Here’s a bit of insight into the wackiness that is me:

Before I went into surgery, I convinced myself that I would be healed and ready to work again in five days’ time (it actually took two weeks).

So I set the goal for myself that on the fifth day I would celebrate my success by baking our family carrot cake from scratch. This is no ordinary cake. It is three layers, involves about a pound of carrot shavings, and we make the icing from scratch as well. But this has been my favorite cake since before I can remember - my mom would make it for me every birthday. So it was the perfect present to gift myself upon the day of my complete recovery…or so I’d thought…

Perhaps if I had fully recovered by day five it would have been fine, but…

It took me all damn day to bake this evil cake!

Pure tenacity and pride baked that stupid cake, because it sure as hell wasn’t made with love. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had so much blood loss that I couldn’t move, walk, or do anything for more than 30 seconds before utterly exhausting myself, getting light headed, and blacking out.

So picture this process:

1. I wobbled (yes, I literally wobbled like an old grandma - slower than my own grandmother actually - and had to hold in my abdomen as I shuffled each foot out in front of me) to our den, pausing at the landing of our stairs for two minutes before I could make it all the way…found our recipe book, rested again at the landing, this time for four minutes, and then sat at the kitchen table to find the carrot cake recipe.

2. I wobbled about one foot to the cabinet to get the first ingredient. Took a deep breath, wobbled back to my chair, and sat there.

3. Poured first ingredient into the bowl. Damn, even that tired me out. Sat there for a bit, then repeated the process to get the next ingredient.

The part I remember most is the eggs. After getting six eggs from the refrigerator, I would crack one egg, rest for a bit, stir the egg into the batter, rest for about five minutes because stirring was so hard, then crack the next egg, stir, rest…

Just the eggs alone took me an hour!

Thank goodness my father helped me grate the carrots. But it still took me all day to bake this freaking cake. I wish I took a picture of it. When I was done, it was lop-sided, one piece of it had fallen off and we stuck it back on, icing was dripping off and causing all the layers to slop over to one side…

But it tasted INCREDIBLE. Even though the process was painful, exhausting, frustrating, and caused me to black out every couple minutes, there was still an incredible sense of accomplishment.

And I have to admit, the next day I felt so much better and started feeling a bit like myself again. :)