My arrival home from the hospital was a day of flurried activity and expectation. I hadn't seen my boys since the night before my surgery. After 3 and a half days in the hospital, I was done and wanted my own house, my own kitchen, and my own bed. Getting home went ok except that the ride home in the car was enough to exhaust me. Everybody was fetching and carrying and asking me if I was ok or if I needed anything. The attention was nice, but I was really looking forward to being home and trying to find a short-term routine that would leave me feeling more like a person and less like a patient.
Night fell and I was looking forward to being back in my own bed. When I announced that I'd like to go to bed, it set off a parade of people. Such a bedtime spectacle hasn't been seen since the court of Louis XIV. Both of my parents, my two oldest children, and my husband all jockied for position. I assured everybody that I'd be fine, but my father insisted on spotting me up the stairs. My husband turned the bed down and began arranging pillows. The kids carried up my iPad and iPhone. Somebody fetched a glass of water.
Eventually, I was able to lie down in a relaxing fog of pain medication and unwind enough that I thought I might sleep. It was very nice indeed to be back in my own bed. It may not fold into all sorts of positions, but the mattress didn't make a crinkly plastic noise and it didn't smell like hospital. And best of all, I knew that nobody was going to wake me up at 2:30 to take my vitals or stick me in the belly with blood thinning medication.
Sleep finally came followed by aching pain and a pressing need to go the bathroom. I opened my eyes. Oh, the irony. It was 2:30. Using my hands on my right leg, I was able to swing myself sideways to reach my crutches. Already this was feeling like a lot more work than I was up for. I took a deep breath and stood up. I was a little wobbly from sleep and medication. I took a minute to make sure I was going to be steady enough to walk. So far so good. I had to maneuver through two doorways to get to the toilet, but I manged to do that without falling over. My eyes were growing more accustomed to the dark and I was doing ok. I had a vague memory that this used to be a lot easier.
What to do with my crutches, how to sit down without it hurting, all of these things that suddenly had to be figured out. I the dark. At 2:30. I managed all of that and then disaster struck. No toilet paper. Now, this isn't a new experience. I've often spoken of having the worst paper karma on the planet. The paper is ALWAYS out when I'm around. And it's not just at my house. Public restrooms, other people's homes, everywhere I go if there is paper and I need it, it's gone. And now the paper karma had struck again at 2:30 in the morning. I calculate what has to be done. I need to get up, get into our walk-in closet, pray that there aren't piles of clothes on the floor, shut the door, reach up on the shelf, get toilet paper and somehow get it and myself back to where I was now. Not going to happen.
None of my other creative solutions to the problem seemed very appealing. And so, with something akin to shame, I call out to my husband. It takes a few times before I hear him stir. "What is it, baby?" he asks. "I"m out of toilet paper". A brief silence and a whoosh of air that is the closest he usually gets to laughing. "Really?" he says, not unkindly, as he gets up. "What is with you and toilet paper?". I decline to point out that he could have checked it before I got home from the hospital to ensure this didn't happen, but I decided not to. And here is really the limit of my vulnerability. Not only do I have to wake up my husband in the middle of night, but I have to actually be nice about it.
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