Spoiled Only Child

Prepping for surgery

In three days, I will have back surgery. I still cannot believe this is happening. But after two months of complete disability, and a neurosurgeon's opinion that I will not get better on my own, I no longer feel I have any choice. I have all the indications that surgery is warranted and necessary and very likely to help. There was no agonizing over the decision. In fact, I felt immense relief when I found out that surgery was an option for me. Knowing there was some way to fix this problem almost immediately brought me out of a depression during which I spent most days sobbing, wracked with despair. Not knowing how long this ordeal would last was the hardest part.

Still, I am scared to death. I am scared of the surgery, yes. But I am even more scared of the future beyond it. The doctor says the prognosis looks good, that I should feel better quickly, that the surgery is minimally invasive and I should feel better a couple days after than I do right now. (That wouldn't be a high bar, since I can barely walk or sit right now.) I've heard lots of stories of people who made full recoveries from this type of problem and went on to many years of active healthy living.

But I've also heard the other kinds of stories, some from friends and some on the internet. (Oh lord, why can't I stop Googling?) Stories of people who had poor results. People who were still having lots of pain many months after the surgery. People who were cured temporarily but then the pain came back. People who reherniated their discs shortly after surgery. I'm terrified that it won't work, or that it will take many months to make me feel better. I'm scared that I will no longer be able to live an active healthy life. I'm scared of what my future with a weakend back looks like. I'm scared  that this kind of pain and disability can just descend on a relatively young, healthy and active person for absolutely no reason. Another layer of my innocence has been stripped away by this realization.

I know I need to stay in this moment and deal with what is here now. I know there is no sense in playing out these scenarios in my head. I know that life is full of uncertainty, that anything can happen at any moment. I know that worry is useless. I know that people face far worse than this. Still, this is so, so hard.

I guess I never knew what a back problem could do to your life. As this blog has chronicled, mine has reduced me to a pile of rubble over the past two months. Two months doesn't sound like much when I type the words, but it has felt like eternity. When you are lying on the couch hour after hour, every day feels like a month. I can hardly imagine what it's like to live without pain anymore. I believe in my heart that this experience will make me stronger, that it will transform me. I am still on the hero's journey. But I'm so ready to get out of the mountains and onto smoother terrain again.

Acceptance and hope

I realize that what I have been going through is a grieving process. I don't know the official stages of grief, but I have definitely been through the darkness of fresh grief. The feeling that everything is officialy over for me, that all hope is lost. I have also been through the intense wanting, the desire for everything to be restored just as it was, the despair that comes from wanting so badly to just go back to "normal." I think I am beginning to move on now, to the stage where I accept that my life is different now, and that it will never be the same again.  There will be no magical day when everything snaps back into its old place.

This does not mean that I have given up on healing my leg and back, or my brains. Not at all. In fact, for the first time in a while, I feel a sense of genuine hope that I will get better. I will be an able-bodied person again who doesn't spend all day lying on the living room floor, trying not to panic and/or cry. I am going to psychiatrists and therapists and spine doctors and physical therapists. I am getting epidural injections, popping more pills than I care to name, reading books about healing back pain.

But I also realize that I am walking through fire, and that I will not emerge from it unchanged. I will have a new awareness of how suddenly everything can change, of how thin the ties are that bind us to what we have in this moment. I hope these revelations will teach me how to live with new gratitude for every day that I have my health and my family. We say these are the things that really matter, but you can't truly feel it until you have seen them slipping away. I know now that the things I once took for granted, or even dreaded, are sacred gifts. Being able to walk my daughter to school, to pack her lunch, take her to a museum, or to dance with her in the living room. Being able to clean my home, to help with the dishes, to cook dinner, all those acts of care that we do for our families. Being able to go to the gym, to run errands, to throw a stick for the dog, to take a bike ride on a warm winter day. I didn't truly realize what gifts all those things are. But I will never forget again, that I promise.

I will also know that I am bigger than my thoughts and emotions. I have seen what dark places they can take you to. I've seen how they lie, how they tell you stories that aren't true, how they cripple with you with fear, how they separate you from what is real. I will remember that the only true wisdom emerges from a place far deeper than the emotions and thoughts that swirl around me like clouds, obscuring my view of the truth.

For now, I am trying to walk through this ordeal — which is not over — with both acceptance and hope. For now, I have to accept my limitations and try to be the best person I can be within them. I have realized a few things during this time of weakness — most of all, how much we need people in our lives. The love and care that I have received from friends and family have been humbling. My mother has spent more than three weeks here, doing everything in her power to help me. My husband has held me while I sobbed more times than I can count. Friends and family have sent cards, dropped off meals. Even the many kind messages I received on Facebook felt like sacred reminders of our capacity to comfort and love one another. There is such power in reaching out to one another, and for the rest of my life, I promise to give that gift as often as I can.

I am doing my best, and I am making it, day by day, through the darkest time of my life.