Recovery

An essay from how I felt about 1 year ago:

Labor. Delivery. Now RECOVERY.

Recovery can come in different forms depending on the trauma inflicted—physical, emotional, or mental. I have been in a recovery room several times throughout my life—as a student, a nurse, a patient, and a mother. In the PACU (post-anesthesia care unit) some patients wake up thrashing and disoriented while others are peaceful and drowsy. My 2 year old cried and cried as I held her, while my 4 year old just kept asking for food and tried to escape. Some have flashbacks or hallucinations such as the vet who kept having flashbacks to traumatic experiences in Vietnam. Flashbacks to intern year. Disoriented by this transition phase from training to “it gets better.”

After carrying, laboring, and delivering my first baby after a complicated pregnancy I felt a real toll on my body and psyche. Once home from the hospital, I told DrH “everything hurts: my butt, my boobs, my back, my tummy. Everything.” That recovery was painful and the emotional recovery lasted months. But with my other two children recovery was a much different (and better) experience.  

I guess I am trying to say that RECOVERY is a personal, unique experience but it is something that we all have to go through as a transition period from the labor/surgery/procedure.

For us, that labor period has been that past 11+ years since I married my young, ambitious, pre-med do-gooder. He finally finished up fellowship in July & started his first “real” job in August! We MADE IT! WE are DONE! The light at the end of the tunnel is finally here?!!

ALMOST.

It has taken a toll on me/us as I never imagined. DrH has lost his hair. We have both lost our youth. And we have huge debt hanging over our heads thanks to out of state tuition. But, we have made some amazing friends, lived in unknown places, and learned loads I don’t think we would have any other way. Journey would be an understatement.

Through it all, I held onto my vision of the light at the end of the tunnel. I HAD TO. And as DrH graduated from residency and then fellowship, I thought I was “there”—finally. Better hours, bigger paycheck, better location, less debt, etc. And it’s true, some of these dreams are becoming realizations. But now that we are “Done”, I realize there were a few more steps I couldn’t see from my perspective below.

It’s called RECOVERY.

We are in a new state. New job. He is the new guy. We are adjusting. Again. New friends, new schools, older kids, stereotypes of DrW. Lots of NEW and lots of Firsts. Trying to figure out how our expected paycheck can dwindle so fast to taxes, insurances, and loans. How he can help shape the practice he has joined into one that he would like to stay with long term. How I overnight became labeled a DrW and all the expectations that go with that. Trying to make new friends, reminiscing about old ones, and processing where we came from and where we want to go.

Life is full of transitions. And sometimes this change is tough. As we have all learned. But we are recovering. We are almost there.

Almost.

“If nothing ever changed there’d be no butterflies.”

Post note (1/11/2015): I now feel like we are almost out of the recovery phase . . .