Back Down to Earth (and a little below)

I should have known things were too good to be true. I guess I just got caught up in the eupho­ria that comes with hav­ing my con­di­tion improve for the first time in over three months. I began to think I was almost back to nor­mal. Turns out I’ve for­got­ten what nor­mal is. I made plans to return to work and live a rel­a­tively nor­mal life once again. Well, I jumped the gun. Back to earth I came crashing.

The goals that I set for myself were, shall we say, realigned yes­ter­day when I met with my back doc­tor (I was sup­posed to have seen him two weeks ago but I missed my appoint­ment by a day – damn vicodin). He was impressed with the recov­ery I’ve made so far, say­ing I am where I should be. He added that I am set up for success.

How­ever, he fears return­ing to work too soon could jeop­ar­dize my long-term recov­ery. I still have a way to go and much work still needs to be done. My ham­strings are extremely tight – I can’t raise either leg more than a cou­ple of feet off of the table when lying down. This puts undue stress on the back. My left leg mus­cles are also still weak from the dam­aged nerve.

He even said I might need another cor­ti­sone shot! Wow, I hadn’t seen that one com­ing. He wants to wait and see if phys­i­cal ther­apy and con­tin­ued walk­ing can restore my nerve, but since I can’t take any anti-inflammatory drugs (aller­gic to the whole fam­ily of drugs), he might have to go back in with the needle.

Also, he (like me) doesn’t like the idea of try­ing to work while still on nar­cotics. He thought that in another month or so I might be down to just half a vicodin pill in the morn­ing and half at night – a marked reduc­tion of nar­cotics in my sys­tem from what I have flow­ing now.

I have a myr­iad of emo­tions surg­ing through me right now. I felt some relief when I real­ized I didn’t have to go back to work next week. I was sur­prised to feel this since I had thought I was ready and was even begin­ning to once again look for­ward to work­ing (some­thing I didn’t have the energy to feel for quite some time). But I guess part of me always knew this was push­ing it.

Just yes­ter­day I felt quite sore and tired. A thought began to form in my head, won­der­ing how I would be able to han­dle work if clean­ing up the dishes was dif­fi­cult. I guess I quickly squashed that thought with a quick, “I’m just going to make it work.” Forc­ing myself to just do it, though, and not tak­ing care of my body dur­ing stress­ful times, is what got me into this mess in the first place.

I also feel plenty of guilt. I feel like I let every­one down, includ­ing myself. My wife, par­ents, and work all thought that I was going back to nor­mal next week. Instead, more of the same. While I know men­tally that I shouldn’t feel guilty – how was I to know? – I still feel pretty bad for it.

I’m also quite dis­ap­pointed that my doc­tors never indi­cated that recov­ery might take so long. It seems like they’ve done a poor job of man­ag­ing expec­ta­tions. I guess it’s hard to know the exact sit­u­a­tion that each patient will be in dur­ing recov­ery. Yet couldn’t they have at least explained the short and long esti­mates of how long it could take. That would have saved many peo­ple a lot of headaches when mile­stones that we thought were legit­i­mate couldn’t be met.

I guess I just have to take com­fort in know­ing that all of the pro­fes­sion­als I am in the care of tell me I am mak­ing good progress and should recover fully. Some day.

So many ques­tions. Too much to think about. It’s all very stress­ful. I bet­ter pro­ceed care­fully. My well­be­ing is at stake. I can’t let a change in plans and rise in stress make me for­get to do the only things that will ensure that I do one day get better.

Deep breath. Tighten abdom­i­nal mus­cles. Toe raises. Squats. Walk. Breathe. Think happy thoughts.

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