About a year and a half ago my body told me to stop. Stop working. Stop exercising. Stop socializing. Just stop.
What should have been a relatively minor middle-aged grumble and a few weeks of old lady noises turned into months of debilitation, a touch of permanent nerve damage, and a bonus year of personal lockdown.
As the primary caregiver in our house, this caused a breakdown in the system. I worked part time to pay the bills but being a caregiver was my job. The system that ran and fed and kept the gears turning in our house, fell apart for a while and we needed some help to keep it together.
It’s not that my partner didn’t do any of these things, but neither of us did them alone. We’ve always done a good job of dividing and conquering tasks, especially considering the additional time and mental load of our youngest child’s medical complications. But, if there’s anything we’ve learned in the last seven years, it’s that the world can flip upside down at any given moment.
One morning, after a couple months of standard caregiver’s back pain, I couldn’t stand up. It had been a perfect storm of gradual degeneration, a “heroic” catch on some stairs, and a slip on the ice. A couple of ER visits later, I became the official owner of some thoroughly ruptured discs and a severely compressed nerve. Woot. Woot. Caregiver down.
I’m incredibly grateful that I have the kind of partner that can and did take on the full-time job of parenting as well as all the layers and appointments that come with the conditions our youngest child deals with every day. I could manage some of this from a horizontal position, but there wasn’t a whole lot I could actually do. No cleaning, no driving, no appointments, no ER visits or hospital stays. For a good six months, he looked after me in addition to the kids and the dog. For the better part of a year, he had to do everything outside the house as well. He did this in addition to his actual full-time job. We don’t really get vacations in this family, but the man really deserves a vacation.
My kids also stepped up to do what they could, bringing me food, keeping me company, and generally demonstrating an understanding way beyond their years, that sometimes parents get sick or hurt too. In this family, we have a decent amount of training in accommodating medical crises. When I went down our backup generators kicked into high gear.
We have grandparents that fed us as they swooped in to ferry me to appointments and kids to extracurriculars. We have brilliant friends that stepped in for carpools and took tea with me in the bedroom a la John and Yoko.
It was fucking hard and I’m not all better, but I am still progressing, and that’s with a tidal wave of gratitude pushing me forward.
One thing that happens when you’re stuck on your back, for months at a time in your own little room, is evaluation. I cried a lot about what I loved and might never do again. I thought a lot about what I might be able to do, with time and healing. I waffled a lot about what direction my life should take from here on out and I got very very bored.
I flip between hobbies the way dads in the 90s changed TV channels, so I dug up some old favourites that I could do flat on my back. I started crocheting but lying flat and holding the hook and yarn above my chest messed up my shoulder. It worked, but I have to space it out now. Bit by bit, I make little creatures out of scraps of yarn. To be honest, they’re piling up.
I watched all the things I’d been meaning to watch. I read as much as I could.
I started drawing again, which has been magic. I couldn’t sit and draw with pen and paper but I could prop up an iPad or doodle on my stomach like a kindergartner, so I finally got into digital art. (Only about a decade behind on that one.)
I had to stop writing and editing (to the extent I needed to professionally), but I could point, click, and drag. So, like any reasonable Type A personality confined to a bed, I digitized our pen and paper caregiver binder.
I am a wild party.
I learned to use some new tools (thank you internet) and reworked the system we’ve been using to communicate and manage the ins and outs of our daughter’s care. Making graphic organizers is not the coolest hobby in my collection, but it tickled the part of my brain that needed to feel like I was contributing.
I couldn’t be at the appointments, but I could document the shit out of everything else.
I honestly used to think I was kind of a chill person. I was wrong.
The tools and templates are good, I think. They help us, so I’m sharing them as widely as I can. I hope they help someone else feel like they have a little control over a hard situation.
What surprised me, is that I felt real joy and purpose in putting them together. I’d love to do it more. I’d love to make custom versions that work for all the unique and challenging situations families like ours integrate into our daily lives. I don’t know how that’s going to play out, but maybe it will. Life is nothing if not surprising these days.
I have had the privilege of tangible support and all the benefits of an emotionally available and loving community around me.
I’m still on the chronic pain list. I’m still not working and still don’t feel like I’m holding up my end of the bargain as it pertains to co-parenting or caregiving. But I’m trying to pay some good stuff forward and I’m trying to get back on the rails.
I aim to start posting regularly because this also tickles an important part of my brain that I haven’t used in a long time. I’m back. (As long as my back behaves.)
NOTE: If you’d like to check out the art, tools, and templates that have kept me in one piece this year, click the links below.
It’s all under Layer Cake Digital Design because life has been a layer cake of hard crusty bits and soft fluffy growth over last 7 years. More on that another time. For now, just take a look. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any suggestions. I’m all ears (and old lady back) over here.
Layer Cake Life 