Sometimes my world feels very small.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in my house for the last three months, waiting for my foot to heal. The truth is, I usually spend a lot of time in my house, but there’s a difference between doing it by choice and doing it by necessity. When staying in by necessity, the entire structure seems to shrink and squeeze, and free time that would normally seem pleasant and relaxing slows down into something resembling tedium.
And then there’s the physical energy that has no real outlet, leaving my mind restless. I’m ready for action that my body cannot perform.
The most critical part of this kind of long-term healing isn’t the regularity of icing, or elevating, or taking Ibuprofen. It’s mood management. It’s keeping the spirits up so I don’t fall into a funk or give up in despair or become deeply depressed. It’s focusing on what I can do instead of what I can’t do. It’s dealing with the stress of constantly having to ask for help, and then doing without the help I can’t bring myself to ask for. And it’s letting go of the times when I make my physical limitations known and people ignore them and I wonder how many more days of healing this has added to the final recovery.
It’s also cherishing the moments when people help me take care of myself. When people sit down to talk to me instead of making snide comments about how sitting is bad for your health. When people give up a chair for me. When they go out of their way to drop me off right in front of our destination so I don’t have to walk as far. When they slow down their pace to match mine. When they think of an activity I can do to alleviate the sameness of my days.
We don’t talk much about what it’s like to have a slow-healing or chronic injury, do we? After all, I don’t want to be defined by my limitations. Even as I type this, I’m thinking about how there’s going to be somebody out there who thinks I’m whining or how so many other people are worse off (problem comparing for the win!) or who just isn’t going to get it. Because somehow whining has become equivalent to talking about things that are hard. So then we just don’t talk about it; it’s easier to be silent.
But this is my reality. And it feels a little strange not to talk about it.
What really helps with mood management is reminding myself that, however small my world might feel right now, it is actually big and rich and varied and dynamic. Sometimes I do this by imagining what I’d like to do in the future: travel to China, go to the Walt Disney Museum and the Academy of Sciences, go walk by the ocean, travel to London, travel to Morocco, travel travel travel. Make it to the park with my dog, even though it is a very, very long block away.
Little dogs are also very helpful for mood management. 🙂
Sometimes, though, thinking about the future doesn’t help because it feels like I’m never going to get there. So then I think about how I can enrich my life right now. I romanticize the idea of living a life of the mind. I take adventures and learn what it’s like to be other people through fiction: books, movies, TV shows. I write. I read about economics or neuroscience or Mars or feminism. I sing. I learn how to play new games. I enter into interesting conversations. I feel grateful for all the interesting people in the world who help to keep me entertained and engaged.
What about you? What do you do to manage your mood when times are tough? Have you ever experienced an illness or injury that you had to overcome? I’d love to hear your stories.
The Practical Free Spirit 
Wishing you a good recovery! Your piece was sensitive and honest as you are coping with something, an obstacle you need to deal with. Years ago I was working very hard, a young single mother and was hit hard by arthritis…..life slowed right down and I did my best coping with it,,,,,I kept thinking of others dealing with much worse….some people in my life were not very supportive but when health issues affected them i could see their frustration….do everything you can to recover good health and be good to yourself, be patient.
I’m doing my best! Thanks for your good wishes. 🙂
The hardest part of dealing with the running injury I struggled with for much of last year was the uncertainty about how long it would take to heal. (Well, that, and the fact that because it was a running injury it was in some sense “my fault” for pushing too hard.) I was actually really lucky in that I was able to resume normal non-running activities without pain almost immediately, but the process of slowly building back to where I had been before (and occasionally overdoing it and setting myself back) was a bummer. I really tried to focus on enjoying what I was capable of doing at any given time rather than comparing myself to what I had been capable of before.
And thank you for talking about this – I think that as a culture, we aren’t very good at recognizing the physical limitations that even people who look able-bodied sometimes have. (We’re not great even with people who are obviously physically disabled, but that’s a whole nother issue.) I know that I’ve been guilty in the past of blithely assuming that anything that isn’t physically a big deal for me shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone who looks about as healthy as me. Posts like this remind me to be more sensitive.
