Do you ever recover?
Last week when I wrote about beginning (again) my fitness journey, I put a question box on social media and asked people what they want to know about transplant recovery and life post transplant. And this question, I felt, deserved a blog post.
Do you feel like you ever recover?
the definition of the word recover is to return to a normal state of health, or to regain something. When I think of recovery post transplant, I think of 2 things. Short term and long term, or more accurately broken down into surgical recovery and the rest of your life.
In terms of surgical recovery, I very much believe this is a thing. Over time, with rest and nourishment and guidance, the body will move from a state of acute injury to a state of less acute injury, or recovery. When I had my transplant and couldn’t get out of bed, that was a temporary state, and then I recovered from the surgery and things like walking became easier. Maybe things don’t go back completely to the way they were, but the injury becomes less acute, the body learns to adapt, life continues. Things can complicate this process, but more or less life follows this course of events.
And then there’s the rest of your life. And this stage of recovery, I feel, is less about recovering and more about adaptation and integration. It’s the healing stage.
I think of it this way: in a 12 step program, when someone is sober they don’t say I have recovered. They say I am in recovery. It’s active, it takes work, staying sober isn’t something that just naturally happens. You have to insist upon your own healing.
The definition I could find for working recovery says that it’s a process of change where individuals strive to improve their health, live a self directed life and reach their full potential.
And doesn’t that sound like what I’m trying to do every single day? I am constantly in recovery. Pretending my body isn’t sick or I don’t have limitations serves no one. In fact if I acted without consideration for the entire process of healing, I would probably make myself sicker. When I am honest about where I’m at, I can do things to help my recovery (or help me operate as a healthy, happy, deeply embodied person.)
And in that sense, I am always in recovery. I haven’t arrived, I will never arrive. There is no finish line to cross saying I am a perfect transplant patient. And the truth is the entire trajectory of my life could change in a split second, a reality I know better than most. I can’t bank on being recovered, I have to be actively recovering.
One day at a time, I’m showing up and asking myself where I’m at today, what I need today, what should we orient today?
How I live life post transplant isn’t that different from how I live with staying sober from drugs, or with my eating disorder, or as a wife and mom and person who lives on this planet. One day at a time, I show up and ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
