I Begin Again.

Last year at this time, I was sitting in a paper gown, answering questions, feeling my heart pound, and holding my husband's hand.  My surgery was scheduled for 11:30. 

My surgery went smoothly and I woke up in the recovery room, dreaming of my childhood basset hound, and missing my left adrenal gland. 

It had to go.  It had grown a mass.  It was kind enough to make it a benign mass, but it was creating extremely elevated cortisol (stress hormone) levels and jeopardizing my health and longevity. 

It has been a long year.  The offending adrenal gland had been so over-producing for so long that my remaining adrenal gland had stopped working.  Well, much like an under-paid, under-appreciated employee who suddenly receives double duty, the under-utilized adrenal gland does not rush back to production.  It took months for the stubborn little gland to come back to life, and, while I took enough cortisol in pill form to stay alive, a cortisol deficit is quite debilitating.  For months I felt fluish and weak and exhausted and cold.  Then I improved to just weak and exhausted and cold.  By the time I improved to just exhausted and cold, I was quite grateful.  I am now almost back to normal, but a normal I have not known in years, for that over-active adrenal gland has marred my idea of normal.

I still feel cold almost every minute, and tired is always right behind me like a shadow.  But I am better.  And I am alive.  And, I am told, I am healthy. 

Now to get my head to believe it.

I have spent so much time being sick, and then more time feeling sick, that now I don't seem to believe that I am no longer sick.  And so I apologize to all who are sick.  I know how lucky I am.  My condition was reversible.  It has been reversed, and I am all but totally recovered.  Now I just need to grab hold of life and live it again.  To begin again.  Without any grudges.

So here I go.  I am closing out the year of feeling unwell and monitoring every symptom.  Of not trusting my body.  Of focusing on its limitations and shortcomings.  I am going to trust my body now, enough to focus on living my life, and leave the day-to-day running of things to my body again which is healthy and is trustworthy and is strong.

I begin again.   

   

Thank you for listening.