"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity". (Hippocrates)

Giving yourself time to heal

A few months ago I underwent surgery to have 3 of my wisdom teeth out. Because it needed to be done under general anaesthetic, I was off work for a week to recover. This much time spent recovering, mostly in my own company, I learned a lot about my friends and a little about myself. 

I learned how much my friends care about me, and that they all showed it in different ways - the flowers, the cards, the texts before I went in, the texts after I came out, the visits when I was recovering. 

My friend Cally spent the day with me in the hospital, patiently waiting for me to go into surgery, and she and my friend Sarah spent hours waiting for me to come round from the anaesthetic, only to be sent home because the hospital kept me in overnight. It's times like these that you realise how fortunate you are to have good friends in your life. 

My friends also rallied round to lend me boxsets and DVDs of movies that are guilty pleasures to watch. When you're feeling ill, if that's what you want, if that's the creature comforts of home, so be it. Who wants to watch Shakespeare when you're ill? And even the guiltiest of pleasures can still teach you something, if you're looking for it. 

I realised that even bees have to sleep! Sometimes you're the bee, sometimes you're the person lying in the sun. When they are busy, you are relaxing, and sometimes it's the other way around.

It's okay to sleep and rest and recover - and I learned that if I had to do so for a year*, I would find a way of getting through it - just the same way that Pollyanna** did. 

And there's nothing like a good boxset when you're feeling ill - it  takes your mind off  things entirely, you get involved with the characters and their lives, and you remember that this too will pass - it was just my mind playing tricks on me, because I knew that in time I would be fully recovered. 

But most of all, I learned that although you can put off facing something you don't want to do, that by facing it you get to decide when to do it. You get to regain control of the situation, and that you will make it through. 

Purlgirl xx

*"How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" Dale Carnegie, (Simon and Schuster, 1948)

** "Pollyanna" Eleanor H. Porter, (L.C. Page, 1913)