I sprung a leak

My spirits are plunging. 

For all you who have recently asked me how I'm doing lately, you probably got some version of this: "OK, up and down, good days and bad days, pain minimal, tired a lot..."

I really do try to keep on the bright side. I know this is going to pass into easier times. It always does.

But my spirits are crashing.

I was hoping it wouldn't happen this time. I generally have a good perspective, and went into this surgery knowing that it is for a good goal, to be as out of pain as is possible.

My kids are doing great. My husband is fraying at the edges with almost all of life's details on his shoulders. People are helping out in generous ways with their time and energies driving my kids hither, thither and yon.

One problem is that the physical therapy hasn't started yet. National health insurance is dragging their feet, and it is way past the time I was supposed to get started. Orthopedic surgery is such that if you don't get started with it at the right time, you wind up not optimizing the positive effects of the surgery. I call the health clinic every day, have given in all the necessary paperwork, and the request is "being managed". I was told today that it does have the red flag of "urgent" on it. I'll just keep calling. I need that movement, though. I need inspiration.

I have been doing some exercises myself, I've had this surgery before I know what it needs. But I haven't been doing it enough. Probably because...

my spirits are crashing.

I have been going out, walked the dog a few times, even went shopping with Shifra yesterday for a few necessities she needed (that took hours longer than planned, thanks to a cashier who was unable to make both lobes of her brain work simultaneously).

I am getting around. As I tell people, pretty minimal pain. No pain is the hope.

It's only three and a half weeks after surgery, I tell myself. Chill out. It's all going to be OK.

Rainbow in Mitzpe Ramon, taken by Robert

I have a few close family members who haven't been in touch, and who, I am left to believe, view me as weak, not pulling myself up by the boot straps after NF, and volunteering for needless surgeries. They don't read my blog, they see it as too negative. Once, one of the people I am referring to asked me why I don't write about good, happy things in my family? Perhaps about Emma, our dog?(I'm serious). When I referred to some of the numbers of readers there are on the blog, I was told the reason for that is inhuman cyber "bots" who are sent to randomly hit sites all day. 

That view of Sarah, being the one who succumbed to a life of illness, who chose yet again to undergo surgery, who wasn't strong enough of character to keep working at her careers, who gave up,... that view is one which I have to fight off, like a terrorist, like that which sucks out the very life force of a person. And once that life force springs a little hole in it and starts leaking, the pain that accompanies it is greater than the summation of all the physical pain I have endured over these past eight years.

So, when we talk, I will always tell you that things are going OK, I am not lying. What I won't tell you is that my spirit is leaking.

 That doesn't have a spoken voice, only a written one.