Recovering

I spent about 2 days completely shutting everyone out.  If you sent me or my family messages, from the absolute bottom of my heart thank you, knowing that people were thinking of me just means the world to me.  Even if I didn't respond right away or at all, please know it really helped.  I just needed to spend those 2 or 3 days completely in my own head, but ignoring my thoughts.  Eventually though, on Sunday or Monday, my parents and I went out for dinner.  I was so uncomfortable being outside and chatting, I still wanted time to process.   (click "read more")




By the way, I don't know what was going through my mind, honestly, I was trying not to think too much.  During these days though I don't think I was wallowing, or mourning or even hiding, I think I was processing.  All of those things and much more are included in that, but basically I was almost paralyzed from needing to sort out and put aside some of the thoughts and emotions I experienced.

Anyway, dinner was good and I wasn't unhappy, I was just uncomfortable.  After dinner though my Dad convinced me to let him buy me some ice cream and we sat outside Haagen Daz and talked.  Most importantly, we didn't really talk about the surgery or the Esteem or anything.  For some reason, all of a sudden, I felt like talking about random stuff and it made me feel a lot better, more complete in a way.  The surgery left me feeling broken because it seemed like the one thing that was going to make me "whole" had been taken away, maybe talking about a hodgepodge of other things going on in my life helped me see that even if I'm a bit bruised and missing a few parts and sometimes an entire sense, I'm still a whole person in other ways. 

Since then, I wasn't suddenly, magically better.  I still just wanted to stay home and rest, I still wasn't really keeping in touch with my friends, but I was a little more and I would say by now I'm pretty much back on the grid.  I'm still feeling so completely exhausted though, in a way I haven't felt in a long time - if ever.  Today was my first day back at work and it was a fine day, but it was long.  I got a lot done but my ear and the side of my head were killing me and I was so tired.  I'm half tired because it's almost impossible to sleep sitting up, which I have to do to keep from feeling pain in my ear from pressure, and half just from the whole ordeal.  It's also exhausting only being able to use one hearing aid,  because there is still fluid in my left ear and when I put in my left aid everything sounds as though I'm underwater.

I want to keep working though, and I want to keep being in touch with people, but I needed to adjust it so I could also recover.  I've scaled back at work a bit, moving from a full time 5 day a week schedule to 3 days a week plus extra as necessary.  I think that will help me take a lot of stress and pressure off of myself.

There's been some good out of all this, I've gotten to see how incredibly lucky I am to have the people in my life that I do.  It's hard for me to sometimes trust the people that I let in, but I've realized that I needn't have worried, I've got good people around me.

So, yeah, that's a bit of an update of where I'm at.  I'm in a weird sort of place where I laugh my head off at funny TV shows and I joke around and make my usual sarcastic comments, but it feels a bit weird.  I don't think twice about laughing at or with others, but when I joke... I don't know, it feels odd, like I'm letting down the version of myself that was so completely devastated the night before I found out that this was not the end of the road.

I'm still not feeling optimistic or hopeful or looking forward to anything, whether consciously or subconsciously, but I do feel confident that we'll move in some sort of forward direction and I think that's good enough for now, wherever that direction should end up taking me.  I definitely feel more normal which feels good.  

No news from the doctor yet, but I'll be sure to update when there is.