I’ve been on bed rest for 37 days because a disc in my back collapsed. To make a long story short, I cannot walk further than the bathroom or the kitchen without feeling completely exhausted along with my back tensing up accompanied by a pain shooting down my leg that feels like I’m being electrocuted. The same goes for sitting. I am not the least bit exaggerating when I say that I spend 90% of my time in bed, the other 10% is in the bathtub, the yoga mat, and doctor’s offices.
The thing is that the excruciating pain I feel almost every moment isn’t the shittiest part of it. The shittiest part of it is realizing that you’ve surrounded yourself with shitty people. In 37 days only one friend has come to visit me and one more has tried. I’ve been invited out countless times, and not one of those friends stopped to think that maybe I would enjoy some company. I’ve realized that if I can’t go out, I don’t have friends. This isn’t a to bash on my ‘friends’ it’s just me sitting in my bed alone for the 37th day in a row wondering why the fuck I spent so much time investing in people only to wind up completely and utterly alone.
To be candid, I don’t think that this life is worth it. The current life I am living that is, I wake up in pain, usually, about 5 am but sometimes 2 am and 3 am and so forth until I have no choice but to get into the bathtub. Finally, 8 am rolls around and my boyfriend goes to work, and I stretch and I get prepared to lay down until he gets home for lunch. I make sure I have enough water, a phone charger, computer charger, a snack, etc. because once I lay down that’s it, I am down. So I place my legs onto my sleeping wedge and gently lay my back down and I wait. I wait for the exciting pain that is my disc pushing off my nerve to settle, which takes about 20 minutes but sometimes the pain never alleviates. Then I realize that I can’t reach my water cup or the remote or that my phone is dying so I just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Some days I get up and deal with the excruciating pain that comes with movement, other days I don’t, I just lay there. Day after day, for 50+ hours a week, completely alone.
Bed rest has taught me that it sucks to rely on someone, but it’s nice to have someone to rely on. My boyfriend does everything for me because I can’t. From putting on my shoes to cooking all my meals, to helping me get out of bed in the morning, but when he isn’t there life is really hard and really lonely.
This injury is so debilitating and so lonely but it’s taught me that I have a really fucking high pain tolerance, it’s taught me that it doesn’t matter how many nights you go out with someone if they won’t stay in one night for you that’s not a friend, it’s taught me that Google is better than most of my doctors and that you can order almost anything from Amazon.
It’s Friday night and instead of killing myself I made pasta, so I’ll take that as a win.
Small victories, Tenney
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