Repeat after me...

Yesterday was a tough day.

It was the first day since surgery that my pain got up to about a 9 or a 10/10.

I woke up, and my leg was swollen a bit, and the pain was there, hovering around a 6. I took a couple of muscle relaxers,. I haven’t been allowed to do any of my stretches or anything, and it felt like the piriformis muscle was stuck in a spasm and setting off the nerve pain.

I took a nap, woke up, and the pain had mostly subsided. So, I laid on the couch with my stimulator turned up and stitched for the day. Self-care day.

The pain started climbing again around 4pm, and at 7:30 pm I climbed into bed, feeling defeated and with the pain continuing to rise, now at about an 8.

Around 11:00 pm with my pain at a 9 or so, I got up to get a drink and use the restroom. The pain was so intense I wasn’t able to sleep. As I was walking into the kitchen I realized something — I was holding my breath. I kept catching myself actually holding my breath. And my muscles all felt tense, my shoulders and neck and everything.

I was carrying around an immense amount of anxiety and fear, which I hadn’t vocalized because I hadn’t wanted to admit it.

Even though I know that recovery isn’t linear, that my brain is going through a re-training process right now and being trained to feel this strange tingling instead of pain… even though my pain yesterday was worse than my pain had been since surgery and my implant has been providing me so much relief, I was imagining worst-case scenarios:

“My implant stopped working…This is going to be just like the piriformis injections that stopped working… Nathan’s going to be so disappointed if I have to tell him it's not working… what if I won’t get back as much of my life as I thought?”

As soon as I made the realization, I said it out loud to Debbie Jo in an IM, then I took two valiums. Within twenty minutes my anxiety was subsiding, and my body was beginning to relax and wouldn’t you know it, the pain started rapidly subsiding.

So, here’s the thing my therapist tells me that I’ve literally been saying on repeat in my head ALL DAY.

“It’s just a bad time in your life, sweet girl. not a bad lifetime.”

It was just an awful day, only one terrible day out of the last 13 days since getting my implant. Those are a lot better odds than what I was working with before!

And it reminded me that we have to let.shit.go.

Don’t hold it in and shove it down into your guts! That’s how we all end up with ulcers and shit.

Ya gotta let it out. Acknowledge it. Then work through it.

Then let it go.