RE: Am I Settling? Is This The New Me?
This really resonates for me. Thirty five years ago I had a car accident that left me paralysed for a number of hours and with injuries that kept me in hospital for 6 weeks. It was earthshattering. I was 21 - just - and with my whole life ahead of me. Concussed and with multiple breaks I felt as though life was not worth living. I'd have happily asked someone to end it all. I thought I'd never get out of bed again. I did, thanks to a doctor that chivvied me up and insisted I take his arm and "walk" to the end of the ward. I insisted I went home after 6 weeks and 2 weeks later resumed my university life - well, sort of.
Suffice it to say that it was a long haul. For more than a year, I had constant pain in my back. My knees still don't work the way they should because, in those days, there was no physio if you had broken bones. There was no counselling, helped along by parents who just wanted me to "get on with things".
I survived. I remain terrified of being a passenger in a vehicle. The smallest of things set me off. I remain terrified of hospitals and doctors. In hospital - I got stuck in a lift and thought I'd die in a lift in a hospital bed. I was so ill and the trainee nurse so inexperienced, she left me in my own urine. The nursing sister berated me for wanting pain killers when I was in so much pain I literally counted the hours from one dose to the next.
Granted, you're not 21, but what I hope you get from this is that it is possible to carry on and live. It took me an awful long time to get beyond it all, not helped by losing my first real love in the aftermath of the accident and again wanting to take my own life.
I look back on that black time and realise how far I have come. Knees don't work properly, and I do have a very real fear of falling, but I still dance, and do what I want to do. Because why? I want to, and will and I'm not going to let my head or a stupid accident stop me.
Go out there grab the brass ring and just do what you need to do. And it's ok to rail about it. Hell no, it's good to rail about it. But at the same time, think about how much you do have to be grateful for: your home - which you love and the homesteading which you love and the people and...
Be well, and hang in there
Fiona
Oh how many times hear that! When I was in a doctor's office (the insurance made me go to one of their so-called IME- independent medical evaluation) doctors, he was rude and condescending. I blew up at him when he said...
"I don't see what the problem is... you were in a car accident and you survived. It's time to move on..."
I went off on his a$$ and in his report he said I was defensive and showed signs of hostility all because I yelled at him and said; have you ever been rear-ended by a semi truck? No.. probably not. I'm pissed off and my life is not what it used to be.
So if that makes me hostile, then so be it.
Some day I want this to be me too.
Glad you were ok after all the time to heal.
Healing bones is one thing, I've never had to heal emotionally like this before, not even when I divorced my first husband. It is so draining on one's psyche.