PLATTEVILLE, Feb. 4 — I have been back in Southwest Wisconsin since Saturday thanks to Mrs. Editor, whose numerous roles include transportation coordinator.

My return followed my two hospital stays and two weeks with my 85-year-old mother, who has a handicap-accessible condo. For two weeks she was part of the “sandwich generation” in taking care of my father, who lives in assisted living, each night and her mobility-challenged oldest son.

An observation/piece of advice about long-term hospital stays: If your hospital stay includes limited mobility — say, maneuvering only on one leg — then any sense of personal modesty ends up disappearing. If you need assistance moving, you will have others assisting your taking a shower, using a toilet, or getting dressed.  In my week at the rehabilitation hospital my greatest accomplishment was going from yellow — moving around by yourself with assistance when transferring from bed to walker or wheelchair — to green, with no movement restrictions.

Another observation: Since I have returned to work I have noticed something about myself that may well be temporary, but is notable to me anyway. Remember that my production week starts on Wednesday, and the B section of your favorite weekly newspaper needs to be done by the end of Monday, with the A section finished Tuesday morning.

I have been accused at times of my life of procrastination. I prefer to call it “working on deadline.” (A former boss once gave me a bumper sticker that said “Deadlines Amuse Me,” and it was at my desk while I was there.) I have never been a writer who would write several drafts of something in my school theme and college term paper days (laziness or efficiency?) and now that I’m an ink-stained wretch I usually write a story once, hopefully as error-free as possible. Working fast but accurately is the key in this line of work, even for those who don’t have daily deadlines.

But since I’ve been back I have been pushing to get newspaper things done sooner, instead of leaving work to finish the next work day. I doubt it’s a burst of renewed energy from having been out of commission for three weeks. Maybe in the back of my head I am concerned about some kind of unplanned medical setback, though I have not had any to this point. This week also starts a bunch of medical appointments that take up a lot of time if they aren’t in the 53818 zip code.

Maybe it’s also mental anticipation of the time it takes to do anything that involves movement from where I’m sitting. Those able to get up and go wherever they want might not appreciate how mentally exhausting it is to have to think about and plan your every single movement, especially if they involve such important tasks as eating and drinking coffee. Distances from, say, your sink to the refrigerator and stove now look like a trip from Platteville to Lancaster. (It’s a good thing there is no video of my making coffee the first night I was back home.)

I have pointed out in this space previously that those who become and/or are mobility-challenged find out that Platteville specifically and the world generally are not very handicap-accessible. Every step outside with a walker or a knee scooter brings to your immediate attention such potential perils as pebbles of any size, cracks in the sidewalk, wood chips, slippery surfaces, and surfaces of varying slope. Even getting bathroom doors open and through them requires such mobility gymnastics as using your walker to block the door from closing. And when you are recovering from leg surgery, you (1) rely on the other leg more than designed and (2) are warned by your medical professionals that wiping out would be a really bad thing for you.

There is the additional issue of limited carrying capacity. Even if you have a bag and a cup/cellphone holder on your walker or wheelchair, that doesn’t mean you can automatically take along every size beverage container or very much in the aforementioned bag. Maybe there are storage containers that can be attached to walkers or wheelchairs, but that means you must propel that plus yourself plus whatever you’re carrying, and possibly hold one more thing than you should be holding.

The people in your life may understand all this. The animals in your life probably don’t. The two-brain-cell cat, who took a while to remember who you were (but now sleeps on your bladder once again), doesn’t grasp your having to slowly move around your kitchen; he wants his treat NOW! and will loudly complain, before he moves to his food perch and repeats said emphatic complaint. The dog wants to go outside, and mobility challenges certainly could include messes on the floor. Fortunately for him he knows to come back.

You’ve heard of “first world problems”? These are one-leg problems, for now.