My medical team told me a great many things, some of which I didn't really want to know (like, if I'd waited another two weeks to go see my doctor it would have been too late and I'd have been dead by April). This is in part because I work for the medical group which provided most of my care and all of my doctors. Although I work in philanthropy, not medicine, many of my doctors are people with whom I serve on committees, so there's some breach of whatever the medical equivalent of a fourth wall might be.
For mental recovery, it helps to factor in how long you were under anaesthesia, as well as how long you were on pain medication afterwards (and which ones). I pretty much don't remember January and probably never will, although there are moments from my hospital stay which are crystal clear. In the hospital (9 days) I had a morphine drip, but later it was all vicodin, which seems to turn my brain into mush.
I keep remembering reading that after giving birth women forget the details of the unpleasantness, and wonder if there is some similar mechanism at play in healing. I can't afford to revisit the pain so my memory shuts it out, but I remember in detail my brother and housemate laughing together, and my orthopedist coming to see me several times and rubbing my feet.
That's a tolerably terrifying story. I was much luckier, in that mine was caught very, very early and the procedure was (relatively) simple and straightforward. I spent one night in the hospital, then got sent home. I remember pretty much everything, including the lovely night nurse Evie, to whom I gave a FREEDOM MAZE postcard, with my thanks scrawled on it. But the thinking? Not so much.
For mental recovery, it helps to factor in how long you were under anaesthesia, as well as how long you were on pain medication afterwards (and which ones). I pretty much don't remember January and probably never will, although there are moments from my hospital stay which are crystal clear. In the hospital (9 days) I had a morphine drip, but later it was all vicodin, which seems to turn my brain into mush.
I keep remembering reading that after giving birth women forget the details of the unpleasantness, and wonder if there is some similar mechanism at play in healing. I can't afford to revisit the pain so my memory shuts it out, but I remember in detail my brother and housemate laughing together, and my orthopedist coming to see me several times and rubbing my feet.
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