[2020-09-11] Milestones
It's been two weeks since my surgery.
Recovery has been an exercise in patience. I would have thought that each day would be better than the previous day: better sleep, less pain, more energy.
Such has not been the case. I can have a good day followed by a not-so-good day. I can have one pain disappear, only to be replaced by a different ache. I can feel mentally and physically energized one day, only to lose the drive to move around the next.
And the quality of my day can vary from morning to afternoon to evening to night. For example, this morning, I felt achy and tired, but picked up steam by midday. In fact, I went for a few little walks: to the mailbox down the street, from the front of the house to the back and vice versa. I exceeded 2,000 steps, which is a record since returning from the hospital. This was in part because I had the energy and in part because all the websites I consulted on recovering from a hysterectomy recommended walking. Not marathons, of course, and nowhere near 10,000 steps. But just moving about.
I also did something today that I haven't done in many years. I finally meditated. And by that, I mean that I simply paused where I was sitting, chose some relaxing music on Spotify (think spa) and set a timer for 5 minutes via the app Insight Timer. I closed my eyes and just breathed. No deep inhalation through the nose for a count of so many seconds followed by slow exhalation through the mouth for another set amount of seconds. Just normal breathing and an awareness of my breath. It actually felt quite restorative.
Today's biggest milestone was the removal of the staples from my incision—all 29 of them—thanks to my niece, the nurse. I was starting to feel like I had a zipper in me. I'm hoping that my belly will start to settle and soften in the coming days and weeks.
Today's inspiration is from The Pocket Pema Chödrön, a little book that a friend sent to me. Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön is resident teacher at a Tibetan monastery in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She writes:
As long as we're caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honoring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we are always running away from discomfort, we're going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker.
As the graphic below illustrates, that unhappiness and disappointment come from a disconnect between expectations and reality, and illustrates why patience is so important.
