A Bright Spot

A few recent milestones worth mentioning:  Tonight I took a shower 100% by myself.  No having my husband wash my hair for me, no sitting on the old person shower seat, no help drying off.

Before you laugh, let me explain.

In the past few years, I have taken probably 5 showers A YEAR.  I have become more of a "bath person."  Every night I have quite the ritual to soak in the tub... very hot and very long.  It is my therapy and my time to unwind for the day, and I looooved it.  Now despite the fact that I really do enjoy the soak, I didn't even realize that I was avoiding the shower more because it HURT to shower.  I'd always had a difficult time standing for more than a few minutes, and when you add the aspect of having my arms up over my head (ie:  shampooing/rinsing the hair) it became excruciating.  I would have to bend all the way forward to relieve those muscles, then hurry out of there as fast as I could.  Afterwards the pain would last for hours.  So I think I began to avoid those kinds of situations altogether (I'll give you more examples another time) and rarely to never used the shower.

While healing from this back surgery, I am not allowed to take baths mostly because the act of sitting down that low and getting back up again is too much strain.  So I am back to showering.  And guess what???  I can stand there the whole entire time (a long time!) and no pain at all!  It is a strange and amazing feeling all at the same time.  I do believe I have forgotten what it feels like to be normal.

This leads me to milestone #2:  I went to church today!  I sat up nice and beautifully straight for 3 continuous hours.  Of course this was something that I haven't been able to do for years, either.  I had to constantly slump, and shift, and lean forward, and try a million things to support my upper body because my torso couldn't hold it up.  And I would struggle through these 3 hours hurting.  For years.  I can't remember a time when I would sit up straight.  It just became my new version of "normal" so I began to adapt to that and didn't even realize how bad it was.  I'm just completely out of the habit.  I didn't even try anymore, slumping was my automatic "normal."

And now... NOW!  I sat up straight today.  (Of course I did, my spine is fused now and won't bend even if I wanted it to.)  The feeling of having good/normal posture is absolutely foreign.  I feel strange to be sitting tall because it's so different from my old version of normal.  But you know what?  As strange as it was, I sat there the whole entire time and it didn't hurt.  Not at all!  (Now to be fair, the place where my back met the bench or chair was actually the very top of the rods inside my back, and the top of the incision, and it became a bit sore to have the extra pressure right on that spot for so long.  But that should get better as I heal.  For now it was tolerable.)  On the other hand, holding myself upright was completely easy.  I'm fully supported and don't tire of it.  Best of all, this means the surgery was a complete success and I feel like I have the rest of my life back.

THAT is a pretty exciting realization.