Heidi says: I have a great idea and I won't tell you what it is because there is a certain person who cannot know, and this person reads this blog daily :). Almost Nico's birthday by the way!! :) This friday!
Sarah says (you do look happy Heidi - and nuts! What's the secret?):
Here’s The Truth: I am worried. I am sad. I am feeling very uneasy. It’s been two weeks since I made the great mistake of lifting up that old lady who had fallen on the street in Gent. You would think after two weeks the pain would have gone away. It hasn’t. Yes – the x-rays I had the day after the strain showed that my prostheses was in place and unaffected, which was great news. But the bad news is, the pain has stayed. It hasn’t really gotten any better. Maybe a little. But then again worse. I can walk and sit and lie down – but all with pain or more than minor discomfort. I can go on with my life – as I did all those years with heavy pain. I can work. I can see friends. I can cook. I can play with my kid and husband and be a mother and a wife. I still can’t do any sports – but I haven’t been able to for years really thanks to pain so… I do want to start Pilates to get strong or get a personal trainer to teach me what’s good and what isn’t good for my back. I need to make my back stronger. My back will always be my weak point. I know that now even more than I knew that before. What changed? I had NO PAIN for about 5 great months. It was amazing – almost too sweet. Now that THE PAIN is back and my movements and motions are limited and my emotions are being tested to no end, it’s as if the pain is even worse. It probably isn’t. The comparison to then and now is skewed. I find it so very unsettling. I hope and even almost pray (and I’m not even a believer!) that the pain will just go away. I’ll wake up and it will be gone. It’s like “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil”. Denial! I keep telling myself I’ll just get through this. I got through it before. And I will. But whereas the physical strain might be the same, worse or better than before – I don’t know – it’s slightly different – the mental crap that goes along with it is 10 times worse than what I experienced before. It’s so stressful now. I tasted the good life. Now the hard life tastes so much worse. Shame is a horrible emotion. I am sure it gets in the way of being able to experience any joy and it triggers all sorts of dark stuff in the brain. I hate to admit it, but I feel ashamed of my back pain. It’s like anyone who knows me, has been hearing about my stupid back pain for years now and my operation – and then the fantastic results of my operation! And now, here I am again, poor poor Sarah, once again with back pain to complain about. Weak, weak Sarah. Enough is enough! I know this is only in my head. But it is part of the mush in my brain right now and it more than even the actual pain is what I need to get over. I am useless if I am in pain and depressed. There is always this pressure to be strong. I am strong, I know that. I was so terribly strong all those years in pain – getting up everyday and going to work, traveling for work, working hard, being a mom, being a wife, singing and performing in a band, being happy… I can and will be and do all those things again, with or without pain. I’ll do them as well as ever, with or without pain. But I want to SCREAM SO LOUDLY right now because I am sad and in a rage! The simple reason being that I don’t want to live with pain anymore. I don’t want to live with these limits of movement anymore.
Here’s The Reality: I will live in pain if I have to. I will live with limits of movement if I have to. I will just make the click. That’s what happens. You make a mental click and you just get on with it. You go through the motions and emotions at first and face and rage at the frustrations at first. Then you get over it and you move on. You have to. In your own time certainly. But you have to. It’s not as though I can crawl up in a ball and not live life for a while. I have all these responsibilities. I have so many great things to look forward to, which I will approach with delight and vigor. I have so very much to do. I just have to do it. I have to get over these frustrations. I have to get over myself. I have to make everything relative. I have to accept this and not fight it and fight it and fight it. I should not be ashamed one bit of any of it. That’s the dumbest part of it all, which is of no help to me at all. I have to rid myself of all that crap. It’s not as though I have a life-threatening sickness. I have what seems to me like a life-limiting condition. I know that I will have to face it my whole life and I know 100% that there will be more surgery on my back in the years to come. I know eventually I will have to have a much-more-serious- fusion operation when my prostheses gives out. I see old people walking around bent over and almost in-half and I can easily imagine myself that way in the future. I know that one wrong move, one bad twist, one heavy car accident; one dumb thing can put me back in the hospital folded in half. I can easily imagine myself in a wheelchair later. I am not even exaggerating one bit here. I know it. I have to live with it. But I also know I can live with it. I have before. I will again. If I am lucky, this new back pain, which feels very bad, will turn out not to be bad at all and will heal and will go away and I will feel great again… If I am lucky… And I am lucky. Pain sucks but you can live with it… Shame sucks but you can get rid of it…
I have to add one more thing to lighten up what I wrote above. It's pretty funny actually! On Friday we're going to a town in Belgium called Ittre for the weekend. I was just looking up information about it and found out that it has something very pertinent to my pain and if I am lucky maybe I can get myself a small miracle by having a chat with this Lady of Ittre! Check this out! I should actually head out there the 15th to be safe!
Description:
The procession of Notre Dame d'Ittre has been held since 1384 on a traditional course with three shrines along the way. People prayed to Our Lady of Ittre over the centuries, to help remedy outbreaks of plague, fever and senility. However, she specialised in curing hernias. In the 19th century, the pilgrimage was considered as the 3rd most-important after Hal and Montaigle. Nowadays, the procession carries banners and is accompanied by bands and a large group of horse-riders.
1 comment:
ska met de zotte tote...
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