Recovery notes, 1

This is one of five messy journal pages called Hospital Stays 1 & 2, 2025. I had four major surgeries in 2024 and many hospital stays. Unfortunately, 2025 started with two. I am committed to doing anything possible to avoid any invasive procedures or hospitalizations for the rest of 2025! Let's hope my body cooperates.

At this point, I feel I have significant medical trauma to work through. Medical trauma does not only occur from abusive or inappropriate medical incidences. It also applies to the incredible physical and emotional trauma you go through when you have a major illness and medical intervention for treatment.

While, most of my healthcare providers were wonderful, there were a handful that caused emotional and physical harm. It only takes a few people working 12 hour shifts to impact your hospital experience. But, luckily, these people were few and far between.

An overriding, soul wrenching experience in 2024 was the unbearable PAIN. The pain I was living with on a daily basis had become literally too much to bear. Multiple Percocets a day did not extinguish it, and I was reduced to barely moving at all. I could only be on my feet a couple hours a day and then had to lie flat in pain. I would not wish this on anyone. Along with your loss of daily functioning, you have to deal with unrelenting pain in multiple places in your body. Much of it was nerve pain, which is it's own version of hell.

I don't wanna revisit these terrible times too much in this post. I still live with pain on a daily basis, but it is not as extreme, and I look forward to it disappearing. I am also regaining much of my abilities such as using my dominant hand to write and eat with.  I am also gaining in my ability to be on my feet longer, and I am relearning to walk. I have a year to work on this and I'm hoping for a full recovery. 

I am also going back to some of my rheumatoid arthritis medication. I was off them for five months and boy did I feel it! I am still not cleared for my biologic injections of Enbrel, but I got to start my hydroxychloroquine and sulfasalazine last week. Hopefully the side effects from these medications will pale in comparison to the relief I will get in my many painful joints. I had to be taken off all my RA medication because medication for autoimmune illnesses suppress your immune system and I could not have that while I was undergoing sensitive surgical recoveries.

I feel such gratitude to my spinal neurosurgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. Dealing with severe spinal compression is so delicate and complex. I am overwhelmed with appreciation for the people that went down this long educational tract to be able to save people like me from paralysis and death. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My neurosurgeons had to go through medical school, then go years for a specialty in neurology, and then had to go years in a specialty of spinal neurosurgery. It is one of the longest physician trainings.

This journal page is messy on purpose. It is chaotic and violent.  "Fall risk "was a label assigned to me in medical settings. This told personnel that I needed their hands on help for everything. I literally had alarms set on my bed and chair, prohibiting the slightest move towards independence. I do understand that this was for my safety. But the hospital definitely aired on the side of caution. As a fall risk, I had to fight with healthcare staff to give  me any privacy. The hospital's fear of liability in case I would fall kept me dependent in ways I did not need. The most private of actions had to be in full view and hands-on with 1 to 3 people. To say that I was impatient and crabby to be left alone is an understatement. The brick walls represent my struggle to breakthrough pain and demoralization to embrace recovery. The fiery colors reference  my pain and blood.

My rehabilitation is difficult.  It is a daily challenge that sees growth in very small increments. And my body is still not 100%. I am chronically anemic, my rheumatoid arthritis is flaring in several joints and my cervical and thoracic regions are still limited in movement and painful. This rehabilitation requires patience, which is a virtue I find lacking. I intuitively know that I must be grateful and hopeful to continue recovering. Cheers to that.

 Here's to a 2025 that is healthier, hospital-free and full of creative projects. Wish me well.