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To say these past eighteen months have been a journey is an understatement. I can't believe my last blog post was in June of last year. Mind you everything for the past 18 months seems to have become a blur.
It has been filled with loss of what I couldn’t, and some things I can no longer do, loss of my dear friend and mentor of twenty plus years, loss of two sisters who died withing weeks of each other, loss of friendships, loss of myself on so many levels.
This post septic shock has also affected my family and friends, as they have also experienced loss. Loss of who I used to be, of what I could do etc. It has been a journey for all of us.
I am happy to say that I am so much better than I was this time last year, I still have some limitations, but I am working on accepting those. Some days that is easier to accept than others, and I am learning my limits, when to push them, when I need rest etc.
I am delighted to say that I can feel the fog starting to lift.
I have become more intentional about my writing, enjoy my tea without it making me ill, and am full of gratitude every day that I am still here and can do what I am able to do.
With that in mind I decided to pull out a sewing project I had started before landing in the ICU with septic shock.
I am making a quilt for the little one that lives upstairs. She is almost 2 and 1/2, and a ball of energy and very sweet. She is a smart little one and through this illness has made me smile countless times. I am grateful for that, especially on really bad days. She has given me ideas for kid's stories, and I have started to jot the ideas down.
The quilt isn't anything fancy, just 6-inch squares sewn together. I wanted to get back at it and knew that there would be a learning curve- but wholly. I got the sewing machine out and I had forgotten how to thread it, then I was thinking that I had a special quilting foot but couldn’t remember what it looked like. I had to figure out how to deal with the bobbin etc.- all I can say is thank goodness for you tube.
I have also learned that I have to do this in stages. Yesterday I was talking to my brain training facilitator, and she told me that all of this was using the frontal lobes, which we use for executive functioning. I didn’t realize that, and I felt pretty good about it as when I came home from the hospital, I couldn’t figure out how to make a pot of tea.
I have been working a bit on the quilt each day and some parts are easier than others. This morning I realized that’s a metaphor for the fact that I am slowly starting to stitch my life back together.
Like the quilt, I have to make sure the stitches are not too tight and restricting, use good thread, take breaks when I need it, some parts will be harder than others, and there may be some patches I can no longer find, so I need to replace them., if I can even do that.
But I am slowly stitching my life back together and I am beyond grateful that I can do this, as I remember that time in ICU when I thought I was dying, and when I got home not being able to figure out how to make a pot of tea.
How are you stitching your life together and what are you including in that?
It’s good to be back writing and thanks for being here.
Until next time be good too yourselves, there is only one you.
Suzy
Photo by Darling Arias on Unsplash