Timing is Everything

   For several days after our seder at Passover, I felt much the same way I had following Thanksgiving - wiped out (almost ill, but not actually.)  I thought back on if there was somehow more work, or less sleep, or less help than usual and to all of those things the answer was - not really. It was the same amount of everything.

   After all, it's been awhile since the last surgery, and long enough, I figured, to be not tired like that.  I even took purposeful breaks between the cooking and cleaning.  Although by the time all was said and done my back and feet were sore from standing in the kitchen, they always are, so I didn't think twice about it.


   When I stopped to consider my own line of thought,  which was that it's been quite "long enough," I realized I was wrong.  It hasn't been long enough.  It's only been since January, and that's a little over 3 months ago.  From last April, when this all started, through 4 surgeries and what seemed like an infinite merry-go-round ride of miscellaneous anxieties, disappointments, reliefs, and decisions - it was relentless.

  In retrospect, there was barely time to really recover from one procedure before it was time for the next, and there was that whole everyday life thing to keep going with as well!  It hit me harder than I thought, and like getting off a really really long merry-go-round ride, I guess I am, metaphorically speaking (although not visibly, thank goodness) walking with a bit of a "side lean!"

  On one hand, I'm still reminded every day - maybe not every second or every minute any more, but for sure every hour I'm not sleeping, that something is different.  And my mind goes right to what that something is, and I stop, and consider if I'm feeling better about it.   I then remind myself that it's going to take time (some say a year at the very least) to get to feeling more normal.

  So, if I am supposed to give myself the benefit of plenty of time to feel "better" then why was I so surprised about the post-Passover exhaustion?  I don't know.  But at least now I realize that I can't just give myself the benefit of realistic recovery time in one part of my life and be impatient about it in another.  It's just going to take time, and that's all there is to it.