Hi,
I am just a few days ahead of you in recovery. I could really relate to what you are saying. It's a bit different as I have my long suffering partner who is with me at every step of the journey and recently I would have really struggled if I had been on my own. In reality the recovery is going as expected, which at the start I was bouncing up and down given that my leg is now able to do things that it just couldn't do before the op. After a couple of weeks, I then started to feel a little stir crazy, not able to drive, to get out and about, fed-up with being in four walls, plus starting to feel very despondant about my leg length discrepancy. My energy levels dropped (compounded by the lack of sleep) and despite constantly reminding myself there will be low times, there were a couple of moments when I felt despair and panicy that I had aged before my time, life wouldn't get back to normal and how the heck did I end up with one leg longer than the other at the grand age of 57? I must have been driving my partner up the wall as I moaned about lurching about the house on uneven legs feeling sorry for myself.
We went out with my neighbors for a drink, fell about laughing and all those internal negative feelings flew off into the distance. It's so easy when when you are alone and not interacting with other people on a regular basis to fall into negative thinking - despite however good a reason it is. It's incredibly frustrating not being able to drive the car, take my lovely dogs out for the their daily walk and in effect to have your life on hold.
I am doing an online course that has helped. It has also helped to have a daily routine, so that when a specific time comes, I have set myself an activity that I have to do. This really helps me to focus on achievements throughout the day, rather than just lying in bed. I tend to be a very displined person anyway, planning stuff, but I have found that this helps - if I feel low, I still do whatever activity I had planned to do, despite lack of enthuasiasm which helps to bring my mind back to reality.
I also get in touch with some friends on an occassional basis for a chat, but not to much as I want to have something to talk to them about. I also reach out to my partner's grown up kids. I have to tell them when I want a support chat or a visit, as they don't know what to do that will help. It's easy to assume that others will do what you want - but if you don't tell them what it is you need, they don't know , so it can be easily misunderstood that they don't care, which most likely isn't the case, more likely that they don't know what support you need or are just absorbed in something else. I found myself falling into this trap, feeling miserable because someone hadn't texted or called as someone else said 'catastrophic thinking'. It's so easy to do. Normally I don't have this issue, but have found in the past couple of weeks, I easily find my way into that over thinking and over reaction, bursting into tears which just isn't like me AT ALL! Really what I need to do , is just reached out to the person, then within a couple of hours I was having a good giggle with that person as they asked if I wanted a visitor, then leaped in the car to come and see me.
Healing is challenging particularly when it takes time and you can't engage with life as you normally do, so have to find other ways to do things or ask others to come to you. Some of us don't like to ask, not used to asking, don't want to ask as very independant and so on, despite friends and family constantly saying let us know what we can do - we forget those words when nothing happens and those friends haven't actually been told what they can do.!
United States
goes.
