I’ve tried to compose this post so many times but before I’m done, I start to feel ashamed that I’m complaining, and delete it.
I have been struggling with my physical health big time.
I’m in a lot of pain lately and it’s been extremely difficult to walk and get around. I need to have surgery on my foot because a tendon has deteriorated from arthritis. I will have to have it repaired and that means screws and 6 months of recovery where for 3 of those months I won’t even be able to put weight on it. This scares me.
I was supposed to wait until my partner is healed from his shoulder replacement surgery, he had over a year ago. When they opened him up, they found a birth defect that needed to be corrected, so his recovery has been slow.
Now, my son is getting married in Sept and if I go in for surgery now, I’ll still be recovering when the wedding comes, and it will make things harder for me and everyone else. So, I decided to wait till after.
I’m really struggling with accepting the fact that I need help. The other day, we went to Costco and after looking at the electric scooters they have for people who need help shopping, I decided to not use one. My reasoning was that someone else might need it more and, using one means that I’m admitting that I need help and my pride is getting in the way. By the time we were done shopping, I was in tears because the pain was so bad. I had a half hour drive home and holding the accelerator down the whole time was so painful. My partner isn’t cleared for driving yet, so I have been driving.
Then, there is the issue of my partner. I am afraid that he won’t be able to handle things that need to be done around the house while I’m recovering because of his sever learning disability that affects his short-term memory. I have to help him with pretty much everything from self-care to remembering how to do certain tasks that most people can do without even thinking about. I have a plan to start “training” him months before my surgery, so hopefully that will help him, but this has been something I have been very concerned about. I have to show him how to do things over and over.
I’m not sure if I can handle this pain for very much longer and my brain keeps going to dark places. It’s distressing and hard to deal with. I struggle with feelings of resentment because I feel like I have always been last when it comes to being able to take care of myself. Like my health care comes after everyone else. When I was married, my ex-husband was financially abusive, and I wasn’t allowed to go to the dentist until I was either in excruciating pain or my tooth was rotting. I don’t have any upper teeth now because of that. They are too expensive to fix, so they just get pulled. Now, I have to wait for surgery because of other people being first. It sucks and it’s not fair and it makes me feel like I don’t matter.
Yes, I could have had this fixed years ago, but I’m not very good at taking care of myself because I was taught to always put myself last and my mental health tells me that I’m not worthy of being healthy as well. So, there was always an excuse to put it off.
I don’t really know what to do with all this.