It has been almost two weeks since I posted about my plan to spend July listening to my body.

Ask me how I am doing?

Not great. I spent the other night agonizing a repeat trip the Emergency Room. I’d fallen out of sync with pain management, and I couldn’t find a comfortable way to sleep. Was I worse than my first trip? Was I the same? Where was the pain? Pain is so subjective, it is hard to measure. In the end, I did not go. I loaded up on pain meds; took ones I have been advised not to take (I was desperate) due to the risk of internal bleeding with prolonged use. Finally drifting off for a couple hours around 5am.

Wednesday morning, I got on top of it, remembering (from several back surgeries) to never chase pain. Today, I am doing well but have reduced the dose of the heavy pain med, to see if I can manage with a minimal dose. I am on the edge.

My usual methods of pain management are not pills at all but breathwork, meditation, and energy work. None of which are available to me. Breathwork, because I cannot catch my breath. Meditation, because it is linked to my breath. Finally, my energy feels detached and disconnected. It is a hard one to explain, but when I tried to do Reiki on Finn, our Wheaten terrier, I literally felt a split in the flow of my energy. It hopped from one hand to the other, and there was no connection. Where there are usually feelings and ‘visions’ of smoothness and distinct feelings of togetherness, there was nothing but a lack of cohesion.

Now, to the point.

I feel okay, pain aside, but my spirits are ‘damp’, because while I know what to expect from the pain from all my surgeries, I do not know what to expect from this. This pulmonary embolism thing is new to me, and I don’t know what better looks like.

So, maybe the real question isn’t figuring out what better is but staying curious enough to keep asking? If I know exactly what I want, what my idea of better is, I might become too rigid and fixated on that. If I keep wondering, I can remain flexible and that flexibility has its own power!

Perhaps better is a small thing! A nap, an honest conversation, a smile from a friend -it doesn’t have to relate to the PE (pulmonary embolism). Or, it could be a breath without pain, a seven hour gap between pain meds, an inhalation that felt like it inflated more of the lung – or it could relate to the PE.

Shifting my focus on what is possible right now and celebrating the small victory (I walked up the stairs and didn’t gulp for air) is a win!

We are inherently programed to look for the final better instead of seeking the stages of journey. Every trip we take has stops along the way. It didn’t occur to me until today, that a recovery is like a vacation (well, a pretty crappy vacation, but you get what I mean).

Instead of scenic destinations with fun souvenirs and gas stations to buy snacks, you hit recovery milestones that you can count and celebrate too. So, while this is proving to be an incredibly LONG journey, and one on which I feel very much alone (I am still waiting for my referral to the Thrombosis clinic), it is a journey with many stops and points of interest along the way. I just have to patient and quit asking “Are we there yet?”