Broken Clocks

It’s been said that healing is pain and this was definitely the case with my surgery recovery.  I was in too much pain to feel like writing, which is why there has been a nearly 2 month absence of an entry.  Many days, I would listen to this song, “Broken,” originally recorded by Lifehouse and beautifully sung by Trisha Yearwood in the New Orleans “Passion” as I tried to fall asleep.  In "The Passion," the song is set in the context of mourning Christ's crucifixion but leaning on Him for true healing in times of despair:

The following lyrics from Broken  applied directly to how I was feeling post-surgery:

 I'm falling apart, I'm barely breathing

With a broken heart that's still beating

In the pain there is healing
In your name I find meaning
So I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on, I'm holdin' on
I'm barely holdin' on to you

I'm hangin' on another day
Just to see what you will throw my way

It seemed that if wasn’t one thing it was another.  There were a couple of nights when I had intestinal pain that was so bad, it was paralyzing.  I freaked out and called my poor mom to come over and she spent the night with me, twice. Shortly after I had an outbreak of shingles on my face, and my PA didn’t prescribe me anything and it was heading toward my eye, so I had to ask a family friend for a prescription which eventually cleared it up.  Then there was the ever-pressing pain at my incision site. I felt like I had a big hole in my gut, because I did, as the entire right side of my liver had to regenerate. 

 Also, Getting to sleep at night has been an issue since diagnsosis, but post-surgery, I would break out in night sweats several times a night.  At least I didn’t have anywhere to be the following day, but it would have helped my mood to get some sleep.  The following lyrics discuss a broken clock being a comfort.   

 The broken clock is a comfort, it helps me sleep tonight

Maybe it can stop tomorrow from stealing all my time
I am here still waiting though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best, like you've already figured out

This reminds me of the following quote by President Henry B. Eyring.

"I cannot assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop."

Yes, the clock seemed to almost stop for me during those 7 weeks post-surgery.  I am not what you call a home-body, and I love to be out and about.  Recovery took half the summer, and I missed opportunities to enjoy the beach, the pool, and do fun things with my girls.  At that point in time, I had to turn off my Facebook feed as it was too hard to see friends out on vacation enjoying their summer as I languished at home.  Some days, the only time I got out of the house was when some sweet ladies from Church or my mother-in-law came to take me on a short walk. I don't have any pictures from those walks, but I do have a couple of being wheeled around at the airport by my sweet mother-in-law, Susan, and dear friend, Sarah:

Note that I had to wake up at 3:30am that morning and it appears I didn't fully rinse out my hair!

Just a couple weeks post-surgery, even though I still felt miserable, I was ready to get out of the house.  My sweet friend Robin offered to see a movie we had both been looking forward to, “Me Before You,” about a girl who falls in love with a quadriplegic she is care-taking.  So I loaded up on painkillers and Robin picked me up.  The movie features, the song “Unsteady” by X-Ambassador, which seemed to be the theme of my recovery.  Robin had to help me walk a crossed the parking lot and through the movie theater. 

This song reminds me of all the people I physically and emotionally leaned on during my recovery. Several friends came to visit to bring me cheer. Both friends from church and Aunt Lisa and cousin Kiera came to help clean my house.  I love that they wore their Team Carmen shirts!

I still have some pain from the incision site, but I'm feeling about 70 percent better.  I haven't tackled working out yet, but may next week.  Feeling well and health are not things I would ever take for granted again.  Thankfully, the clock no longer is at a standstill.