My Winning Surrender

 I wanted to hold off on physical therapy so I could get both hands surgeries first and do my therapy sessions for both hands at the same time, since our insurance only allowed a certain number of PT visits per year. However, by week four after the first surgery, I was still in pain and the wound was healing poorly despite no infection and tons of care. "If we don't start PT now, I'll be completely useless with two non-functional hands!" I complained to my surgeon. I THEN started physical therapy for my hands, as well as my neck and back, to maximize our visits and address my other major pains at the time. I also found a wonderful chiropractor who began working with me on my other issues.

Doing physical therapy twice a week and seeing the chiropractor once a week was a train wreck on my body. The pain and fatigue were so intense I could barely function. Thankfully, the electronic stimulation and ultrasound therapies provided the healing touch that the basic at-home exercises were not. My incision site was still beyond sensitive, but my range of motion and strength finally began to increase. Unfortunately, I struggled to gain any additional core muscles or neck strength by the end of the allotted sessions.

My husband had worked his way up to General Manager and was working more hours than ever. One of the “perks” of being a GM is this every two year massive international conference in Las Vegas. We went together as a family despite Jacob having almost every moment already scheduled out for him. Princess was the happiest and so overstimulated that she refused to sleep. For two nights she didn’t sleep more than an hour a night she was beyond wound up. The lights, the sounds, the people! She couldn’t get enough, she was the happiest 2 year old ever. The rest of us were exhausted beyond belief from the tons and tons of walking. The second day Rayne and I could barely move and Jacob was stuck in seminars and expos all day. By the afternoon Rayne and I had managed to make a half plan to walk to the aquarium then meet up with Jacob for dinner after. We loved the aquarium and went through it and then went backwards to the beginning and through it all over again. The next day Rayne, Princess and me went and explored more and stopped at an adorable hello kitty cafe. Rayne let me borrow one of his headphones and we listened together and sang along with the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack on repeat for most of the trip.

That last night we had planned to try to make it to Omega Mart, a trippy art installation like fun house in a sci-fi themed area of Las Vegas called Area 15. The problem was if we ALL were going, getting the car seat to the place and back was going to be a massive hassle. Not to mention micromanaging a 2 year old and 14 year old in full on sensory overload style of setting. We spoke to Rayne for a bit about the dilemma and he told us he would just stay in the hotel room with Princess watching ms. Rachel and all would be fine for the few hours we’d be gone. Rayne had watched his sister for short 15 min spans only before this so it was a big deal and lots of responsibility since we would be so far away. I’m so proud of him for handling it so perfectly, when we got back to the hotel they were exactly as we had left them. For such a short whirlwind of a trip, it was our first (and only) family of four vacation and I am so thankful for the experience.   

I finally felt ready enough for the next hand after pushing it 3 weeks longer than expected. If I waited any longer, I would run out of all LOA hours at work before my next recovery was finished. The left hand (luckily) went a full 360 degrees differently. It was still a three-minute surgery, but this time we knew which pain meds I needed on day one. I felt no pain until two weeks later when my medication wore off. There was so much less swelling the entire time, and I was able to start moving it within seven days. I was back at physical therapy by day 14 post-op, the day after my stitches were removed for the second time. I was told that since the carpal tunnel wasn’t as severe on the left side, that was most likely why it recovered so much more easily. I think the proper pain control and knowledge of correct bandaging and wound care the second time around had a major part to play as well.

One of the biggest struggles post surgeries was having to relearn all muscle control and muscle memory all over again. I had to completely teach myself the basics of art and drawing all over again. It was mentally and physically a hurdle that was extremely tough to push through. Eventually, I would get so deeply depressed, intensely stressed, or overwhelmed I would just pick up my sketch book and draw a small 2 inch by 2 inch sketch for 30 mins and I would focus so hard on it my panic and immediate stressors would melt away for that short amount of time. I’ve actually lost count of how many existential crises I’ve pushed through in the last 3 years alone… Drawing is probably one of the healthiest coping mechanisms I have, and I was sooooo glad I could use my need to escape to join hand in hand with my pushing to regain what was lost.

