Health Update: So far things are going really well. My incision has almost healed, which means I'm on my way to a sweet scar. My posture is becoming impeccable since I have to always keep my back straight, and although my muscles in my upper back are really sore from it, I literally look taller now! The one set back to recovering is that the more normal I feel, the harder it is to remember not to bend or twist since those are normal movements.
And just as I was writing this I got 2 cards in the mail for a speedy recovery! I also received 2 cards last week. I am blessed to have some amazingly supportive people in my life, including all of you who commented. One of the cards was even handmade from one of the girls I became best friends with abroad and included a picture of our abroad home-city. Another card was from one of my abroad besties as well and she wrote part of it auf deutsch (in German) which made me smile. Someday soon I am making a post about how going abroad changed my life and gave me six new amazing lifelong friends.
After my recent hospital stay, I got to thinking about some of my strangest habits and decided that of course it would only be fitting to post about.
How I cope with pain...Many of you have kindly praised my bravery in having surgery/staples removed and said you're wimpy (paraphrasing) yourselves. What you don't know is that I am actually a TOTAL scaredy-cat about pain. I think I cried about shots until I was seventeen, and even now I can only handle them if I
don't look. Ok, so I guess this is actually 2 things I do to cope with pain. One is that I never ever look at the thing implementing the pain. I'm sure the nurses delivering shots notice that I'm always talking to the wall farthest away from the needle instead of to them.
However, ever since I've had to start doing even more painful things, like get IV's for wisdom teeth & back surgery, epidurals (not for babies, for back pain), and have back surgery, looking away just wasn't enough.
So what do I do when it's time for the really big needle? To deal with the anxiety attacks and pain I try to
list all 7 Von Trapp children in my head. I kid you not. I don't remember when I started this, but it's been a while. It works for me because it is darned near impossible to remember all 7 at once! Seriously, try it! (Uh oh, am I about to be embarrassed because everyone else can do it but me?) I usually mix up one of the girls and for some reason one of the boys names always escapes me. Kurt and...? Friedrich? Anyway, I just sit there with a constant stream of "Liesel, Marta, Kurt...um....did I say Marta?...Brigitta" in my head. (Excuse the misspellings)
(Isn't it handy that the picture I found to illustrate this quirk is numbered?)
How I deal with happy tears...
I'm a cryer. I won't even try to deny it, you'd catch me out fast enough. I cry at the good and the bad, but last summer I took my ability to sob to a new level. My sister, my best friend, my confidant and co-conspirator, got married. I was her Maid of Honor. I had no idea when I started down the aisle what was about to hit me, but from the second she appeared, I realized I was in huge trouble. I was losing it and fast. It didn't help that literally half the audience (audience? that sounds weird...) was sobbing. But I was standing in front of everyone! I couldn't sob! I was trying to take deep breaths and smile but I just kept wavering and after five minutes it was only getting worse. My Aunt was the Pastor marrying them so the words were personal, I'm close to both my sister and her husband so that was tugging at me, my cousin sang--and that girl can sing, she gets paid for it. We'd already sat for prayer once and when my Aunt began her little homily I was on the brink of embarrassing myself.
Something had to be done.
And since I'm a very strange delightfully quirky girl who loves to eat I did the strangest quirkiest thing possible. I began frantically listing food. You read correctly. Food. "Chocolate covered pretzels, oatmeal, steak, french fries...", deep breath, I think I'm ok and then three seconds later I'm hyperventilating again so "lima beans, toast, peanut butter".
It seems rude to zone out on your sister's wedding to list food, but I swear to the big guy it was only because I would have collapsed at the altar in heap of happy tears if I hadn't. Even so, I did take in most of it, but to this day I don't think I would've made it through without food.
Note: It's my personal belief that this trick could work with things beside food. It's just telling that my mind jumped to food first.
How I cope with sad tears...
Awkwardly enough, this segment is about how I cope with trying to cry, not trying to stop. Remember, I did theater for four years. Sometimes these skills were necessary.
So I love Harry Potter. A lot. He's my home boy. In plays, I used to be just dorky enough that to try to cry I would think back to the really sad parts of the book regarding Harry's parents. I would try to relive the moment I read about Lily and James coming out of Voldie/Harry's wands. Or there was always Sirius' death to aid me. Usually Lily and James did the trick.
Now, if I need to cry, I can usually just think of my baby girl. I grew up with my precious dog, we were pups together. Then, the summer before I was a college Freshman, she got cancer and...
I guess this inadvertently brings me to one last quirk. When she was dying, I would lie with her for hours and sing her lullabies. I don't know why, it was just something I did and I think it made us both feel better.
(R.I.P.)
Didn't mean to end this on a downer! I treasure the ten years I did have with her and I know she's not in pain now.
So do you all have any truly bizarre and unique habits? Do you count Quilleute wolves instead of sheep? Maybe you separate your food by color? Don't worry, I won't judge.
(This is unrelated, but I still don't seem to get blogger completely. No matter how many times I edit this post to try to make the line spacing look the way I'd like, it remains scrunched up and the spaces I added don't save. What gives?)
