6 weeks - hows it going?

So, its been a little while.

I saw the surgeon last week, who was pretty happy with how it was all going. That was reassuring. Its great to actually sit down for half an hour with an expert who has seen it hundreds of times and have all your questions answered. Very reassuring.

So how is it right now, at this moment? I'm hurting. Jeez it's aching. Its crazy. It's hard to tell if it is the bone, or if its muscular (and you can't even do the whole, bend, twist, stretch thing to check!!) I haven't done anything stupid, I'm not mowing the lawn, moving furniture, or re-tiling the roof. I've had 24 hours with absolutely zero pain killers of any kind. I think this may have been a bad idea. Will fix this tomorrow.

I'm not doing anything stupid, but I'm able to do vastly more incidental things now, I'm much more active overall during the day. I emailed the surgeon to ask his thoughts on this. Naturally, my thoughts go to all the bad places on this - the spacers have moved, the screws have come loose, I have to go have the surgery again to fix it, ruining my time frame for recovery.

It was again reassuring to have the surgeon give a calm, considered response on this. He said is common for a bit more pain around this time, as people generally become more active. That, coupled with the decrease in pain killers will do it. The advice, very unlikely its anything bad, most recent X-rays look good. Scale back the activity for a day or two and see how it goes. By all means, see my local doc, and get some X-rays to check, see a physio, but it should be fine. It was enough to calm me down.

That said the pain is still there. Its different from the pre-surgery pain, but it hurts like hell. I'm glad I have another 2 weeks before I go back to work part time. The last thing I would want to be doing is rushing back before its too soon and jeopardising the recovery.

I think its a good stage for reflection on this.. Its six fix since I had major surgery. I couldn't dress myself, get food, or do anything for a while there. I needed help for everything. Now I can do these things. Its important to manage my expectations and have a reality check on this. Yes, I'm in pain (for a good reason, I had surgery and they drilled 4 screws into my vertebrae!!) but I'm in different pain. Also, I find taking a macro look at things help. Don't focus or over analyse the day to day stuff. Compare today with a week ago, what about the week before, or last month? Hell, I'm heaps better, much improved, more mobile. Sure, I've had some new pain kick in, but its a reminder that I need to pay attention to my body and how it recovers. That I will always have to be conscious of this. This new pain, I'll manage that, I'll get through that too.