Trying to Find a Place Between Cold Reality and Rose-Colored Glasses

Today I visited our internist, who told me I looked "great" and was exceedingly upbeat in my demeanor (or something like that.) He said he knew I'd make it through this, but under the circumstances I certainly deserved to be less cheerful. I asked him - well, what was my other choice?

Option 1: Sitting in my chair or my bed or elsewhere, doing nothing and being afraid.

Option 2: Doing most things I ordinarily do, trying to be cheerful about it, throwing that nervous energy into some really good advance planning for when I might be a little laid up, and being afraid.

Note here that being afraid is a component of each choice; aside from being (I guess) drugged to the point of not caring, feeling the fear is part and parcel of feeling all the other stuff - like excitement(the Red Sox win sometimes,) awe (witnessing the ordination of now-Rabbi David Segal in an over 3-hour long ceremony that felt shorter and so amazing,) pride (family & work all going as it should,) gratitude (to Rod for all his caring,) happiness (to see all of the teachers celebrated this month at a special service - and at another school year successfully completed.) The list goes on, but the bottom line is this: if I want to feel good, I'm going to have to accept that sometimes I'll feel bad too.

I'm pretty sure this is not a concept unique to me or even my current situation, but until I wrote it out I didn't think about the fact that I WANT to feel all the good stuff; I don't want to spend the next few weeks, or month, or however long it is until I wake up from a surgery, doing nothing but being afraid. I want to stuff the fear behind the proverbial sofa cushions in my head, to be rediscovered long after it is past its "sell by" date and toss it out in the trash. (Maybe it could go in the recycle bin because I could recycle it into strength and resolve during the recovery phase. That would be cool.)

So, my first doctor of the week was very reassuring, kind, and tried to help me figure out my miscellaneous aches and pains. He gave me a nice muscle relaxant called Meloxicam (aka Mobic)and if that works to alleviate some of this, I think I can attribute the rest to stress. (Imagine that - stress!) For that, he says, it's time to break out the prescription he wrote for Atavan. Lovely guy.

Tomorrow being a physician-free day, I'm looking forward to teaching one of my adult classes, having lunch out with a friend (Hi Shari!)and momentarily tucking the fear maybe not all the way back behind those cushions, but just under the dirty clothes in the hamper. Come laundry day...........oh well.