What’s Been Happening: Surgery Talk

Jet Nialle, LMT CMLDT EPC

It…. has been a while since I’ve made a health update. Life has certainly given me some ups and downs this past year. There is so much to catch up on that I’m going to do this in parts.

Where to actually begin??

Lets start with my chronic illness and some very major surgery. Yeah, I would totally say that they aren’t connected, and would love to say that they aren’t. That was, in the end not the case.

The chronic nausea has caused me problems since 2011. Being sick every day up to 3 to 4 times a day was very wearing. Those who have hidden chronic illness/pain know how dealing with a thing daily is just utter crap.

Fast forward to April 2023. Finally getting ready to go into surgery to remove internal body part. Yes, I did get myself a hysterectomy for health reasons. Crazy hormones and abnormal pain/periods are horrible to deal with. Got all of my things at home ready knowing that I wasn’t going to be 100% for a bit. Now mind you, I had told my surgeon about the things I was worried about. Mostly the fact that I’ve been sick for so long, and I DO NOT WANT to be sick while recovering from this. Biggest fear ever. I did not need this to be the thing that undoes everything. Fortunately they listened to me. They gave me meds for pain and meds for my stomach so that I won’t fall prey to the sick issues.

Yaaaaay!!!!

Post Surgery Life

First few days post surgery weren’t so bad. Mostly slept and kept up on all of the meds they gave me. Because I am a baby when it comes to pain. They also gave me the advice to make sure that I move. Moving will help everything settle back to where they should be and help things heal. Now, I wasn’t allowed to run marathons of course… But slow and steady always wins the race, as they say.

About a week out from surgery, I was of course getting slightly bored with things. (Although my cat was an amazing caretaker and made sure that I rested lots.)

So I added on to my walking. I still didn’t walk too far because energy levels were still pretty low. I did start working out with my Oculus again, adapting the app I use to lower levels of intensity.

But how did you adapt your workouts, Jet????

I’m glad you asked!! So for those who want to know. I use Supernatural on my Oculus. (And I absolutely love it.)

First and foremost, I kept seated instead of standing. This allowed me to limit how far I stretched out my arms and twisted my body while I was still healing. I made sure all of the targets were to me from one place, right in front of me. And like I said, I started on the lowest intensities and smallest times I could find. So I would do 1 10-12 min workout every few hours to help keep my body moving. There was no need to do everything in one shot, no need to rush.

As the days went on, I could do a bit more per session. I increased slowly, being cautious but still trying to push my body just a tiny bit. A month out from surgery, I was still sitting down mostly, but was increasing to medium intensity, and was feeling pretty good. At this point, my energy was still not 100%, but it was definately better than it was. I started to add in more standing, and it certainly felt amazing to get more of my body moving.

Now mind you, I was still listening to my body. Because full recovery is a few months out from surgery date. But it was amazing how great my body started feeling. It also helped with the stress, the frustration of healing and that feeling of being stuck.

And the best part of all of this???? The chronic nausea I was dealing with??? It is now practically non-existent. I have had moments, of course. But, I am now on a path of figuring out my healing path. It is never an easy place to be. However, scar tissue working havoc is a real thing. (Yes, my surgeon stated that there was a huge bunch of scarring in my abdomen. No real idea why.)

As I finish today’s life update… I’ve been working a bit daily on my scar tissue. It’s not been an easy experience. And I will still have that scar tissue for the rest of my experience in this body. I know this. So, I take the time to take care of this so that eventually this will just be a way of life that I won’t really have to think about, I can just do my stretches and go. But until then… the work will be done!