger (I would have been too) and he just held my leg there. I was putting my entire weight and leg strength into getting my leg to the bed, and it wouldn't budge. I couldn't help myself: I started laughing. The whole thing was just too funny. I mean, how did I ever think I was stronger than him? Seriously, he's a physical therapist. He does this stuff all day. Plus, he has biceps.

Ken says my progress is 'excellent' and says he'll wait to hear the verdict from my appointment on Monday, but he will probably cut me loose soon. I am slowly developing his addiction to Arnold Palmer half lemonade half iced tea so that he'll have to keep visiting me. I'll write about this later when I get to talking about the weeks when I got home, but just so you can imagine him: Ken is about a half a foot taller than me and is probably in his early-mid 60s. He used to be in the navy, I think (he has an anchor tattoo on his arm, but it's old and the edges are blurred), and wears all white. His hair is white, and he has a crew cut. He hasn't mentioned anything recently, but he tells me that I have benefitted a lot from military treatment of burns, and based on his stories, I believe it. I'm also so incredibly glad that I got burned now and can take advantage of all of that knowledge, rather than 20, 30, 40 years ago. It's terrifying to hear of how burns used to be treated - from applying butter when you first burn yourself (DON'T - it actually fuels the burn. Cold water is the best initial treatment, NOT ice, as some people think.) to methods of cleaning (whirlpools, no morphine. blargh). Yikes, yikes yikes.

Okay - sunken treasure associated with the Taj Mahal just walked into the pawn shop (see Netflix - Pawn Stars)... more later!

Day 33 - Approximately 1 month later

Wow. If someone had told me while I was in the hospital that in a month I'd be home walking around mostly healed, I'm not sure I would have believed them. I think that at first, I thought I'd be in and out of the hospital and healed up in max 2 weeks. Then they said I'd be there for 2-4 weeks, and I started trying to walk... anyway, I can't honestly say that I'm amazed, but I'm so happy to be here, both at home and at this stage of healing. I only have one more bandage, which will probably be on for only another week or two!

In a way, that's kind of frustrating because the potential is there for me to go to school. Physically, superficially (I wanted to write surficially, but that isn't a word), I can tell myself that I'd be ready, but I'd be lying and wrong. Frankly, I don't have the stamina to make it through a regular day at Wellesley, let alone adding TAing and doing research and getting myself to and from Penn State. And, well, I'm not ready to be on my own so much of the time. I'm going to be talking to my advisor at PSU tomorrow to work out some stuff for me to do so I won't just be twiddling my thumbs, and knowing I'll be accomplishing something does a lot to make deferring a semester easier.

And... that's the update!

Day 32 - Daddy Jim

I wanted to write down something I wish I had gotten up and said at my grandfather's memorial today. I had kind of planned on it, but everyone had such beautiful, eloquent things to share, and I only had a few sentences. Excuses, excuses.

My grandfather, in the last few weeks of his life, had a great deal of difficulty traveling: It was exhausting and uncomfortable for him. Regardless, when I got home from the hospital, he made the trip out to see me. It was within the first couple of days, which are pretty fuzzy for me, but I clearly recall sitting in the dining room. Daddy Jim was in the TV room, and wanted to see me. With the help of my dad and my uncle, he got up and walked over to the dining room. His walk was more of a hobble, and my walk was definitely a hobble - and when I saw him hobbling over to see me, I got up and hobbled over to meet him in the middle. He gave me a big hug, and told me that he was glad I was doing well. He just always made me feel so loved. Even sitting with him in his last days, while he was unable to speak and move (last stage of Parkinson's), I would tell him what I had been up to and how I was doing, and he would squeeze my hand to let me know that he could hear. I love and respect him so much, and even more having heard so many stories yesterday from before I was born. He was truly an incredible man. I really, really mean it.

Days 2-9 - the hospital

As I said at the end of my previous post, my time in the hospital is very amorphous. A combination of morphine, percocets, and who knows what else has made for some gaps in my memory. I do remember how absolutely incredibly awesome my nurses were. Marrin and Mona Lisa (not a nurse, but just as unbelievably awesome), and Helen were there during the day, and most nights Jay took care of me. The multi/non-religious chaplain Alex came by every few days, and even arranged for the gorgeous cheering-up collies to come stand outside my door (I wasn't allowed to pet them as 18% of my body was burned). Vic was my first visitor, Diana and Chris came to entertain me (though I may have ended up entertaining them.... this is one of the visits I don't really remember), and the incredible Stephanie Newton also came. I think. Oh! Dan's parents both came, and Dan was there often. My family was there every day, and my parents were incredible.

