I am forever grateful that my chronic pain isn’t lifelong. For the past year I dealt with sciatica that increasingly got worse every day. About a month before surgery I was finally given pain medication that took the edge off. The rest of the time, I was ready to sacrifice myself to the Brightline God for the good of Florida. While surgery helped immensely, I have good days and bad days both physically and mentally.

The Physical

Overall, surgery recovery was easy and I am *mostly* pain free. If I push myself or just do too much I do have days with minimal sciatica pain. I was told that full recovery would happen around a year after surgery. My sciatica pain is currently only quick, sharp, unexpected pain when I move or do something unusual. I am still incredibly sore overall when I wake up or move around too much since I didn’t really do anything for a year. My flexibility is slowly coming back but silly things like putting on shoes or bending over to put on pants can be difficult most days.

The Mental

This is the hard one and I wasn’t expecting it at all. I knew that I was in a bad place mentally over the course of the last year but I didn’t realize how much it was going to have lasting effects after being “healed.”

I am an out and about kind of person. I want to explore, I want to take photos of the world, I want to experience everything. I am finding it so hard to find joy in any of that. I make the plans, buy the tickets, and go to do thing and I either can’t bring myself to go or I go but I don’t enjoy it the same way I did before. Even indoor hobbies like baking and jewelry making I can’t bring myself to do. I try to make myself do it and yet I can’t. I sit there and stare at the tools and items in front of me and I start to cry. I have no idea why that is the visceral reaction to things that I used to love.

Trying something new

In all my infinite wisdom throughout the years, I have apparently told my child and husband to try something new when they were in a funk. Those words of wisdom were handed back to me recently and I decided to try paper crafting. I love my planner and I started scrapbooking before sciatica screwed with my life. I ended up settling on card making since I have a love of sending snail mail. I do not know if this hobby will stick but it is where I am right now in my life.