Instructions & the Butcher

My Uncle Bob once said, "Money doesn't come with instructions." I love that expression because it is so true. The idea is both freeing and terrifying.

I think of all of the other things that don't come with instructions, like our bodies, marriage and children, and how often I've tried to find instructions for all of those. I've read countless books and articles, trying to find guidance, insight, wisdom, perhaps. But no definitive instructions.

Recently, I've been trying to find instructions for my body. After I had my ovary whacked out in March, my core turned to mush, along with lots of other muscles. Where are the instructions on how to get it those muscles back? Where did they go? How to find them?

I didn't realize how much I lost my core until I hyperextended my knee a few weeks ago. I am convinced this knee injury is indirectly related to my surgery. I was probably compensating for some weakness somewhere, and then tweak, there goes the knee.

"Surgeons are butchers and you are a piece of meat," said my new pilates instructor after I told her my woes. She is right, and yet the problem isn't that my surgeon is a butcher--she did a fabulous job of getting out the cyst--but no one in the medical system warned me that once I recovered from the wound, that I would need to rebuild. Being able to walk around is a low, low bar. I want to dance again. I want to play pickle-ball and hike and bike.  I wish someone would have told me I needed a rehab plan to return to all of the activities I just to do, not just get back to the simple activities of daily living.

So here I realize my body doesn't come with instructions. I would I have thought I would have figured this out years ago, but alas here I am, trying to make care of this machine, this bag of meat, that before took care of itself.