Fake It Till You Make It...

     So, the game begins. I am now 8 weeks post-op and still only feeling partially recovered, but I just can't lay around all day, and do nothing! Somehow, I need to move forward. I decided I would act like everything was fine, and just do my best to push through the pain. I would do everything that I'd typically do prior to surgery in an attempt to have things seem more normal again. (After all, I'm through the worst part of it, and in a couple of more weeks I'll be feeling great...right? "so I thought.")  However my couple of weeks had soon turned into a couple of months. I knew something wasn't right, but I had no idea of the severity. I still believed once we figured out what was wrong it would be somewhat simple to fix.

     Now, this is probably why I had completely fallen apart after learning the news of my new condition. I was trying so hard to be the person I no longer was. I was trying to stay optimistic and have a positive attitude despite my situation, and I truly thought I was going to get better. For the most part everything looks normal from the outside there's not one particular thing that stands out too obviously when you have PNE. Only that I avoided sitting, and if I did sit, I sat so I was leaning up on my hip. I'm sure that may have looked off at times to some people, or maybe they just thought "that girl is rude, she's practically taking up two seats, can't she just sit up-right." So to a certain degree, it was really easy to pretend things had gotten back to normal, but physically I was dying inside. The more I did, the more the pain would intensify, and as the day went on the pain became unbearable, and it's really hard to push through pain like that. So, on that day I learned my devastating news I was tired of pretending that I was okay, it's so exhausting being something your not, and out of sheer exhaustion and disbelief I broke down.

     I definitely was not the same person I once was. The surgery changed me in every way, I just didn't want to accept it, I was in denial. I was desperately holding on to what once was, by just a thread. I desperately wanted everything to go back  to normal. On that day, I finally had to face the truth, there was nothing pretty about this truth. The truth about PNE is that "it's unbearably painful and it really sucks all the joy out of life" and I really hated my life with PNE.

I couldn't fight for the old me anymore, the old me no longer existed. Feeling completely defeated, I was finally forced to throw in the towel. The fake it till you make it game was officially over!