I've gotten many comments throughout this process that I don't seem to treat this injury, surgery, recovery as a big deal. I somewhat blow it off and say it's happened, can't change it. etc. Totally my coping mechanism and I know it. If I let people see how it's really made me feel, then they'll know how much this really knocked me down. How hard I've had to fight to stay positive. How hard it's been to make everyone else think it's not the end of the world. How hard it's been to realize that I was in and still am in a serious situation that I had no control over. So I roll with the punches. I let it roll off my back and try not to let it bother me.
Ask me about the pain I was in the day before surgery and I'll say it really wasn't that bad. I survived it. In my mind, I've already blocked the amount of pain that it was and really have to push through to remember how bad it was. That Tuesday was ridiculously bad. Wednesday wasn't as painful but more scary as the numbness spread. I do have a high pain tolerance...in the hospital they stopped asking my level of pain (it was 0 way more than they thought it should be) and started asking if I was uncomfortable or starting to get stiff. Pain (after the first weekend) wasn't registering as pain and was registering as I'm uncomfortable.
Ask me about PT....even when I was worked to the point fatigue and my legs were shaking uncontrollably, I wanted to push harder. I didn't want to stop. I want to keep going. My PT really worked hard to get me to listen to my own body and rest when I needed to even when I didn't want to. That is something that I'm still working on doing, listening to my body and actually doing what it's saying to do. That might mean not working out on a day that my body needs rest. That might mean not pushing as hard as I could because it doesn't feel right. That might mean not doing full range of motion because it won't let me. It also means that there are times that I just need to lie down and not be upright. My body is just tired of being upright and having to work that hard to stay straight and upright. So after a crazy day, a long day, or I'm just tired, I've learned to take some down time....horizontal time. (on good days, I don't take a nap...on tired days I often can't stay awake once I'm horizontal!) It's tough to listen to your body when you are used to pushing through and just making everything work. I'm still learning to listen and not push quite so hard.
Ask me how I'm doing and 9 times out of 10 I'll say I'm fine. Everything's alright. If I say it, it must be true. If I'm going to focus on all the things that are wrong...I get extremely negative and nothing can go right. If I start to focus on the positive, everything's fine, then the world doesn't seem so bad. It's not that I'm lying about how things are going, I'm just choosing not to let things bother me as much...or let others see how much stuff does bother me. I've made people worry enough about me with the craziness that happened with surgery and losing feeling, I don't need people to worry that I'm bummed or had a rough day.
Ask me if this ordeal has been a big deal, I'll answer flippantly...It happened. Was it a big deal? Yes it was. Yes it is. Am I working through by getting back to normal? Yes. Have I fully accepted that normal will never be the same? Nope...not yet. Reality still hasn't hit. I look at pictures of lifting heavy weights and mentally say to myself, that will never happen again, I'll never do that again. But still in my heart is a little bit of hope that someday, somehow I'll be back to normal.
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