I woke up Saturday and felt super uncomfortable. Not in pain per se, but I just didn’t feel great. I was either too hot or too cold. I was antsy lying down but ready to sit when I was walking around. I was hungry but nothing sounded good. I wanted to leave the apartment, but being outside sounded awful. My legs were swollen and tight which made it hard to walk, but the less I moved the worst I felt. More than anything, I desperately wanted to be back home. That lasted for most of the day despite my best efforts to push through the discomfort and enjoy the day.
I forced myself out of the house and headed to The Grove and Farmer’s Market to get in some steps and to just be outside. That ended up being remarkably stressful because it was packed, and I spent most of the time on edge worried that an errant shopping bag/dog/kid would hit my bruised and tender legs. By the time we made it to dinner, I was so relieved to be safely tucked into a corner table where I could let my guard down a bit.
Needless to say, Saturday wasn’t the most amazing recovery day I’ve had. My inner perfectionist who loves exceeding recovery expectations didn’t take that well 😂 I had to remind myself that healing isn’t linear and not all days are as amazing as the best day or as awful as the worst day. I need to be patient and realistic because the road to a full recovery is quite long. There will be days where my swelling will be so bad that my legs will look as big as they did before surgery. There will be days where the fatigue hits hard, and I’ll not want to do much but lounge around all day. There will be days where I look at the excess, saggy skin and think my legs look worse than they did before. Those days are an inevitable part of the path to healing. So, I need to remind myself, like I did yesterday, that I’m strong, resilient, and unstoppable. I have less pain than I’ve had in months. Despite the swelling, my legs are lighter than they’ve been in years. Even with drains, a lot of swelling and tons of bruises, I’m more mobile and energetic than I’ve been in months. That’s an absolute blessing.
Days like Saturday are the outliers. Actually days like Tuesday are also outliers. I mean I was 15 min out of the OR and as the nurses were putting me into my compression leggings, they asked if I could help my lifting my leg up a few inches off the ground. Apparently, I told them not only could I lift it but I could do squats if they wanted….and proceeded to actually do some squats 😂 Most days will be somewhere in between super uncomfortable and squats 15 min post op. I’ll take it!
The LipeDiva 