A reality check...

I think it’s time for a reality check. But first:

There was a little girl,
who had a little curl,
 right in the middle of her forehead,
when she felt good she felt very, very good
and when she felt bad, she felt horrid

Good light and HRT

I have two personas, we all have at least two. There is the official one, the one where you keep calm and carry on, where there is a smile for the camera, your best foot going forward where things are positive and all is well. And then there’s the private.

In my private world, the one that admittedly I have to live in the gaze of others it’s harder to hide what’s actually going on. Take yesterday for instance, we arrived in Barcelona, had a trundle around looking at various sites before stopping for a drink and to contact the AirBnb hosts to say we were about to arrive and gain access to the apartment.

I struggled to get out of the car.

I struggled to sit down on a chair in the place we’d found and then, drink drunk, I struggled to get out of the chair. It suddenly struck my that after years of offering my mum an arm to help her out of a chair it was me on the receiving end. Don’t get me wrong, I can do it, but it’s very slow and I’m very careful.

The feeling of weakness is throughly incapacitating, it saps morale. And it’s making me very grouchy.

But not as grouchy as the lack of sleep is making me.

Last night, according to FitBit, I slept for 7 hours and 31 minutes. In fact for the first time in a while I’ve actually woken feeling moderately refreshed. I know that moving from place-to-place is probably to the ideal way to deal with sleep depravation but to be honest staying home in Limehouse would have been worse as the constant noise of the Limehouse Horn Concerto in F minor is equally bad for sleeping.

I’ve pretty much worked out what the root causes are. I’m anxious, obvs, mostly about work related things as I’m struggling to get much done owing to the constant tiredness and feeling out of sorts, then there is the physical discomfort though, for the most part, that’s all it is, discomfort rather than actual pain. Err, pain like I’ve just had which shot through my nether regions with such vigour that all I could do was grit my teeth and breathe deeply. Talking was not an option. And last but not least there is the HRT, I restarted it last week and other than my skin seeming to respond well to oestrogen after nine weeks without, it’s leading to hot flushes, tetchyness, dizziness and goodness knows what else. At least the nausea has stopped now.



Yay.

On the bright side, I can feel my energy coming back too, a complete lack of hormones in my system was not just increasing the risk of osteoporosis but it was leaving me completely drained. What fun.

A window on my world.

So yes, a reality check. I’m not back yet, I’m trying and it’s incredibly frustrating that it will take a while longer. The fact remains that less than four weeks ago I had major surgery and this has had a huge impact in many ways. I suspect that in another four weeks I’ll be largely back to normality. Why do I think this? Well, each day is different, I know that on this Recovery Road-trip each day actually is different, but I’m getting my perspective back and I’m actually able to walk around and slowly my head is getting back together. On my good days I become over-optimistic and then I get a crashing reminder of the fact that it’s been four weeks. Or worse still, it’s been only a week since I was under house arrest at the behest of the surgeon and nurses. 


So the point behind this rambling mixed up post? Well, it’s simply this:

Watch this space…