As you may know, or can work out from the dates of my blog posts, I blogged practically every day for three months. And then I stopped. Not altogether of course - I continued to squirrel away my thoughts and feelings in a journal and it still remains my aim one day to sit down with a box of tissues and a large glass of wine and read all about it :-)
In fact I may print the blog and the journal, probably in double line spacing with a margin either side, and send it off to a publisher (probably need an agent first...) as I remain convinced this story needs to be told. And read. And heard. As scoliosis is still something that so many people are ignorant of. The few that have heard of it are often misinformed and it continues to concern me that there is no screening programme to identify AIS - adolescent ideopathic scoliosis - in the early teenage years.
There used to be - that's when mine was picked up. But "back in the day" surgery was lengthy, risky and unlikely to produce a significant correction. Which of course is why I never had surgery years ago.
Why did I stop the public blog? At the time I couldn't have put it into words, other than to say that I felt uncomfortable writing about things and knowing that they were in the public domain. Someone commented to me that my blog was relentlessly positive and upbeat but that wasn't how I was feeling. In fact the time when I stopped blogging was about the time I had some kind of emotional breakdown with all the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. To continue writing positively felt like a lie, that I was deceiving myself and others, so it had to stop.
It was therapeutic to continue writing in a less public place and I am very grateful to those who accompanied me on that very difficult stage of the journey. But the point of this blog had always been to try and offer some help and support to others facing this surgery or recovering from it.If that is you, and if you would like to read more about the dark days, then please do drop me a note or comment below.
It's now a week since the intercostal nerve blocks. No real change to be honest, other than the area under my right boob/breast (delete whichever you are least comfy with) is slightly less painful. For a few days the site of the injections felt sore and stung. Now the pain is back to how it was.
However - having tried just about every prescription drug on offer I did wander into Superdrug yesterday and for £1.09 bought a pack of "extra strong painkillers" Hmmm....
200mg of paracetamol, 300mg of aspirin, 30mg of caffeine. Sounded like chicken feed. Never mind, I gave it a go and by the time I'd added in a couple of gin and tonics the pain had lessened. Always good to know there's something out there that has helped on occasion and may do so again, perhaps cocktails are the way forward :-)
Time for bed - as Zebeddee once said. More soon.
Linda xxx
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