The Guide to Thriving Beyond the Crises in your Life: 4 Effective Steps

It's not just tea that revives you

As a spouse, parent and caregiver I have been on hyper-alert for 5 years.

Why?

It’s because my family is very good at having serious medical conditions with unpronounceable names.

My husband was first diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia in 2008. And if trigeminal neuralgia wasn’t difficult enough to say and remember, in 2009, our oldest son Benjy won the prize. 

He was diagnosed with a heart condition called Wolff Parkinson White with supraventricular tachycardia. (Try saying that a few times, very quickly.) This condition is sometimes connected with sudden death. Benjy's version of this syndrome meant that he needed two heart surgeries, between January and April  2010. 

My husband had invasive brain surgery ( MVD) for his trigeminal neuralgia in 2011. You can see why I might live on high alert!

Living on hyper-alert puts you in survival mode. You are either waiting for a symptom to show itself, in the midst of an attack, or recovering from the fallout:

Recovery Part 3 - What Does Recovery Look Like?

***This is the third post in a series about living with and recovering from serious illness. The first post Recovery-The New Normal appeared two weeks ago. The second post Recovery Part 2- Poem In Your Pocket appeared last week.***

 

I really thought I knew what recovery looked like. I started to write about Jonny's recovery from MVD brain surgery, the moment he emerged from the ICU back in early November 2011, until starting this blog in February. I measured it in terms of Celebrating the Small and Big Milestones. I described it as Navigating a Labyrinth, I talked about  Two Steps Forward One Step Back. ( Please see Brainstorming, for all these posts and an explanation of MVD.) I thought I had it down.