Yeah, I really hate the uncertainty. I keep trying to plan trips and things, and always there’s that caveat: if my foot is feeling up to it. It definitely puts a damper on things, although I’ve been traveling a bit in spite of it. And I’ve had a few setbacks after I overdid things as well. Sounds so familiar!
I struggle to be more sensitive about this myself. I always remember this time on a bus in London when I took one of the seats because I had bad RSI in both arms/wrists so I couldn’t hold the bar to keep my balance standing. And some lady yelled at me for taking up a seat since I was a young, healthy-looking individual. It made me feel awful, and I realized then that you can’t judge someone’s health by how they look on the outside.
I’ve had chronic urticaria for the past 2 years, though luckily I’ve finally got it under control with some strong drugs. But it took well over a year to get to that point, during which I was a mess. I felt lucky to have Taylor so patient with my appalling appearance, crankiness, and inability to participate in events like pool parties. Which make thing think–I bet people would be happy to come to you more, plan more sitting-oriented events, and so on, if you’d let them know 🙂 Personally, I quite like “working in parallel”–reading or working while in the company of a person/people doing the same, or TV/video games.
You’re right that communication is key in situations like this. And some people have been really kind about working around my injury. For example, the conference I was at in LA, I was really worried about attending. But my friends went out of their way to help me the entire weekend, and I left feeling like those friendships had deepened as a result.
And yes, I like working in parallel too. And watching in parallel. 🙂
I’m sorry you’re continuing to deal with foot issues. As you know, I’m nursing a broken right ankle. Actually this leg has had issues for at least a decade, ten years ago it was a sore achilles tendon, then problems with my hip, my knee. Lots of physical therapy and having to stop my aerobic exercise and then gradually increase it back at at a snail’s pace.
I’m able to walk in the orthopedic boot but not drive. My biggest frustration is that I was going to audition for a musical in a few weeks. On the other hand, I’m behind on revising my novel, and now I’ve got more time to work on that.
Oh man, I hear you about the snail’s pace. It really does feel like that.
I’m sending you love and encouragement. It’s really disappointing that you won’t be able to audition. I’m glad you have another creative outlet, but that doesn’t completely wipe the disappointment away.
Obviously what needs to happen is for both of us to feel better as soon as possible. 🙂
A little over a year ago my wife had post op complications which resulted in a horrible peritonitis. Her recovery was several months so I identify with your description of the difficulty of being patient with the process of healing. I was her caregiver throughout the recovery and perhaps the most painful thing to watch was her frustration with the pace of recovery. She also had frustrations with inability too care for herself.
She is much better today. This is not to say that the healing is over. The mental aspect of healing continues to this day. What has surprised me is that we both have gone through this healing process and that I needed to heal as well. I am a RN and though I knew intellectually that illness can effect the whole family, I had never really experienced it with the intensity of a family medical crisis. There are two kinds of life changing events, those you choose even if that choice is an unwise one, and those that are imposed on you from the circumstances of living. Having had both experiences now I can tell you that the most profound has been the ones that I did not choose.
Please accept my wishes for your quick recovery. I enjoy your perspective of things and look forward to reading more.
Just wanted to say thanks for writing this post. I have been struggling with chronic injury/pain/disability issues for quite some time now. In the beginning I completely underestimated the emotional wear and tear a serious chronic issue like this would have on me (and my family). Sometimes, with injuries, recovery can be especially baffling, because you have all these hopes and expectations about healing… but in reality that all takes much longer than you could have imagined, and, at least in my case, I don’t know if I’ll ever return to prior levels of ability. (Or, if I do, how long that level of ability will last before I am hurt again.) Makes it hard as hell to plan my life, you know?
Anyway I really appreciate you being brave enough to talk about this. You are right that injury can be extremely silencing. Best of luck with your recovery process.
Amy, et. al., a video for you to watch… how Jane McGonigal handled a long recovery from an injury. From TED talks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBpsV1Hwqs