My medication caused constant half dreams; I'd close my eyes for just a second and people would be there, talking to me or giving me things and I'd stretch my arm out and wake myself up to find that no one was there. It got very frustrating. At one point I apparently had a dream about miniature whale-rabbit lesbians. Don't ask me, I don't know. Along the lines of the half dreams, I would apparently insert completely random statements into my conversations (obviously they made sense to me...). At one point I was talking to my cousin Aaron (I don't remember this) - we were having a nice long conversation, and all of a sudden I said "And then I had SPLINTERS in my PAWS!" My mom took the phone away from me after that, haha. I also had a very hard time maintaining focus on one thing. Dan and I played Battleship one night, and I had to constantly ask if I'd already gone and whose turn it was. I had huge blisters on my right hand that I was always asking my parents to take pictures of. I think it was the way the light looked through them that I was interested in... plus just how weird they looked.

The biggest thing I remember is that they told me that key to my recovery would be walking. Getting myself out of bed and walking up and down the hall. Mona accompanied me the first time, and came looking for me the second time when I overstretched myself and had to sit in a lounge at the end of the L that is the burn center. She was also the one who reassured me when I left puddles with every step I took with my right foot. Helen did my hair when my dad realized he didn't know how to execute a simple ponytail, and Marrin's constant good cheer helped me stay in good spirits. Jay's jokes and teasing made him one of my favorite nurses.

On the 3rd, we heard early fireworks late one night, and Jay turned my bed so I could see them out the window - I don't really remember them, but I remember someone coming in to take a blood sample and Jay saying to wait until the fireworks were over.

It wasn't all great though. I had a lot of nausea, and at one point was sitting in the shower having my dressings changed when a wave hit me. It happened to be that there was a group of students (and my doctor, though I didn't know it) in the bathroom too, looking at my burns when I called for a bucket. One of the students was faster than Helen (lucky for me!), and all of them got a thorough lesson on my excellent puking skills.

I basically had to relearn walking. As Jay said, we didn't have to reinvent the wheel, just relearn it. While my leg wounds were still open, that was extremely painful. My family often slowly walked down the hall with me as I hobbled along, encouraging me the whole way.

Oops, no good Nooreen - end on a high, not a low! The situation (and medication) brought out the teaser in me, and every opportunity I got ("Okay Nooreen, I'm heading out. Can I get you anything before I go?") I would ask, completely serious and deadpan, for a pony. Tee HEE. At one point Jay and Marrin said I was up for 'Patient of the Year', and I asked if the prize was a pony. ;)

This post is a work in progress... I'll add more as I remember things from the hospital.

Day 1 - the accident. Disturbing content.

I've been debating about whether or not to write about this for a while now - it's part of the reason that I waited 23 days to start this blog. I want to warn you that you might find the below content upsetting (I certainly do), and that you don't have to read it. I'm writing this for me as a cathartic exercise.

June 29th. A Wednesday. Dentist appointment at 1:30. There's a big pile of scrap wood in the yard that needs to go, and I want to get the fire going so that Brendan can keep an eye on it while I'm at the dentist. Unfortunately, everything is damp from the last couple of days of rain, so I get the gas can from the rock room. It has a nice long safety nozzle, but the opening sticks so I take it off. I pour some gas on the pile of wood, take the gas can far away, and toss a match on the wood. It goes up, but quickly burns itself out, leaving the wood just as it was. I decide to go back and get some drier wood from the scrap pile, and put it on. This isn't like a camp fire, and I have to get going soon, so rather than find kindling and get the fire going slowly, I go back and get the gas can. Walking over to the pile of wood, I splash a little bit on the toe of my left sneaker, but I don't worry about it because the fire is out and I'm not going to get too close. I step up to the wood and start to pour a bit of gas on - as I do, it occurs to me that there may be a flame underneath the big piece of plywood I put on that I can't see, and then everything goes up. The next part happened in only a few seconds. I look down and see that the gas on my shoe has caught and take a step back to get away from the fire. Suddenly I notice that my shorts are burning, and then my shirt. I throw myself on the ground and start rolling frantically while screaming for my mom. This happens so slowly for me. I have time to think that this is such a dreamlike situation - surely this isn't really happening. When am I going to wake up? As I roll, I realize that the fire on my shirt isn't going out, and that I have to take it off - as I yank it off over my head, my mom runs outside looking for me. I'm on the other side of a tree from her, so I have to yell 'I'm over here mom' as I climb to my feet. I beat out the last flame on my shorts with my hands. She is so upset and so scared for me but also so brave. She knows exactly what to do in the midst of this absolutely completely bizarre thing that has happened, and she runs me inside to get in a cold shower. I keep asking what's wrong with my lips - in the process of yanking my shirt off I gave myself a first degree burn on part of my neck, chin, lips, and nose. I stand there shaking from the adrenaline, mildly fascinated by the pockets of skin that fill with water - probably burst blisters, my mom says. She calls 911 and they send an ambulance.

