Learning my limits

I am three weeks post-op today and, while I am feeling a little better every day, things are moving much slower than I imagined. I am leaps and bounds beyond where I was a few weeks ago, but I still spend most of my time on the couch with a heating pad and the smallest activities lay me out for hours. I’m slowly learning my limits and accepting that this is going to be a very tedious recovery. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually spend ALL of my time on the couch; that wouldn’t be healthy. I am up and moving, taking short walks, going upstairs and downstairs in our house, etc. But by the end of the day, I’m sore and tired and usually laid out again on the couch with my trusty heating pad. The majority of my day is spent resting in an attempt to find a comfortable position. When I’m feeling down about this recovery and my inability to do pretty much everything, I remind myself that this is a necessary investment in my health. Despite all of these inconveniences, my post-surgical pain is substantially less than my everyday pain used to be. Y’all, I used to need four ibuprofen every two hours to function on a daily basis. Now, post-surgery, I am alternating half that amount every six hours. 

If you know me, you know that I’m basically an evangelist for therapy these days, and part of my therapy was working on appreciating and being kinder to my body. It sounds pretty crunchy, but it has been a game-changer for my healing and processing. In the past, you probably heard me say that I hated my body or that my body hated me, but I haven’t used words like that toward myself in nearly two years. In reality, my body was doing literally everything it could to keep me going everyday. It was running with the check engine light on for years. Reading my post-operative report last week opened my eyes to the true extent that this disease ravaged my body.  

Reader’s Digest version of what I read about: They shaved deep into the walls of my organs to remove as much of the disease as they could without resecting the organs themselves. They reconstructed the shape of my insides. They cut, pulled, lasered, shaved, and scoped nearly every part of my abdomen. Ligaments were cut and sewn back together. Organs were removed and parts of me were sewn back together. I had 11 biopsies. Scopes were inserted into very small places that are not meant for scopes. NO WONDER I AM STILL SO SORE.

I am slowly learning my limits; mostly by going way past them and then realizing it was a terrible idea. I’ve organized my discoveries into the following categories: 

Things that I have discovered I cannot yet do:

1. Driving. A big ol’ nope.

2. Drag a dog bed four feet across the floor to be closer to the fireplace. The dog appreciated it; my body did not.

3. Not take pain medication. Spoiler alert: No one in our house appreciated this one. 

4. Yell (Hint: It involved a child that lives in my house.)

5. Rest a laptop on my tummy

6. Sit on non-cushioned surfaces for more than 10 minutes at a time. 

7. Any sudden or quick movements that involve the lower part of my body.

Things I previously couldn’t do but can do now with minimal discomfort:

1. Play Mario Kart

2. Crochet

3. Rest a laptop on my legs

4. Sit up from a full supine position.

5. Open the freezer (ice cream has mysteriously disappeared around here).

6. Use my weighted blanket

                Things I am still so happy I cannot do

1. Cook or clean

2. Any household chores at all