denali's Journal

     So much has happened to me since my last entry.  Most of you already know what happened to me.  For those of you that don't I will condense the story.  I had to have a laminectomy on March 31 of this year.  The surg went fine but I developed a blood clot long story short they removed the clot and I woke up paralyzed from the waist down.  I have no feeling from the waist down on the back side of my body.  (Very hard to explain)  I spent over 3 weeks in our local rehab hospital.  I am doing much better than expected.  But I still have a huge hurdle to over come.  I ditched the walker and am using 2 canes instead.

     I had hoped the surgery would help with the pain that I had in the down the right leg and in my lower back.  Well my right leg is fine now its the left leg and I have more pain in my back than I did before.  I have a constant fight to get pain meds.  At the moment I have 12 left till I can find a Doctor that will give them to me.  Every time I call one of my Docs they tell me to call one of the other Docs.  Oh well I will survive.

     I want to add a positive note to this entry.  In an odd way I am glad that this all happened.  While I was in the rehab dealing with everything the depression got the best of me.  My Doc in the rehab asked me if I would like to talk to a Pdoc.  I said "I don't care".  I met the most wonderful Pdoc in the world.  He talked to me for about an hour and somehow knew that I was on the wrong mental med and how I actually felt about life in general. He changed me to Paxil instead of the Effexor.  It took some time for me to wean off the Effexor but that is finally over.  I finally feel so much better mentally.  Also the Pdoc tricked me (and I am so grateful that he did) into telling my husband of my mental problems.  He took it so well.  Why I hid it from him for all these years is ridiculous when I think of it.

     I don't know if it was the surg and the outcome or the change of meds but I am finally living in the moment.  I no longer save the special outfits for a special time or don't use the good dishes (just examples).  I use what I want and when I want.  We never know if we have a tomorrow.  I finally feel like I deserve to be good to myself. I saved some clothes from years ago that I loved and didn't want to ruin or wear for fear that something would happen to them, well they no longer fit me and they just hang in my closet taunting me.  So just for today I am going to wear the "favorite outfits" whenever I want no matter the occasion. While I was in the rehab I wrote a journal entry to put in here but, lost is somewhere in the mess of papers that I brought home with me.  I know that there is alot more I wanted to say and when I finally get through all those papers I will add that entry also.  This is the jest of it.

I would like to thank you all who sent me hugs and well wishes. I know it helped me in so many ways.  A special thank you to Silent angel for all of her continued support then and now.

Thank you for reading this and I wish you all a wonderful day full of sunshine and happiness.

Denali