Learning Patience While Healing

Oof! This has been a bad year for me, health-wise. I had 2 stays in the hospital, one for 9 days in July, and the other for 7 days in September. Then I took a fall in a local mall parking lot at the end of October that resulted in 6 broken ribs. I’m looking at 6 weeks while those heal.

Enough already! I am ready to be well!

Of course, things don’t work like that. The body takes the time it needs to heal. And when the time comes that your brain is ready to get back to doing things, but your body isn’t done healing, guess which one wins the argument.

It wasn’t so bad when I was in the hospital. The first half of my stay, I was too sick to do much but eat when my meals arrived and sleep. When I did reach the point where I felt like doing things, I never thought to have my hubby bring my laptop to me because I was sure I was going to be discharged any minute! And when it didn’t happen that day, I was sure it would happen the next, so I’d find some mind-numbing shows on the tv, and think about all I would do once I got home.

But cracked ribs are a little different. You get to be at home; you just have to be careful not to aggravate your damaged bones. And get plenty of rest. The ache of my ribs made me extra tired. I found myself sleeping 9-10 hours at night and taking a nap in the afternoon. And maybe one in the morning. It left me little time to get anything done.

Each day, I would stare at my To Do List and cross off those things I did manage to do; take my morning pills, check my blood sugar, check how my Amazon Ads are doing, open the daily snail mail, brush my hair and teeth, take my evening pills… small stuff that had to get done. And each day I would gather up all the things I didn’t manage to do that day and shove them off until the next day. Things like write my family letter that usually gets sent out every 2^nd month, write my weekly newsletter, write my weekly blog, format the next manuscript waiting to be published, ride my stationary bike for some exercise, and so on.

The first couple of weeks after my fall, I had plenty of pain to remind me why I was sleeping so much. “This isn’t forever,” I told myself, and so I wouldn’t beat myself up about all that I wasn’t getting done. But as the pain subsided – and by now, it’s just a gentle ache in my ribs to remind me to take an afternoon nap – then I find myself impatient to start doing all those things I’ve been putting off. To ignore the ache and keep working.

I could do that. Some days I have done that. However, if I choose not to take a nap, then I am extra tired extra early that evening, and I sleep even longer that night.

I have to learn to be patient. It is no good beating myself up over my need for extra sleep. That just makes me depressed, and I’m already fighting chronic depression, so I don’t need any more of it. This won’t last forever. By mid-December, my ribs will be fully healed. That’s only a month away.

Thankfully, this past week has afforded me the opportunity to get some writing done; the family letter, this week’s newsletter, this blog, and even a couple thousand words on my current Work In Progress. Although that story has passed 10K words, so I’m not sure it truly qualifies as a short story anymore, but we’ll see how long it gets. However, that time for writing is obtained by being away from our home for the day, so I can’t get an afternoon nap. Here’s hoping that these days give me a little boost in stamina for getting through a day without a nap. That would be nice.

In the meantime, I must be patient. Being impatient doesn’t get me anywhere.

Red Deer Cave People

The Red Deer Cave People appear to have been some of the most unusual humans in the past 20,000 years. They have been dated to have existed about 14,000 years ago, which is exceptionally recent in terms of human evolution. Yet, their fossils display many ‘archaic’ human features that are associated with more distant relatives in the family tree.

They might have been an ancient relic of humanity that held on until the end of the last Ice Age. Or they may have been a hybrid population, possibly related to Neanderthals and Denisovans. Or perhaps they show that Homo sapiens were extremely diverse throughout their history.

In 1989, human remains were unearthed at a cave in Yunnan, southern Chine. It became known at the Red Deer Cave because of the discovery of giant red deer fossils at the site. It is believed the human inhabitants cooked and ate the animals.

In 2012, scientists speculated whether the people in the cave represented a new human species. By studying their jaws and teeth, it was noted they had thick skulls with flat faces, broad noses, small chines, large molar teeth and prominent brow ridges, all features associated with older, long-extinct members of the human family tree.

The scientists had discovered a population of prehistoric humans whose skulls display an unusual mosaic of primitive features, like those seen in our ancestors thousands of years ago.

A 2015 study of a thigh bone discovered at Red Deer Cave suggested that individual weighed about 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and shared anatomical features with early Homo erectus or Homo habilis, both of which went extinct about 1.5 million years ago.

Since the femur was dated at just 14,000 years old, this did not fit the widely accepted chronology of human evolution. This femur was part of a living person a few thousand years before Homo sapiens developed agriculture, which sparked an evolution of culture that ultimately gave rise to complex civilizations.

It suggests that primitive-looking humans might have survived until very late in our evolution. But it is just one bone. A pre-modern species may have overlapped in with modern humans on mainland East Asia, but that case needs to be built with more bone discoveries.

By 2022, advancements in ancient DNA allowed a study of Red Deer Cave hominins’ genetics. It confirmed that they were modern Homo sapiens. In fact, they had a significant genetic connection to modern East Asians and Native Americans, who descended from the same groups of people.

So the Red Deer Cave People were not as unusual as first thought, even though the small population did have features not seen in any modern population of humans. With no clear explanation why they appeared this way, it hints that humans living towards the end of the last Ice Age were more diverse than those living across the world today.

 

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/tripideas/red-deer-cave-people-mysterious-humans-with-archaic-features-lived-just-14-000-years-ago/ar-AA1sjQUN?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=d22bab67fbce4483a434506da43bfd67&ei=110