I was totally out of leave hours now. I was still so sore from the muscle I had lost and was attempting to rebuild. I felt completely cured of my carpal tunnel intense nerve pain as soon as the surgery was done, day one. Yet for some reason, I was still feeling so sore and painful, like my fingers were unstable noodles. Surgery recovery is a very mental hurdle to overcome as well as a physical one. I spent so much time helpless and completely useless to my sweet and very needy velcro baby after these back-to-back surgeries. My Princess was so sensitive to the whole experience, and I just hope she never remembers it. She has the biggest, most empathetic, and caring heart that you could ever imagine, and it also makes her worry very, very deeply.

During this time, I was only able to lie around watching TV and scrolling Reddit. I feel so very thankful to have discovered Twitch before this deep loss of function. I was able to stay part of multiple communities, all with their own authentic lives and distractions to keep me endless company. One member of a community was even a hand specialist, and we spoke a couple of times. He gave me advice and was curious about my status. He suggested finger strengthening exercises that paired well with my EDS too, and he recommended that I get sized and fitted for specialized finger splints called Silver Rings. I've been so incredibly grateful for the amazing people and beautiful souls I've met online. Living in such a conservative state is a culturally limiting state of mind, and I've been starved for the stories and lives that come with every individual person.

My husband is always the first to share everything with me and I everything with him. We love every same fandom, and our hobbies mesh well too. Our brains are in sync, and I am so very thankful for these last sixteen years together. We have been able to provide for each other that special weirdness that we both crave from life, and it honestly can't get any more perfect than that. I attempted to stream a bit and be more social because the connections were beyond interesting and the personalities so diversely authentic. However, my anxiety eventually took over.

Then the panic attacks started. They would come out of nowhere with no obvious cause, just a sudden, massive dump of adrenaline. It was an instant fight-or-flight, full-body response. My heart raced, my lungs tightened, my body was shaky and sweaty all over. My brain was on fire. The biggest problem was that I was supposed to start back at work any day.

On the first day, I couldn't even log in because the system didn’t recognize my hardware. It had been disconnected from their system for so long... I spent three and a half of my first four-hour shift on the phone with various tech teams, beyond frustrated and freaking out about how I was scheduled for a full phone shift the very next day. The next day, I tried a fix myself and figured out how to trick the system into letting me in by bypassing quite a few of their security settings (this absolutely confused the tech team even more later!) Then I instantly started bugging the supervisor line and operations team, explaining that I had zero training the previous day and had been gone for a very long time now and absolutely needed a retraining refresher.

They actually put me down quite aggressively and said I was inconveniencing EVERYONE because I was scheduled for phones based on expected demand, so now phones would be super busy because I wouldn't be there to do my part. They said I could take the day and start the next day on chats, but after that, I HAD to be on phones. So I took the day and read every single update and announcement, and I was still completely confused on multiple major policies that had changed while I was gone, including an entire credit card fiasco that didn’t make any sense.

And guess what my very first chatter was inquiring about? The super confusing credit card fiasco... I spent fifteen minutes speaking with superiors, back and fourth trying to understand it and read up on it while answering the lady’s questions via the supervisor team, giving me their partial answers on the phone while replying over chat. It seemed to be extra confusing because it sounded like REI was at fault but spinning it to the customers as something else out of their control... I only took single chats all day after that because I could not handle multiple research issues at all. My brain was on fire, and I was in major distress. That whole night, I was completely terrified to go back.

When I woke the next morning, I was beyond petrified with pure fear. I gave up and gave in. There was no winning when I was throwing up from the stress of not being prepared for such a fast-paced, high-intensity, high-dollar-value, and completely metric-based work. Not to mention I hadn’t actually spoken to strangers on the phone in FOREVER! It was just a bit too stressful a morning to really recall many details. However, I did snap out of the petrifying terror i was experiencing to very rapidly email my boss and quit on the spot 15 minutes before my phone shift due to a despicable lack of training/readiness prep before being thrown to the wolves.