Recognising Recovery

Today I’m continuing in a window and the fresh air is blowing away any previous waves. It feels good and even the dense fog within my head has lifted. It’s a calm day and it’s been over a week of good days now. This doesn’t mean symptoms have entirely disappeared more that they are grumbling along in the background without forcing their presence. I feel more motivated and energetic.  These sorts of days help me to believe in healing and that one day I will be symptom free and living a fully functional life again. Perhaps it’s not that far off.

It is difficult to know when and how full recovery is going happen. Some say the worst symptoms just dwindle away over a period of time, perhaps years in a few cases. Others say they have woken one morning to find themselves entirely symptom free and able to start living again. Still others say the windows stay open longer while the waves become fewer and further between until they disappear completely. 

I rather feel my progress is more along the lines of a combination of the dwindling symptoms and a lengthening of the windows.  I have had good and bad days throughout the last 17 months although, over a period of time, I’ve also noticed that every five or six months I’ve entered a long and horrendous wave. This happened at my third month, my ninth month and then at my sixteenth month. These Tsunami type waves have lasted six to eight weeks before I’ve returned to a calm window, often much improved over the previous one. In other words there always seems to be a storm before the calm. I then return to the milder waving in and out on a daily basis but this baseline has been raised and is less intense. A complicated process that’s difficult to explain. Whatever happens it’s all healing.

It really is amazing how quickly things can change. One minute I may be despairing of ever being well again, imagining all sorts of illnesses that must have created the havoc within me almost to the point of arranging my funeral 😮. The  next I’m feeling well and looking towards all I’m going to do in the future and almost symptom free. It’s no wonder others, including doctors, cannot fathom the complexity of the process and are all to ready to label us with one of those ‘obscure’ illnesses that have no identifiable cause. I’m thinking of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia (I’m supposed to have had both of these),  a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (also had this), Depression, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and so forth. The list is long and in our society there seems be a need to label anything that can’t be explained rationally or cured quickly. This is a cause for concern in education where children are labeled with a variety of diagnoses for not learning successfully such as Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder and Hyperactivity. Even more worrying when these children are given psychiatric drugs from a young age to dampen their behaviour. 

So, for now I hope that my recovery is well underway however it may unfold. I’m certainly happier and more positive for seeing the disappearance and easing of some of the more intense symptoms at long last.