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I am emerging, on shaky legs, from the dark cavern of post-surgical recovery. I know that some of you may be longing for the day when I return to my usual useful tips about mobility and flexibility training, and I definitely will, but today is not that day.
It’s hard to write about anything else other than the experiences of the last five weeks so I wanted to give you my biggest takeaway, something that has been helpful in my recovery and rehab process.
Recovery has been tough. Going into it every medical professional I spoke to said some version of “this is a really big surgery,” and they were right.
In the end my meniscus had mostly healed itself and the doc decided to leave it alone, which is a huge relief since menisci require at least two months non-weight-bearing. But I still had three shredded ligaments that needed to be replaced and reinforced and I now run the risk of setting off metal detectors with my internal hardware. I have six scars of various sizes that all need constant work and I can’t even imagine what sort of internal magic is integrating all of this new material into my body.
There were times in the last five weeks that I felt like I would never get better and that the pain and immobility would be with me forever. To some extent that may be true, but the mind in pain does some dramatic hand-wringing, exacerbated by the vacuum of a life cycled between bed, couch, PT, and doctor with little else to alter the color palette.
It is that hand-wringing that I wanted to write about today. Prior to surgery I wrote about my struggle with depression since the accident, as my life has slowed down and closed in around the healing process.
Surgery was a new challenge because, prior to the operation, I had pre-habbed to the point that I was starting to have my life back. I was going to the gym, working with clients, walking around, going out. Surgery meant taking a massive step back in order to have a more complete recovery in the long run. It was clearly the best choice—I wasn’t going to get to full functionality while missing three ligaments—but it was emotionally rough.
As I lay on the couch, bandaged, elevated, iced and medicated, it was so terribly tempting to succumb to the doleful wailing of my brain that wanted to bask in self-pity. Self-pity is seductive, placing us squarely in the center of some grand tragedy, the victim of unfortunate circumstances… sniffle sniffle.
Humor is also essential to getting through the tough times. Thank you to Ophelia Flame for this awesome and necessary care package that included the appropriately messaged fan and the fake mustache!
But in succumbing to self-pity, the doors are flung wide to its noxious cousin, depression, who storms in and takes over. Under the stultifying weight of depression I am unmotivated to do my exercises, get outside and see the sun, or eat anything—all necessary steps to improving my condition. Depression, like a bad house guest, wants to extend the terms of its stay as long as possible by preventing me from doing the things that I know will make me feel better. Bastard.
So it has become part of my daily practice to avoid feeling sorry for myself. Some people use gratitude journals for this, gratitude being a formidable foe of self-pity and depression. However, while I am grateful for every iota of my life, I do not want my well-being tied to anything external. I’m well aware that everything I have is temporary and the world is mutable. All these things I am grateful for may be gone tomorrow, and I will need to battle off self-pity more than ever.
Please note that if gratitude and gratitude journalling work well for you this is NOT in any way a condemnation of that practice. I celebrate anything that furthers our well-being and helps us get out of bed in the morning. I am just describing my peculiarities and why it isn’t an optimal practice for me personally. This is descriptive not prescriptive.
What is working for me instead is to change the story. Rather than casting myself as the victim of a tragedy I remind myself, as often as necessary, that I can do hard things. I have done hard things. I am doing hard things right now. Some days just sitting on the couch managing pain is extremely hard, and I am doing it. I am kicking ass at being in pain.
This story makes doing my exercises, hauling my ass to the gym, getting off the pain pills, all so much more appealing and accessible. It feels heroic in its difficulty.
So if this is appealing to you and you’ve stuck with me through this whole personal story, here is a storytelling exercise that I’ve been assigning myself on those tough days. If you like it, take it and go forth and spread it around like glitter in a dressing room.
Think of a time that you struggled. It is irrelevant whether this struggle was physical, mental, or emotional. It is also irrelevant whether you “overcame” whatever it was that you struggled with. We are so used to movie narratives where the underdog hero, after much tribulation, wins the gold medal and gets the girl and defeats the powers of darkness to the sound of cheers. In real life, that is a rare occurrence and unnecessary to the power of our story. What is important is only that you know how to struggle, how to fight, how to be brave and strong and tough in this hard world.
Please remember that this is not a call to return to the toughness of my Gen X youth that called for ignoring your feelings and “sucking it up”. This is about believing in your ability to push against the forces—internal and external—that are preventing you from doing the things that you want to do in the world.
When you remember that time that you struggled, remember yourself as heroic. It’s so much easier to give up, but you didn’t. Know that you are that same hero now. Whatever obstacles lie in your way, whatever scares you, don’t give up. If it doesn’t work out, try again.
It is the practice of working hard, not some external outcome, that is relevant when no one is watching, which is most of the time.
That’s the exercise that I’ve been doing every day, all the time. It has helped me.
Thanks for sticking with me through this time. I’m so grateful for you (see what I did there?)!
Happy Bendings,
Kristina
