Life Hands you Lemons

I'm having a bad week.

First, some a quick update on things: I saw the Throat Doctor today.  He tortured me with a camera up my nose and then all the way down my throat.  My throat hasn't really opened up any more since December.  The good news is that he is conveniently available on July 26th so he'll be able to get in on the surgery party.

But, my week? It's been bad.

When they stuck a needle in my eye last week, they scratched something a little.  So then I had bleeding eyes.  The doctor gave me antibiotic drops and told me I had to stop taking any blood thinners, which basically means all the good pain killers.

So my eye was acting like it was infected on Monday, but it may have just been super cranky.  It has been stabbing me in the brain for the last several days and, let me tell you, Tylenol sucks.

I'm a little concerned that I might need to add neurologist to my list of specialists.  Migraines seem to be a thing I get now.  I'm hoping maybe they aren't, and that the headaches will stop after the surgery.  If not, well, neurologist.

So it's been a bad week.  There's been a lot of pain.  It has stopped me from going to work.  This, of course, frustrates me for all the reasons I've written about before.  It also kind of stresses me out because I don't really have any spare leave.  I don't know how much time I'll need after surgery to recover, but if it's much more than a week I'm going to be screwed.

I'm also worried about the surgery.  I'm worried that it won't work.  I mean, I'm worried it will cause as many new problems as it fixes old ones.  I have good reasons to think it won't really do that - the people going in and trying to fix me are probably the best in the state and they know what they're doing.  There are always side effects though.  It's probably not realistic to expect my nose to ever really function completely the way it's supposed to.  It's possible fixing my tear duct will lead to a lifetime of dry eyes or a bone ridge that will bother me as much as my little saddle nose.

I'm very consciously trying to not dwell on the worst case scenario.  In fact I'm working hard on positive imagery and self-hypnosis* because I do think there's something to be said for the power of positive thinking, hokey as it might seem.  I'm also trying to be realistic.  I don't want to set myself up for disappointment.

I started today with pain, and I am feeling kind of discouraged and useless and frustrated.  And then this popped up on my facebook feed:


This is a video about Josh Hanagarne, the world's strongest librarian.  He works for a different library system, but it's the same city.  I've met Josh.  He came to my book club when we read his book and tore a deck of cards in half.  I have friends who are actually friends with him.  He has tourette syndrome and it has in the past been very debilitating for him.

This one quote really struck a chord with me today:

I try to never go home because my tourettes is bad.  Because it’s always bad.  And no day is necessarily harder than the other.  And I could see myself saying 'oh it’s too much' and then I’d just never come back to work

That's been milling around in my head, and I think I may have been saying "oh it's too much" lately.  Maybe I need to suck it up and work through the pain and the discomfort.  On the other hand, my condition is different is not tourettes.  Sometimes it really is too much, and I can push myself to the point that I literally cannot function.  I think for me too much is something I have to pay attention to and be careful with.

Giving in to my condition is also something I need to be careful of.  I'm not sure that right now is the time to figure out what too much is going to mean to me.  I can try to figure it out, but I'll just have to figure it all out again in 27 days because surgery is going to change things.  Hopefully it will change things for the much better.

Anyway, if you have some positive energy to spare, send it my way.  I need to try to go in to work tomorrow (usually I have Thursdays off) so I don't have to use up my leave for this week of pain I've been having.

*So I've had some experience with self-hypnosis.  I did a whole bunch of it when I was 13 before I had back surgery to straighten up my spine and fuse it (yeah, that was a surgery.  This one I'm having next month is small potatoes) because scoliosis.  The operation went exceptionally well and I can't help but attribute at least some of that to the mental prep we did.