Lessons

So this experience with Shawn's illness, surgery and now rehab is, of course, providing many, many lessons. I'm going to share those lessons from the last 3 weeks and will continue to share them as new ones pop up. Because I know more are coming.

Here we go:

Lesson #1: Dudes, please start taking your health seriously. Pay attention to your body. Tap into your intuition when it comes to your body. If your wife or girlfriend thinks you need to go to the doctor, please listen to her. She knows. Don't negotiate just go. Pain is the body's way of letting you know something is wrong.

Lesson #2: Ladies, don't let your dude negotiate his health care with you. Nag him to death if you have to because if you don't chances are he will let things slide until it's potentially too late. Pay attention for him even though you're telling yourself he's a big boy. I felt like Shawn was handling his crisis in spite of what my intuition was telling me. I thought about taking him to the ER that first weekend, when his only symptom was severe neck pain. I sure do wish I had. Maybe things would have been different, maybe not. But at least I would have done something.

Lesson #3: If you're in a relationship, write down all of your accounts, passwords, logins, etc ... You never know when one or the other of you is going to have to access all that. And get power of attorney now. That way if you want to know something medically you won't get the old HPPA bullshit. Especially if your s.o. can't speak/sign for themselves. Shawn and I have separate bank accounts and we split the household bills. I have my system and he has his. Know each other's systems because you really don't want to waste precious brain power on figuring it out. Know where each other keeps bills, records, etc... Understand what the other person is doing and how they contribute before something happens.

Lesson #4: Know where your s.o. keeps pants, socks, shirts, etc... Shawn does his laundry and I do mine. When I needed to find shorts, pj's, etc... to take to him, I had trouble doing that. Can you believe it? Now I have laundry of his that needs to be put away and I'm not sure where it needs to go. Once again, if I knew this, I wouldn't have to waste precious brain energy. As silly as it sounds, right now I'm wishing I knew this.

Ok, those are all the lessons I have for now. More to come. Hopefully something more profound.

And hopefully, I will be able to get some photos in soon. I'm ready to do some restorative things for myself, like picking up my camera.