Yes! At last, I’ve made it out of my personal doldrums back into the light.
What a terrible place I found myself and now that I’m up and out of that place, I can see how I got there.
Of course, it all started with the on-going political quagmire we’ve been living through for the past four years. That was followed by the world-wide pandemic which re-wrote our social interactions, maybe forever. The next blow for me came on July 5th when I somehow damaged my hip during my pre-dawn walk. I rely on that walk for many reasons. Using the big weight-bearing bones since I started walking 3 miles every morning, no matter what has added 7.6% to my bone density. That’s a big plus at my age when most women are only losing bone mass.
Walking-no-matter-what does wonders for my mental health. Even if control is only an illusion, it makes me feel better to know I did something positive for myself.
As a side note: I also earn $$ from my Medicare Advantage Plan for the “steps” I take on a daily basis. Those dollars add up to free stuff from Amazon. Yay me!
Lest I digress too far off-topic, suffice it to say that my daily walking is important to my sense of well-being, and being unable to walk without pain only added to my growing sense of despair.
I think the final blow, that struck me hardest and sent me spiraling down happened the evening of August 21st. My dear husband never complains about his health, but on this evening I could tell he was having out of control pain. I drove him to the nearest hospital Emergency Room. He has a heart condition and first was stabilized. Then, however, the doctor said he was having an attack of appendicitis and would require surgery.
Because of Covid-19, I was unable to be with him after I left him in the ER. Eleven hours later he made it into surgery. By that time his appendix had burst and everything became even more complicated, but I didn’t know that because NOBODY from the hospital called to update me. From the time I left the ER that Thursday evening until I picked him up OUTSIDE the hospital the following Sunday afternoon, no doctor called to tell me whether my husband lived or died. My own calls to the switchboard resulted in multiple incidences of ringing phones which were never answered. I was a screaming, raging nervous wreck with nobody to talk to and nobody to turn to.
There have been few times during my long life during which I felt so powerless.
I won’t go into the details of my encounters with doctors about my ensuing depression. Western Medicine only has two trains of thought: Operate or Medicate. I rejected both and my chiropractor and I proceeded to work out a solution that involved neither medicating nor operating.
Last week I dropped my ballot into the box and immediately felt more positive. This morning was the second morning in a row I walked more than two miles in the pre-dawn desert without pain and enjoyed the dome of star-spangled blackness. Again, I could breathe deeper, cooler, cleaner air.
If we look in the right places, we find our personal answers.