It’s been a week.
At the start of the week, I almost signed myself up to change to bi-weekly newsletters to make sure I’m keeping my health as top priority. Looks like I’ve managed to complete this week’s newsletter after all. It’s about 24 hours later than unusal and based on this week, I’m pretty happy with that.
If you’ve been following my health journey, so far you’ve heard about specific well-being events. What I don’t tell you, and you may or may not organically realize, is that I have a host of doctor, PT and other health-related appointments every week. If I have one day without a medical appointment, it feels like a day off.
Here’s a taste of the list of medical care team professionals in my current rotation:
Primary doctor
Physical therapist
Gynecologist
Speciality gynecologist - specializing in pain
Urogynecologist
Dermotologist
Therapist for cognitive work (CBT, EMDT, etc)
Dental (too many root canals and gum grafting recently)
Neurologist
Pulmonologist (need to do a sleep study)
Orthopedic surgeon (had bunion surgery last year, plus a follow-up in Feb of this year)
Orthopedic (for hand joint issues)
Gastroentrologist
Stretch Lab (need to restart, as this is very helpful)
This list, while embarrassing to look at how long it is, is also exhausting to look at and to manage. It is no joke that managing my health is a full-time job. I hope to get to a point where a lot of these appointments can be scaled back and I can live a happy and healthy life.
So this week was a week, and as part of sharing my health journey, I think it’s appropriate to share what happened, as well as how I’m coming through on the other side despite the insanity of the issues.
Let’s start at the top.
Issue #1 - 10/10 Rating
Typically, a score of 10/10 is a good thing. Except when we’re talking about the pain scale. Over the last ~2 weeks, my pain, which had been improving, was bouncing up to a 10 way too frequently.
At first, I was just in reactive mode. Doing whatever actions I could to reduce the pain. Sometimes, just resting in bed, not able to do anything else. Sometimes, up and about, but only able to do enough to skate by for the day: hoping to make it to whatever pre-planned medical appointments I had for the day, trying to do PT exercises and eating remotely healthy, and doing some comfort eating, because, well, why not.
After a week or so, it dawned on me that this was a spike in pain levels from where I’d been. Maybe there was an infection involved.
The next sequence of events is a string of conflicting results of testing in the women’s health area:
Yes, infection.
No, not an infection.
Well, maybe it’s something.
And that picks us up where we are now. When I started writing this article, I thought I knew, definitively, what I was dealing with. Now, I’m in the maybe stage.
Issue #2 - Older Dog Scare
Our empty nest at home includes 3 doggies, who have been said to lead a royal life. The oldest is a 17-year-old Chihuahua mix and still wrestles with her 2-year-old Pomsky sister.
Minnie has been aging very well, but in the last week, we found out that she now has some specific concerns we need to address. It’s an aging thing. It would happen eventually. And I’m familiar with the aging things.
All that said, it’s been a rough week at home. Similar to my test results, the Minnie situation was across the board and not always clear.
At this point, we don’t know exactly where things stand, except that she ended the week on a good note. We are taking her to a specialist next week to get more information.
Issue #3 - Dental Distress
Chronologically speaking, this was the first event; however, the ramifications lingered all. week. long. I had dental surgery. Gum grafting is not a pleasant experience. The periodontist takes gum tissue from the roof of your mouth and augments the gum tissue where it’s receding under your teeth.
He finished in an hour, which felt like record time. My upper left quadrant was so numb, I did not feel any of the cutting and stitching.
He cautioned me You may bruise a bit since your skin is fair. I’m going to show him this picture. It was not comfortable going out in public for a lot of the week. I think the bruising will be resolved enough by Easter that I can make an appearance in some spring outfit that might still fit me.
The long and the short of this one is that the impact was an underlying factor throughout the entire week:
Ate only soft foods for the first 1-2 days
Skipped events due to tiredness post the traumatic surgical procedure
Chewed only on the right side of my mouth all week, and will continue until my return visit next Thursday
Skipped events due to bruising
The Leapfrog Effect
When I started this article, I thought I was looking at different outcomes. The fact is — outcomes are only true for the instant in which they are declared. It’s hard to claim that your baseball team is the best in the league a week after the championships when another team beats your team the following week.
I thought I had an infection — which was actually my best-case scenario. Having an infection would mean that my day-to-day chronic pain was not getting worse and the 10/10 pain was incidental to the infection. Now, we are not sure that is the case.
With Minnie, we are not sure where things sit, but we are riding a lot on the specialist visit next week.
And with my dental work, it just has to run its course. The bruising is almost gone. The stitches come out on Thursday. And slowly, I will start to work nachos back into the specialty dinner option soon.
When the outcome is what we want it to be, it’s easy to say — everything turned around for the better. I leapfrogged over the 4 steps back and leapt an extra 2 forward!
Quantifying the Outcome
But what about when the results are not what we want? Or even worse, sometimes, the results are just unclear? How do we quantify the outcome to declare
An amazing result
Things are going well
I can handle this
It may not be what I wanted, but I’m gonna figure out how to make this work and how to be ok with it.
Let’s look at that last outcome. This is pretty much where things landed for all 3 of these issues of the week.
Thinking it through:
It does me no good to be upset (mad, sad, generally disgruntled).
The result that happened is where my life is right now. I can’t deny that. But I can embrace my life for what it is.
I don’t have control over the outcomes. I only have control over how I react to those outcomes, how I behave.
This is where I am.
Turning the Backwards Forwards
I cannot change what’s happening, even if I cry out with all sorts of emotions. Emotions are valid. Having feelings is valid.
But when it comes down to it, once I get through the emotions and the feelings, I need to accept the outcomes for what they are.
I also know that God’s plan is not one that I can change. Whatever God has laid out for me has a future impact that I won’t understand until the future impact shows me why. If it ever does.
So, even though these outcomes did not land where I would have chosen, I can leapfrog six steps ahead if I choose to let my mental perspective accept the outcomes. This acceptance allows me to move forward despite what may feel like a lack of progress.
When I chose to
Publish this article even though I didn’t get the infection test result I was hoping for
Prepare cooked food for Minnie and look up other dietary needs online for her
Eat sushi again tonight because it’s a softer protein
I’m choosing to accept these circumstances and live life despite the setbacks. I’m not going to let the things out of my control impact my ability to move forward in life and enjoy it.
When I look at life like this, I can leapfrog over the backward steps and even move forward additional steps.
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So true about not being able to control external events, only our internal responses to, thoughts or "mind talk" about those events. Keep it up Julie!
What a rough week! I’m so proud of you for pushing through! We are in this together!!