Healing as Microclimates.

Reflections on Day 10 of ACL surgery.

Apr 12, 2026

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All content published by Luv, Babs is completely original and inspired by my unique experience as a biscuit-lovin’ human on this earth. I use AI to proofread, not to generate.

I woke up at my personal witching hour, which has been alternating between 2am and 4am with a familiar feeling.

💡 Gentle reminder: Your leg is still a soggy, semi-lifeless log.

Part of the strange piece of getting a knee surgery is the disconnect.

It feels as if the leg completely severs from the brain for a short period of time.

At the beginning, the nerve block makes it so that your entire foot is completely numb for 48 hours.

As the sensation slowly flows back to your foot, your brain starts to travel upwards. The calf, the skin surrounding your scar, the quad. You find a wasteland of disconnection. There is no feeling when you trace the borders of your precious franken-scar. The quad instantly atrophies. You attempt to bend the knee and find a tight hinge unable to comply. You are Uma Thurman sitting in the Pussy Wagon, willing yourself to move your pinky toe.

I am officially on Day 10 post-op.

I had this idea that each day would get incrementally better.

The reality is that my healing process has been microclimates.

Scuttling into the outer sunset to find impenetrable mist—full body sobs after the pain / impact of five leg lifts. Playing your favorite India Folk band, cradling your face in your hands, holding on for dear life.

Then, you find yourself in Dolores Park.

Faces full of joy, friendship, first dates, second dates, licking salted caramel ice cream off the cone—the first real day of spring, sitting in my leopard print cowboy hat, belting out Crazy by Gnarls Barkley letting the edges of sweet honeysuckle fill my vision.

There are moments on the edge.

You start the day off at the Presidio, gray and chilly, but scenic.

Magnificent. Full of promise—I cleaned my room on my own yesterday. I felt like an absolute champion. And then, I collapsed into a puddle, unable to function or give a fuck.

Today, my bones are sore. Not the good kind of sore. The kind that makes you want to give up movement all together.

My healing process has been microclimates.

Unexpected terrain, instant weather changes. Overcast, bone-chilling, scenic, sun-soaked. Disparate, bumpy, unpredictable. I had a great debate once with a dear friend at Vabali after pushing myself to the edge of death by sweat in the sauna.

We were chatting about psychological suffering vs. physical suffering.

I told him I prefer the special type of hell within the realm of psychological warfare 10x over.

Let’s define terms here:

🧠 Psychological Warfare
Inspired by the psyche. Sorrow, grief, loneliness, anxiety, depression. Mental malaise inspired by dipping into one of these types of frozen lakes.
❤️‍🩹 Physical Pain
The body being in a state of physical suffering that then inspires the consciousness to plummet into a state of psychological suffering.

My pal argued that it is all the same.

The trigger makes no difference, because the output is all the psyche experiencing “pain.”

While this very engineer answer totally checks out, I personally experience these realms in entirely different ways.

I have inhabited the dark lands of psychological warfare, many times.

I have learned to slither over the stones and avoid the serpents.

I know where the eels live, and have learned how to make peace with them.

I have a map that assures me, as spooky as it is here amongst the gillyweed and bottom dwellers—you will survive.

Physical pain is an entirely new realm for me. The physical pain I’ve experienced in my life has been quite limited.

I have no tools. I’m navigating through narrow caves, feeling the rocks softly with my bare hands and understanding I’ve never even attached a belay before.

The physical pain is of course emotional too. I’m three weeks into dating someone new. One week pre-op: life-filled, flirty, adventurous, able-bodied Babs, and two weeks of log body Babs.

I worry they will think I’m actually a banana slug in camouflage. That the leopard jacket wearing smokeshow fresh off her Amazon-to-Antarctica tour was actually just that—smoke. Mirrors. An illusion.

I look in the mirror and see the slug staring back at me. I tear myself down. I think about all the crafts I haven’t done, the friendship bracelets I haven’t made, the books I haven’t read.

To be honest, my favorite activities have been laying like a pancake getting griddled up by the sun and watching Miss Congeniality.

I don’t want to learn about AI or take an online course—I want to mother fucking L-O-U-N-G-E.

🚫 Do Not Disturb 🚫

The most inspiring quote someone has sent me is,

Don’t ever let a good crisis go to waste.

I’ve been trying my best to learn how to navigate the cave world.

How to see the bottomless pit, attach to the rock sheath, and descend.

The land of physical pain—Who She Is????!

Ironically, my new sweetie runs 100 mile races (I know wild, wtf, I can’t really conceptualize what it means either, but #hot). So, in a way I’m co-living with an expert. A cave dweller. A sommelier of physical pain and resilience.