Recovering From a "Simple Procedure" (Gone Wrong)

You know when you go in for what is supposed to be a simple procedure, everyone's had one, everyone's going to need one at some point in their life, but you just have this... feeling. You know something is going to go wrong, and you don't know why. That's exactly how I felt about my colonoscopy and endoscopy. The minute I was struggling to swallow the prep and not get sick, I knew it was going to be a very... very... long day. and the prep was somehow still the easiest part, though probably the most traumatizing.

The prep itself was this disgusting cherry flavored thick water that made me nauseous and feel like I was going to die, and I'll spare any other details of how anything below my neck felt. I had this gut feeling that something was going to go wrong about the entire thing, and I genuinely thought it was how horrible the prep was, up until about an hour after my procedure. We had stopped at Chick-Fil-A, grabbed the food that sounded good, and boom, like a light switch, I needed him to pull over so I could get sick. Luckily, I made it to a Walgreen's restroom and didn't jeopardize the interior of his vehicle (lol), but I knew from that point that something didn't feel right. I was in excruciating stomach pain, I was going to get sick again, and we had to get home. So, I mustered together what composure I could, made it back to the car, and Jared got me home as quick as legally possible. For the rest of the day, and the next one after, I slept for the entire 2 days, and when I wasn't sleeping, I was getting sick. Friday night, after nothing would still stay down, Jared took me to the Emergency Room where they gave me some fluids and anti nausea meds and helped me feel a lot better before heading home.

More than anything, I was extremely mad at my body. Not only could it not be normal, so I had to have this procedure in the first place, but more so, I was upset about the fact that my body couldn't just recover normally. I was also mad that I was as sick as I was and I couldn't get back into a normal daily routine of making sure that things were cleaned, taken care of, and my business is taken care of. I really wanted to get back into the swing of things, and suddenly I was stuck in bed and I wasn't even able to hold a conversation let alone do anything else without getting extremely nauseous. I was miserable, angry, and frustrated, and all of it was with myself.

I'm still working on getting fully back to normal, but a lot more of my energy is back and I'm able to eat more as long as I pace myself. I've been working a lot on cleaning the house one room at a time and prioritizing when my body needs me to sit down, but only letting it be for the time that I need, not necessarily the time that I want. Jared and Yvonne were absolutely amazing throughout the entire process, took care of me, waited on me hand and foot, and are still taking care of a lot of things that I'm struggling with, like grocery shopping and running errands. They've been absolutely amazing and taking care of everything that I need, and I'm so grateful for them.

Sometimes, you absolutely need to relax. You need to sleep as much as your body makes you. You need to lay down as much as you need to. You need to let things go and let the responsibility go to others. Not all the time. You cannot do this all the time, do not get me wrong, but when you physically cannot get out of bed the very few times that are out of the norm, it's okay to absolutely need them, no matter what your ability level is or was before.

All of this to say, please just remember that no recovery, no progress, no health journey is linear. There will always be setbacks, relapses, breakthroughs, plateaus, there's a million things that it can come to. But, You have to continue on the journey to make it a journey.

What are you challenging yourself to do? Recently, I've been working on my own accountability and discipline, so I've started writing out books of the Bible to just have in a folder and help me learn it on a new level. It's not something that's needed for me to do, I don't even belong to a church at the moment, but it's something that I've always wanted to do, and I need to work on my follow through with things and that's okay. So like I asked, what are you challenging yourself to do this week? Or this year? How are you working to make yourself better and what progress hasn't been linear?

Peace, Love, and All the Above,

Ella Marie <3