I'm a teeny, tiny bit discouraged...dang it!

I'm so tired!

If you know me well, you know that I like to keep myself busy.  I teach school, I work at Bath and Body Works about four days a week, I like to go shopping, etc.  I like to keep busy.

So, when I was planning for the big surgery, I had it all planned out that at the magical six week mark I would be perfectly fine and ready to resume my life as I knew it before.  WRONG!  There is nothing magical about six weeks.  In fact, I've been home now for 40 days and I'm still not ready to take on the world.  

Every day I have tried to get out and do something...grocery shop, walk in the mall, go to Barnes and Noble.  By the time I'm at my destination, I'm ready to come back home.  I'm exhausted.  I'm so discouraged.  I thought I'd be better by now.

I do feel better as far as the pain goes but not as far as the exhaustion goes.  I put my problem to the friends I love and trust on my Weight Watchers message board.  I got two responses that really made sense to me.  They cheered me up and I read them every single day.  Thanks to my dear friends Boo and Mo (not their real names obviously) for being so eloquent and also for their permission to post their responses here.  They really do explain what I couldn't put into words about my healing.

1st from Boo:

Tami, it takes time.  Besides the anesthesia, your body had been severely injured.  Yea, the doctors did it purposely and in a controlled way, but your body doesn't know that.  It knows it's been injured, and is taking care of itself.  Your energy will come back.  I promise.  Poor sweet Tami. :(

2nd from Mo:

Boo is exactly right.  Surgery is major trauma to the body.  Think of it like a car accident, or other major trauma.  Like Boo said, it was trauma that was very controlled and contained, but still trauma.

On top of that, you had this thing that grew very, very slowly ad started pushing your organs out of the way to make room for itself.  Your blood vessels carried blood and oxygen to it, and it was starting to damage some of your other organs.  Then, one day, it's gone.  So now instead of the slow pushing movement of your organs in one direction, they have this giant space to move back into and slosh around.  Ouch.  Plus, the organs that the tumor damaged need to heal as well.

All of this requires energy.  It doesn't feel like it, because it's not the kind of energy expended when you get up and move, but trust me, your body is expending it.  Your cells and processes are using a lot of energy to give you your strength back and get you, not back to normal, but in better shape than you were in.

It takes time.  You will get there, young lady (I liked that part). Patience.

Pretty good advice eh?  So now I'm being patient and letting my body do it's job.

Thanks Boo and Mo.