Suddenly facing another surgery

Hello lovely coaches,

Things have been rough and the thoughts going through my brain keep going back to “I can’t cope, I can’t take much more, I’m so alone, what else is going to be thrown at me” etc.

In the last ten days of august: I hurt myself badly falling down the stairs, I froze my eggs which resulted in a horrifying experience due to medical negligence and I’m still processing the trauma (and I ended up in the ER 4 days later because of it), I went through a break-up that utterly broke my heart, and then, even my cat had a scary emergency!

I’ve been getting through it. I’m seeing my therapist twice a week and Maisie’s emotions workshop was amazing. I also had fantastic coaching here about the breakup. I was doing a lot better last week.

But I started experiencing excruciating pain. I went to my GP yesterday who immediately referred me to a specialist who I saw today; and now I suddenly have surgery tomorrow. It’s a separate issue to what happened in August. The post-op care instructions are overwhelming – I’ve been told to expect severe pain for several days and bleeding for two weeks.

I’m in my 6th year of my PhD and I’ve had quite a lot of big health stuff the whole time in grad school. Lots of physical stuff has been stress related, and now it feels like “here I am again, another big health thing”. I’m on a different continent to my family. I live alone, and I am in my mid-30s and really want a partner. I feel so alone, and I’m so nervous of trying to look after myself these two weeks. And I’m so scared of any sort of invasive procedure after what happened in August.

I tried doing some models for this question but I’ve so many different overwhelming thoughts. Would appreciate any advice you have. Thank you.

 

 

Answer:

You may not be able to access thoughtwork if your nervous system is activated. Take care of that first. When you get this answer you’ll probably have had the surgery and be in recovery. It can be scary thinking about future pain and suffering so it’s important to stay present. You can’t know what will happen. Just like you didn’t expect what happened after the egg retrieval so you weren’t scared of it, use your brain to give space for the best case scenario as well. Worrying won’t make recovery any easier.

How can you set yourself up to be well taken care of? You may not be near family or have a partner at the moment but you can figure this out.  You’ve shared that you’ve had many health things over the past 6 years. Instead of using this against you, how can you see it as the perfect preparation for this surgery? What have you learned that will serve you? How are you perfectly equipped to handle this?

You’re not alone. The community is here for you and so are the people who care for you. It’s ok to ask for help.