It’s Not About Me Today

Today one of my dearest friends is having surgery. She told me not to worry, but of course, I’m worried. She’s one of the people who have supported me through my illness since the beginning. She has come with me to doctors’ appointments – I’ve lost count of how many; she has taken me to and been there when I’ve woken up after many of the procedures and surgery I’ve undergone; and she has opened her home to me and cared for me.

We became friends many years before my illness, and the decades that separate our ages have become irrelevant. She is one of the few women in my life that I trust wholly to guide and advise me because she has lived an incredible life in which she has accomplished incredible things, I respect her tremendously, but above all, she is always honest – even when it might hurt. We have shared hours upon hours of laughter – the kind where you almost pee your pants – and she has opened my eyes to many truths about life. With just a few words, she gives me strength to face difficult situations, and her unassuming nature always puts me at ease. Truth be told, she is important to me in ways that my mother should be.

I can’t be there for her physically, so today my heart and mind are with Z and I am sending her positive energy to support her through, what she says is nothing to worry about.

 

Coldplay – Yellow

Constant Exhaustion and Missing Meds

Lately, I’ve been constantly exhausted. A part of it is my messed up sleep schedule. The other part of it is my pain medication level. However, this constant exhaustion is causing a problem: I’m missing some of my pain medication alarms or falling back asleep before I take a dose of my medications – as I did this afternoon.

Missing some of my scheduled medication times is causing my pain levels to fluctuate, and my goal to taper my pain medications to a lower dose is not going very smoothly. I know that I only had surgery a month ago and my body is still healing, but this constant exhaustion is making it hard for me to develop a normal routine and it’s frustrating me.

I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how I can cope with this.

 

Gratitude and Creativity: How I’m Healing

One of the best things I’ve ever done for myself is start my art/gratitude journal. Starting this journal connected me to my quiet self and gave me a tool to help heal myself. Since coming out of surgery – probably the second day after – I started drawing and colouring. With drawing and colouring, I was able to tune out a lot of my pain, other patients, and the busyness of the medical staff and support staff around me.

The first things I made while I was in the hospital contain a loving kindness meditation mantra that I learned many years ago in a mindfulness meditation course. The mantra is

May I live in safety
May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I live my life with ease

I often say this mantra when I feel anxiety. It helps to calm and ground me. Drawing it helped me feel less anxious about all the things that were happening to me in the first few days of my recovery. Things like the drastic drop in my blood pressure (it fell to 60/45), the unbearable pain flare when they removed my epidural, then my blood pressure spiking in response to the pain, and starting to walk again, which was incredibly painful. It was all very intense, so I needed something to keep me calm; as the doctors and nurses did their jobs to get my vitals back within normal ranges and prepare me to go home.

I’m glad I had the forethought to pack my art/gratitude journal, my Zentangle notebook, a new sketchbook, coloured pencils, and markers in my suitcase. I’m glad I’ve found things I can do, even under the fog of pain medication, that relax and calm me while giving me a creative outlet. The things that so many people believe are meant only for children have become significant tools for coping with my pain, and they are contributing to my healing.