Only a few minutes later they arrive, and I step out into the hall (naked) and the men that have come with the ambulance look at me in a mixture of calculation and shock. They bring a chair for me, but it hurts to sit. I'm also shaking too much to stand for long, so I alternate between sitting and standing. I can't bring myself to be embarrassed to be naked in front of all of these people - I think to myself that I have completely lost the right to privacy. This is something I will repeat to doctors and nurses who try to give me some privacy over the next few days, and they, being the wonderful people that they are, will tell me that I'm wrong. In this moment though, I am right. A man douses me in some horrible smelling stuff that I think for a long time is the smell of my skin burning. I'm so unbelievably relieved when I whisper this fear to my mom hours later and find out I'm wrong. Finally they wrap me in a special cloth and lay me down on a gurney. I'm amazed that it can be wheeled through the rabbit warren that is my house. How silly of me to choose the bathroom on the first floor farthest from the front door (but at the same time, how unsurprising. We choose what we know in times of high stress, and I went straight to my bathroom).

We get out the front door and stop on the path as the men (and woman) talk, debating something that I can't focus on. My body is wracked in shivers, and they've stopped me in the sun. This is my first (and hopefully last) experience with the intense pain of sunlight on burns. After about a minute they realize they've left me in the sun and quickly move me to the shade. Shortly after that, they make their decision and we go to the ambulance. It turns out there are two ambulances for some reason, I'm still not sure why. I beg for my mom to come in the ambulance with me, and they let her ride in the front. There are people in the back with me, a woman who I think was trying to keep me out of shock. She kept asking me what I thought of then as stupid questions. There's a clock hung on the back wall. I watch it, wondering how long it will take to get to Waterbury - that's the hospital they've decided to take me to. I remember the clock saying 1:20.

We get to Waterbury a lot faster than I ever have before (that's what happens when you're in an ambulance Nooreen, duh), and they pull me out on my gurney through the doors and into the ER. The brief patch of sunlight between the ambulance and the entrance is awful. There are so many people in the ER, and they're all looking at me. I just try to keep from shaking myself off the gurney (something that couldn't happen anyway, as I'm strapped in). We turn into a room, and I'm lifted off the gurney. A whole ton of things happen here, very quickly and often simultaneously. I get an IV and a catheter, my temperature is taken, I have heart monitor things attached, my shivering is so severe that they bring me several heated blankets. They ask me how much it hurts on a scale of one to ten and I tell them eleven. This is the most pain I have ever been in in my entire life. It hurts so much my tear ducts won't work and all I can do is watch them work. My dad walks in with my mom and they're both so great and calm and reassuring. I'm finally deemed stable, and the ER doctors introduce me to the EMT who will be riding with me to Bridgeport Hospital, whose burn unit is my destination. I ask John (the EMT) how long it is to Bridgeport, and when he tells me about 45 minutes, I ask if he's a good storyteller. Anything to keep my mind off of my burns. He laughs at me and says no, so for the ride I ask him questions and he answers. ("How did you get into this?" "By accident." "Oh? Me too." bah dum chh!)

We get to Bridgeport much faster than expected, and I bid farewell to John and Dave (the driver). Dr. Ali and Dr. Suarez are there to welcome me to the burn unit. They take pictures of my wounds, and I get morphine and silver nitrate dressings (I think). My time in the hospital is amorphous and confused. There are large chunks that I don't remember, and large chunks that I do. I don't know when my surgeries were. I only remember being prepped for the first one. I received gifts that I had to receive again when I got home because I didn't remember getting them the first time. But anyway, that's for the next post.

This has been very cathartic. It was hard and kind of awful reliving the experience enough to write it down, but I feel a lot better now that I have. Mom says I'm in the grieving stage of my healing, which I think is probably true. Right now (day 26) I'm working hard on forgiving myself for what happened. I think this has brought me closer to that goal.

Day 23, Part 1

Time heals all things. At least, that's what they say - and while I do believe them, sometimes, time moves a little bit too slowly. Writing about things helps me heal. This is something I know very well about myself - and so, a blog. This way, I don't have to keep posting snippets on facebook, and you, dear friends, can be thoroughly updated on my progress.

So, here are some things you need to know:

I'm okay. I am healing incredibly fast. I am okay.

This is a long-term healing process. Though I hope to be recovered enough by January to head off to State College, I will not be fully healed (as determined by my awesome doctors) for an entire year.

There will be zero tolerance for pity. This is perhaps something that is more appropriate for in-person visits, but I can see it being relevant here too. I'm probably going to put a sign on my front door that says something like 'NO PITY ZONE' or maybe something else that makes more sense faster. I'm okay. I am healing incredibly fast. I don't need pity.

What I do need is the occasional 'Hey Nooreen! How's it going? Let me tell you xyz about what I've been doing!' to remind me that there are other people out there besides my family, my physical therapist, my nurse, and my doctors. I promise that as I settle into more of a routine I will correspond (for lack of a better word) better.

... I think that's it.

So! There's a lot of catching up to do, but I think I'll try to separate stuff out into individual posts so that you don't have to read what you aren't interested in. Thank you for joining me on this journey, and thank you for the oceans of love and support you've been sending me - I know this first post is a little bit snarky, and I'm sorry for that - you have been so wonderful, and, as per a previous facebook post, I love you all so much for it. Thank you.