Concussion reflections

Life's continuing to be challenging at the moment, and I've found myself often feeling trapped. With the concussion, I can't walk far without nausea and I certainly can't ride my bike or swim; I'm also basically not seeing anyone. I'm trying to put into practise what I've been learning about 'active recovery' from concussion, but it's hard as my CFS-related limits have all been disrupted, and figuring out how to do what's needed for the concussion without over-doing it from a CFS perspective is hard.

Yesterday I decided to go to a close friend's 50th birthday afternoon tea. I knew I'd pay for it, but if felt important.

Today has been a real struggle, with lancing pain through my head and eyes through much of the day; although I did manage a 15 minute walk with minimal nausea, which was lovely.

And I've been mulling over two thoughts through the day:

1. I haven't 'given up' anything for Lent this year. Life feels challenging enough! But I realised I have given something up after all: capability. I realised when fasting earlier this year, that so much of my 'being a nice person' is dependent on having a full tummy. And that's been a good thing to bring back to God in prayer. So today, I've been praying that God would teach me through this experience of 'giving up capability'. 
2.  I've realised I'm part of God's creation, which is groaning as it longs for Jesus to come back and set everything to rights (rough paraphrase from the book of Romans in the Bible). I don't usually see myself as part of God's creation - I put humans in a different 'box' - and I've been mulling over what it means to be more part of the broken world.

Apologies for anything that doesn't make sense, and for the lack of links - I'm very much minimising computer time at the moment!

A couple of other recent challenges are seen in this photo!  For the last few weeks I've been sleeping with my arm immobilised due to an inflamed ulnar nerve (although we're now strapping it slightly bent, should anyone who knows about these things realise we weren't doing it right!), and for a few days Martin and I were wearing masks almost 24 hours of the day due to a significant Covid exposure (so if one of us had already caught it we wouldn't infect the other).

 

PS I do now have a referral to a concussion service, although it's a while since my GP has had a concussion patient so she has no idea what the wait time will be like.