The Tweedy Mutant

Oh my gosh! Hello again!

It's always nice to reconnect with folks and thank you! ❤️

Whoa! That's super wild!

Lolll at least four times 😅

That's so wild!! How??

Yep, I had to move the center of gravity back a bit, and the dump is a little too deep now. I am due for a new chair soon, so that one will no doubt fit better, but adapting my current chair works fine.

Anyway, it has been two weeks since surgery and I'm home and healing well ahead of schedule.

I was literally heading to an appointment with the you-have-no-legs doctor to see how having no legs is going, and my brain kept being like "but you can't just rock up without any shoes on! What would people think?!"

Are phantom social expectations a thing?

A view looking down at a person's lap. They have no legs.

Ask me how many times I went to go put on my shoes before leaving the house for this appointment...

Excited to go home! Definitely asked for it to be tomorrow rather than today because I need more than a couple of hours to arrange things lolll

No drug they've given me in hospital has had the same disorienting thrill as some surgical resident barging in at 6 am, ripping off my dressings, and declaring "EVERYTHING LOOKS GREAT YOU'RE READY LET'S SEND YOU HOME IT COULD EVEN BE TODAY", and then swanning out of the room.

Getting to see these guys yesterday was the perfect way to conclude my first week. If all goes well, I'll be home with them in just a few days!

Corin lies at the foot of a hospital bed a week after bilateral above-knee amputation surgery. His cat, Bear, is curled up at his elbow. His other cat, Finn, is ensconced among the pillows at the head of the bed.

"Yeah, your pets can visit! I am surprised no one has told you that." -- my favourite nurse

Thank you ❤️

Thank you so much 😭😭😭

Things are still going great, but if I don't do some proper convalescing, things are not going to *keep* going great, so this is it for today's update. ❤️🦵🏻🦵🏻

Omg your profile picture is amazing!

Donate to Corin's Surgery Recovery, organized by Mara Ervin Our beloved Corin Parsons is having bilateral above-knee amputation surgery due to complications f… Mara Ervin needs your support for Corin's Surgery Recovery

And if anyone wants to share or contribute to the GFM my sister set up to help with rehab- and recovery-related expenses, this is the link: gofund.me/c8c68108

If everything continues as planned, I have three more days of mandated bed rest followed by a day or so of working on transfers, and then I should get to go home!

The nurse who replaced the bandage also remarked multiple times that she was surprised it had only been two days because the incision looked so good. Hopefully a promising sign!

The dressing on the right side, which had been threatening to slip off since shortly after surgery, fully let go while I was doing physio exercises yesterday. As surreal as it was to see the stump with zero preparation, I was delighted to note that the surgeons saved my tattoo.

I look comically compact in the "proof of life" photos that pals have taken during visits to send to the group chat.

Friends have brought me lots of snacks, though!

Hospital food is impressively bad. I lifted the lid on my breakfast yesterday to find a solitary piece of gluten-free white bread that had somehow adhered itself to the plate. So I guess it's a good thing that I haven't had much of an appetite yet?

The sensations have changed and lessened a bit since then, and l'm not finding them all that bothersome.

I haven't had any phantom pain -- just mild surgical pain -- but I have had phantom sensations. The first night it felt ike my legs were sticking out aggressively straight, like in those viral videos of fainting goats.

Bumping up the dose went a long way towards convincing my monkey brain that the lion isn't coming back to finish the job.

I'm on an epidural for pain but no other meds. It turns out that, like all local anesthetic, epidurals don't work as well/predictably on EDSers, so while my right leg has been numb-ish, I was apparently just rawdogging the amputation of my left leg until yesterday afternoon.

I didn't get a lot of sleep the first two nights, but that's improving, and I slept almost eight hours last night.

The embodied hypervigilance after major surgery is wild, though. The ol' primate nervous system is definitely like, "You've been mauled! A lion ate your legs! Danger lurks around every corner!"