In the last week of February, I started having serious abdominal pain but the idea of sitting in an emergency waiting room for hours in the middle of a plague seemed like a ridiculous idea. After suffering for two days though, I gave up and while visiting my dad who had undergone surgery earlier that day, I walked into St Paul's Hospital and asked to see a doctor. 

I have so many ugly things to say about my experiences during my stay there but I'll leave that for another time and another blog. That aside, I was diagnosed with a severe gallbladder attack with the only course of action being surgery to remove the offending organ. They couldn't get to me that night or the next day but finally, on March 1st, the surgeons were able to free me from my increasingly fussy gallbladder and by the next day, I was home.

Laparoscopic surgery is considered a minimally invasive surgery as it requires much smaller cuts to complete the procedure. I currently have 3 small incisions around the right side of my belly and a somewhat larger one in the middle above the belly button. As with any surgery though, time is needed to heal. My first few days were tricky for getting around the house. Thank goodness my brother was visiting and was able to help! Thankfully, I found myself healing quite quickly and less than a week out of the hospital, the urge to play music hit me.

I first started with my little soprano ukulele that I keep in my bedroom to play when I get an earworm. Such a small instrument definitely made it easy to avoid accidently whacking my stitches but once I moved on to practicing more seriously with my tenor, I quickly realised that this was going to be trickier than I expected. Even going to my student's house with my concert sized Enya ukulele, I found myself grazing those tender areas. The weird thing though is that playing my ukuleles is easy. The difficult part is where to rest the instrument in between songs. Perhaps it's that movement between playing and resting positions that is so tricky? Or maybe I've just never noticed until now how much I hug my instruments when I'm not playing them.

Next up was my tenor saxophone. When I was discharged from the hospital, I was told that for the next 6 weeks, I shouldn't lift anything more than 10 lbs. How much does anything weigh? Putting my tote bag around me when I left the hospital felt like a ton of bricks. Coming home and picking up my fat little dog was probably not a good idea since she's very likely more than 10 lbs. And what about the weight of pushing or pulling like trying to push myself off my bed in the morning? 

I didn't actually feel like finding a bathroom scale to weigh my sax but a quick Google search said that the average tenor sax is 6.5 lbs to 8.5 lbs so I was in the safe zone. However, many years ago I switched to using a harness with my tenor sax instead of the more traditional neckstrap. Taking that bit of pressure off my neck really helped with the migraine I get but I wasn't sure how well that harness would work now with a belly full of stitches. 

The harness alone didn't seem bad but of course, it's hard to get it in the right position for playing without the weight of the instrument. I've also been altering my playing position as well. A YouTuber recommended playing with the swan technique which is where your neck is tipped downward slightly to take some of the work off your bottom lip and producing a somewhat fuller tone. As predicted though, as soon as my sax was hooked up to my harness, it all rubbed against my stitches. Damn! But remembering the issues I had with my ukuleles, I carefully moved my sax into playing position and made my first sounds. Once again, playing my sax was less of a problem than resting with my instrument.

You might, at this point, be asking about my breathing. If you're not a wind instrument or a vocalist, you may not realize that much of your breathing technique should be rooted deep in your core and with my core being sewn up, you'd think it would be painful to take those deep breaths. I admit that I'm intentionally ignoring my breathing and just going with what's comfortable for now. When I first got home, I did change my breath slightly since everything hurt but now, my regular breath is fine. I just don't want to hurt myself with a deeper breath or to notice and come up with bad habits that would be hard to shake later on. There will be a time to go back to the breathing but that is not now.

I have since tried other instrument like my violin and electric guitar with few complications. As I continue to heal, I know I can't go back to everything all at once but trying to tell my brain that is a challenge. I just want to play everything again at the same level I was pre-surgery but no, I have to remind myself over and over to take it easy.