Skip to main content

Christmas spirit and new beginnings

 I've been completely rubbish this year - I haven't sent out a single Christmas card - I've been so wrapped up with organising the office Christmas party, the boys Christmas presents and literally wrapped up in wrapping paper and Sellotape that I forgot to buy the cards and then I intended to buy the cards and times has moved on and a single card hasn't been bought. So if you're one of the kind people that have sent us a card - I sincerely apologise - I will donate the money I was going to spend on a box of cards to charity and I promise to be on it next year! 

I've also decided to take some time out in the next few weeks - I'm tired, exhausted and in a lot of pain. My next operation is booked for 10th January (my 5th operation in 29 months). I will be having X-ray guided lumbar facet joint and sacroiliac joint radiofrequency injections, which are expected to cause a great deal of pain, and I will need to rest completely for around four weeks afterwards. I'm dreading the thought of another hospital bed, another dose of anaesthetic and another road of recovery but I hope this is the last one (how many times have I said that?!) and I will finally get the closure on this journey. Although, I had already arranged for the twins 5th birthday party to be booked only three weeks after - this was planned before the operation, but I am my own worst enemy, honestly. 

I made the difficult decision to quit my job, after eight years, to focus on my health after the operation and take the time I need to rest and recover. The decision was heartbreakingly impulsive - for days I felt like I was going through a break up, imagining my future without the company I'd known and grown up with. I'd started working there aged 23 - childless and still living with my parents - so everything that had happened in between had been parallel to my employment there. However, I felt - even more so now that everything has sunk in, that it was the right decision to make. Many times I had put work first, before my health and I'm ashamed to say that sometimes I put work before my children, when things were busy, when I was working late or logging on first thing in the morning. Now I didn't need to worry about when to return to work after my operation, rushing back and undoing all of the hard work during surgery, carrying my heavy laptop and travelling into London, causing myself pain and exhaustion. Despite all this, I'm gutted, as it feels like this is another thing my illness has taken away from me. 

This push was the push I needed - and having the time to reflect, I decided that once my operation was done and I was past recovery then I would throw myself back into the child counselling courses that I started. I passed my first course back in September this year and with all the statistics on child mental health due to recent lockdowns, I have decided to go with my heart when I'm back on my feet, continue to do all the relevant courses and work hard to become a child counsellor. The number of children needing mental health support are higher than ever and I think it would be good to give back. 

Excitingly, I have arranged to meet in person with a friend I met through the SCT support group - we have been talking and supporting each other for around a year through social media and this will be the first time we will have met. It will be amazing to talk to someone who understands the pain I am constantly in and who has been through the same surgery as me. 

With only a few days until Christmas, I am busy preparing more handmade sausage rolls, stuffing and desserts for the rush and madness of Christmas day - we are hoping to spend it with my parents - 
So I will be going into the new year with another operation ahead of me and a career change in the distance - I will leave behind the job I loved for nearly a decade and looking towards positive changes, friendships, learning and new beginnings. It's been a tough few weeks and I'm looking forward to kicking back, spending time with my husband, boys and family over Christmas and toasting to the future. Hopefully 2022 will bring me less pain and better health, God knows I've earnt it and I hope it's finally my time to be free and live my life again. 






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Surgery preparation

 As I write this, I have exactly a week until my fifth operation.  With COVID numbers apparently high (according to the media) along with friends and family around me catching it and dropping like flies over Christmas; I have decided to wrap myself up in bubble wrap (not literally) and keep myself protected from the outside world so that I do not jeopardise my opportunity to step into the hospital and have the surgery that will hopefully allow me to be pain free for a year and provide me the closure I need, from what has been a traumatising 30 months.  Christmas was as magical and warm as expected with two excited four year olds - however, incredibly tiring due to said four year olds waking up at 4.30am ready to find out if Father Christmas has been (always 'Father Christmas' never 'Santa' - I'm British after all) and to begin the festivities.  So there we were - managing to delay until 5am, but half asleep putting together every single toy one after the other, like...

The Background and The Beginning

Funnily enough, my husband and I went to the same gastro pub, in Hullbridge, a few weeks after my first major operation.  We had less than two weeks until our wedding and my husband suggested a childfree dinner to celebrate my recovery from that operation and cancer free status at that time.  As we drove back home, there was the most beautiful sunset - we played our 'walking down the aisle' song - which by the way was 'Everlong' by Foo Fighters - and afterwards we laughed that we were over the worst of our bad luck; unfortunately we were very wrong.  I'll take you back all the way to the beginning, before I was a wife and a mother, back when I was much less responsible and years before I met my husband.  In 2010 I went travelling. I had been at university studying Fine Art and was living in such a small claustrophobic town for most of my life, in the same house as my parents. At the age of twenty; I was bored.  Two of my male friends from school were already tra...

Marching on in March

 I think with a major operation, just because it is over, doesn't mean the struggle ends there. It isn't like having a tooth out for example - the hardest part of the journey is the recovery, the time in between operations, building yourself up to then get knocked back down; stripped of your energy and shine.  Its been a really hard week. The pain doesn't feel as though it is getting any easier, sometimes it feels as though it is getting worse and I've spent more night's lying awake in pain, than I have in a blissful deep sleep, healing my broken body.  I spoke to my surgeon this week and expressed my concern over the pain I am still in, five months after my last operation, he said that due to the fact my situation is so unique and the operation's were so complex, he would need to refer me to a pain specialist consultant. My surgeon confirmed that things aren't going as they should with my recovery - in regards to the pain and functionality - for example, my...