Re: This is my story
Janet, you are so right.
No one takes time anymore. It's pretty bad when you have to make a scene to get attention as I did with my OS (actually I probably wasn't as hysterical as I might percieve). I work in the mental health field, and I understand now why people who get upset for any length of time fear being locked up in some room with padded walls where no one can hear their complaints.
I too struggled in the recliner, fearing both the prospects of having to live my life there as well as taking the risk to press revision. It felt like a drastic dice shoot, and I have always been a nervous gambler. In the end-well, not the
end because there is always something to contend with even in a good recovery-I opted to trust the OS to tackle what he
saw when he
actually went in there. Whereas I couldn't trust his listening skills and his hypothetical reasoning, I decided to trust the
mechanic in him, and that part of him came through for me. Whereas he couldn't say "You were right all along", he did, like a good mechanic, outline everything that was wrong with the replacement while I was laying in the recovery room.
A riding buddy of mine says we have to keep experimenting-we have to keep adjusting and improving our lives (he happens to be a psychologist). It's easier when we are experimenting with a bicycle (i.e. rasing the seat to see it the ride is more comfortable), but experimenting in the face of such a potentially dibilitating future is so much more difficult to undertake.
I'll tell you this. I think that I decided, in part, and perhaps ironically, that, in fact, I
could live life in the recliner-that as long as I was living and had the will to live, I could find direction and activity in my life (I made more contacts and sketched more pictures of the grandchildren in that recliner). So I decided to accept the unknown-the uncertainty. I trusted that life would hold meaning for me as long as I lived it.
Now there were times when I was frightened and desperate, crying out in pain and in despair.
But I eventually realized the pain was saying, "Get on with it!-get it done! It matters not what the outcome is. Your body demands it. Life will direct you no matter where you are, no matter what kind of shape you are in."
So I took the chance.
My hesitation would say that I don't know what you need, what's most definetly going on in you hip-in your bones. But I know that you want to live, and living says "do what we can for ourselves". The rest is up to life itself.
You have others around you, others who care and support you-others you love and cherish. They and others will continue with you wherever life takes you. I hope you meet this challenge with your best intent in life. It will take you beyond your fear and uncertainty.
Jim
United States
