The Breakfast Blues

While we were still in rehab, Matt would quite often wake from his slumber on his fold out chair bed too find me weeping over my breakfast tray.

It quickly became a running joke that the breakfast food was so abysmal that it brought me to tears. The mornings in rehab were the toughest time for me:

I know I've mentioned this before, recovering from a brain injury is exhausting business, so I would sleep deep and hard every night. At 6am a nurse would come to take my vitals and give me my medications, now, I was srtill completely exhausted when the nurse would come to shove pills in my face and quite often, I couldn't summon the energy to sit up, grab my cup of water and attempt to swallow all four of the pills that were being shoved in my face, so I'd just end up staring blankly at the little paper cup that held the pills, usually resulting in some bitchy comment coming from the nurse who was not too patiently waiting for me to talk myself into sitting up to take the damn things, so I'd get really pissed at the complete lack of insensitivity coming from whichever nurse it was, theen came the phlebotomist, so I'm laying in bed, staring at my therapy schedule and planning out when I'll be able to sneak a nap in later in the day and here comes someone else to keep me from sleeping, and they wanted blood, quite frequently I did not score a gifted phlebotomist, so my arm would be stinging once they were done with me, bacause they kept stcking me in the same place over and over again. Once I completed the worst wake-up call known to man, I would gulp those damn pills down that the pissed off nurse left for me, mumbling something about, just take them later. Promise?Once I got the pills down, I would lay back down and pass out again for a few more precious moments, knowing I'd have to conquer my breakfast before my first therapy at 8:10.

Onc I woke up, I woud stare at my breakfast and by that point all of those pills would have kicked in and every. single. pill I was on caused drowsiness, so on top of my brain injury exhaustion, I also had to battle drug induced exhaustion. So I'd stare at my food giving myself a pep talk all the while, "you can do this, just pick up thr fork, eat the bagel first, that's the easiest.

Now, mealtimes were particularly diffucult for me, there were always multiple containers of food to eat from and I had neither the attention span or concentraion to know which to eat first, causing me to become overwhelmed, plus eating was REALLY hard! My mouth didn't open all of the way , and I couldn't swallow well, either plusand I had to use my right hand, which, up til then was remarkably out of shape, so I made giant messes when I ate.

My OT, Erica would come bopping into the room at 8:10, right on achedule, I knew it, I never wanted to disappoint her so I always wanted to be ready to go when she stuck her head in, so as I stared at that tray of food, I knew I was limited as far as how much time I could take to eat, so I'd start crying, out of pure exhaustion and over stimulation, normally I'd categorze myself as a morning person, I could bop out of bed at 6am, no problem, throw myself in the shower to wake myself up, but that was not an option here, I had to wait for an OT or nurse o clean me. So I was fustrated that I could no longer be a grown up snd take care of myself in the morning.

I don't know what the point of this one is, just an anecdote, I suppose.