Surgery Recovery - Swirls of Emotion

Here I sit nearly 3 weeks post surgery, and while I feel pretty great physically - no major pain to speak of, and I have more energy than I've had in some time - I have been struggling with my limitations post surgery. The first week or so after surgery was easy enough to sit back and let others help with things. But as I started gaining back my energy and I didn't have any pain to indicate I needed to -NOT- be doing things, I found that my body wasn't quite ready yet to resume all those normal-life type things. One evening I helped with getting bags of groceries out of the car, and while I tried to be cognizant of not getting heavy bags, apparently the lifting and moving ended up being a not-so-good idea, after all. I didn't experience any pain immediately, but a couple hours later some mild cramping indicated that it may have not been the wisest choice. I've also found that while my energy levels seem to be up, I am still easily tired. So it leaves me a little stir crazy feeling like I can (or should) be doing things; but my head telling me "maybe that's not the best idea just yet". 


My body is also trying to level out my hormones, which is kind of exciting {heavy sarcasm}. I've had extreme acne - the likes of which I haven't seen since I was a teenager. I cry at the drop of a hat - but only sometimes and absolutely when I least expect it, or when I absolutely don't -WANT- to be emoting. A friend mentioned to me that it may take over a year for my body to adjust and my hormones to settle down. [Insert excited clapping here]{More heavy sarcasm} In addition to the extreme acne my body went into ultra-hypothyroidism mode and my TSH levels jumped over 2 whole points from where it had been just 90 days ago. So thankfully since I had already had a check up with my regular doctor we caught that pretty quickly and adjusted my medication accordingly. Let me tell you, as an Enneagram 9 messy emotions in myself are SO HARD to give grace to. It's easy for me to love on and come along side others who have big and/or messy emotions, but to have them myself... that's hard. Enneagram 9's don't always know what we are feeling - we're not deeply in touch with our feels. 9's don't do conflict (like a cat with water...), and sometimes emotions feel conflicting. SO when big AND messy emotions start showing up it feels scary, and out of control (box that up and throw it into some deep dark corner somewhere RIGHT NOW!). My head-space feels off-kilter - like I've lost my balance so to speak. I feel scattered and frayed at the edges. So even though I know in my head that my hormone imbalance is at the root of all this crazy-feeling-stuff it's still hard in the midst of the crazy feels to make sense of, and to calm the feels. It feels lonely, and scary. 


What am I doing in all my spare time? Well, I've done a lot of Netflix-ing. I've done some painting (and now have more projects I can tackle thanks to my mom who amazon-ed me more materials). I've entertained my imagination with all sorts of ways that I -could- organize my house, but may or may not ever get executed once I am physically able to do so. I go for walks for coffee because that's one of the only ways I am allowed to get exercise for at least another 3 weeks. I found out the hard way last night that I can't even play a family game of Monopoly because the repeated bending at the waist and scrunching things up there apparently angered my insides and I started having mild cramps again. Then major emoting followed, because 1) Anger - are you kidding me?! I can't even do THIS? 2) Sad - because we had to stop the game, and family game night is such a fun thing around here. Something I am SUUUUUUPER looking forward to is Mosaic's Women's retreat coming up next weekend. I think it'll be so good for me to have a change of scenery. Plus it'll be a super-awesome weekend of fellowship and worship, and all kinds of things that I hope will fill my cup. I have such fun memories of the first one I went to 2 years ago, and the new friendships that began blossoming from that time together. Plus a sweet friend and mentor of mine is going to be speaking so I'm pretty excited about that, too. 


I am SO VERY THANKFUL for my super-amazing family. I truly do not know what I would do without my husband and daughter. They have come along side me and taken such great care of me, with not a single whimper or moan about having to do things like laundry and dishes. My husband is super intuitive with my emotions, and can sense/feel when I'm not feeling quite right. He helps me talk through things in ways that my brain wouldn't naturally do. It has been helpful and validating to have him talk me through the feels and for him to affirm that I am not crazy, and my feels are natural part of the process.


So - this is where I am. Sitting in my crazy jumble of feels.