The road to recovery

Photo is pure vanity and totally un-blog-related. Like a guy who can make me look good in a photo so huge shout out to @FABSNETWORK Thank you!

And now to business....

Why have I been procrastinating about writing tonight then? I have an inkling of an idea and it's not just the distraction afforded by the twitosphere this evening. Neither is it the fact I've been catching up on #downton and #corrie having worked Sunday evening and played yesterday.

I'm thrilled, honoured, delighted and surprised that this humble blog now gets a goodly number of visits each day, and has been picked up, recommended, linked to and retweeted in many corners of cyberspace.

But in the words of that great superhero as he spun his sticky web across NY City, with power comes responsibility. Note I omitted "great" on this occasion as one thing I don't have is delusions of grandeur. A couple of hundred followers doesn't make me Stephen Fry, and by reading this you're probably in the company of just a hundred or so others who've done so today.

When I started out on this bloggy road I spent a lot of time agonising about putting my thoughts "out there" for the consumption of others, and for a while the agony stopped me altogether. When I had to make the decision about spinal surgery the blog took a different turn as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family. It replaced round robin texts, emails and phone calls, at the same time giving each day a focus. There were days when typing a couple of hundred words on here was all I could manage, but it did provide a sense of achievement.

Recently I've moved away from blogging my scoliosis journey - there hasn't been much to report. But writing has become addictive and I've experimented with allsorts (see my twitter profile - @lindaaanderson - where that word makes another appearance!) It would be great to have more comments on here and really get a conversation going - I love all the texts, emails and FB messages but confess I don't always get round to responding - sorry.

Allsorts however doesn't make for an easily identifiable blog. I follow several others and they all have a definite theme and purpose. Generally music, politics, or theology which of course betrays my areas of interest. Why then don't I blog in a similar vein?

I've been giving this some thought and had a bit of a revelation about it all today. What's happening now is still in fact part of the scoliosis journey. I may repeat that as it's so important. What's happening now is still part of the scoliosis journey.

Pre-surgery I barely blogged. Fear held me back from speaking out - even speaking at times - for fear of what others might say. Or think. Pre-surgery I didn't give much thought to what interested me or what I wanted to do with life, I just got on with it, probably working too hard in the process. Pre-surgery I didn't use Blogger or Twitter so this probably wouldn't have been possible anyway but had they been more widespread I'm not sure I'd have jumped on board then. I'd have been way too worried about what people might say. Or think. Do you see a pattern emerging yet?

Opting to undergo scoliosis surgery is a massive decision. Go back to my early posts and you can see how I agonised over it. The surgery itself is painful; if you are a teenager you can expect six to eight weeks off school. If you are in your twenties or thirties it will take you longer to recover as your body has been in its twisty position for that much longer.

Fast forward twenty years or so to a fifty year old with a pretty large curvature and you are looking at a couple of years recovery time. It's not fair to say it's more painful - which is after all a relative phenomenon. One person's papercut has another screaming for morphine :-)

But it's not wrong or unrealistic to say that recovery is likely to be prolonged and more challenging if you are of ...erm... more mature years. Perhaps this blog with its ups and downs, highdays and downdays, rationale and ramblings, is actually still just a record of that recovery purpose. A very public record I confess, and one that I am sure some might dismiss as self indulgent. But if it helps anyone else going through this process then I am glad so please tell me!

And for anyone else reading this - I hope this offers an insight into life-changing surgery. Into an experience that changes you body, mind and dare I say it soul. I hope it makes you smile and makes you think, though I accept tonight it may be making you yawn as it is waaaaaay too long!

Perhaps I need to revisit the dinner party guests idea - still loving that and Mr Gary Barlow is so much in the news lately it might make for an interesting post!

Linda

Oh - almost forgot - thank you for all the messages about my job! Another subject to write more about soon!