20 May 2017 - Growth & Self Awareness Part 2

"Go back and tell the Doc I am GOING to have a successful surgery. So he can stop bringing up the High Risk PCAT nonsense" That was how a discussion at the work hospital ended yesterday.  -18 May 2016

June 2016 -2 Weeks Post Op

Dec 2016 with the Help of a professional we went hunting the Demons in my head. My Physio had suggested it based on her past experience with side-lining injuries or her own. It was the start of a journey that I had no idea where it was going to lead me. I am still working through it. It has been a bigger challenge than I thought it would be, yet I have continued to work and delve deeper into my own self awareness. For along time I operated on a very basic level of instinct I will say. I learned to compartmentalize when I was a child and then working in the military that behavior was re-enforced further. I am extremely good at it. The down side is that i never learned to even acknowledge I had anything for emotions except happiness and anger. I know what you are thinking a typical guy. Except I had worked around people for decades that no matter what was going on they could calmly work through any problem. Taking in the scenario, not let it rattle them, and finding the solution. Solution orientated thinkers if you will.
Yet when you live and work this way and never ever open up in any meaningful way those experiences, those emotions go somewhere. The best metaphor I have come up with is that I boxed them up and put them on a shelf. Picture something between that Wharehouse in the first Indiana Jones movie and that giant library of Orbs in that Harry Potter movie. Thousands of boxes pilled high on a shelf. As a system of coping it works, for awhile.

Remember the sleep issues I mentioned last time? Around the time I was going in to meet the Demon Hunter I was shift work in full swing and some days I would get 9 to 12 hours of sleep between shifts. Except no matter how much or little I slept I was always exhausted. Bonking out on the coach for hours at a time. Pulling over for a 30min nap while driving home from Ottawa which was only a 1.5 to 2hr drive depending on traffic and weather. If you have no idea what happens to your body or mind when you sleep you really need to take an hour away from what ever internet hobby you may have and do some research. Everything happens when you sleep, hormones are reset, muslce is built, your mind processes and problem solves. We need sleep being a champion of under sleeping for a long time let me tell you, I was very wrong on that account. 7 to 8 hrs every night, uninterrupted. Uninterrupted is also key, I might sleep 10hrs but I would be up every 2 to 3 hrs to piss, or because i had slid out of position and my hip ached so badly i needed to re-adjust.

Because it is Rickson. 

So far we have borderline coping strategies combined with a near useless sleep system. See how things are building in a bad direction? Most of this happened slowly, incrementally over a few years without me even noticing or simply working through it. As all things do, it built up and caught up with me. There were warnings signs i simply did not notice or know what to do if I did. The answer was always just push through it.

Now the last piece was what the damaged joint was doing physically. Which I already mention the external piece the chronic pain from the arthritis. Internally my body was dealing with large amounts of cortisol and inflammation which triggers weight gain. Which causes more weight on the joints. It got to a point that some days most of my joints hurt to some degree when I really thought about it. My lower back was either inflammed or feeling like I could throw it out at any moment due to the hip being out of alignment (an actual symptom of TIA). I could no longer run or else a few hours later the swelling in the joint would be brutal. To put a fine point to it in a matter of a year I lost most or all of my physical abilities to some degree. I can only imagine people with real actual illnesses or long term chronic problems go through. I say this in the sense I am recovering for all this, which I am deeply grateful for. I actually smiled and took pleasure in being able to do yard work this week. Something a year ago that 30 min of would have put me on the couch for 2 days.

More later.