Thunderstorms.

I don't know if I have fully come to terms with what happened last year. I think my period of amnesia combined with being very self-conscious doesn't help. I've got pictures and videos from when I was at my sickest through to when I learnt to walk and talk again in rehab. I believe documenting your journey can be good for motivational purposes, though there are days when I struggle with my emotions to look at them. When it comes to recovery, I believe that it's like the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance but in this case, the loss is the “old you”, I've experienced some of these, it's not a continuous flow, it's a lot of peaks and troughs, similar to an ongoing, never ending roller coaster. I have quite a few days where I try to forget last year ever happened, but it's difficult! Everything is ingrained in my mind from the scary hallucinations in ICU to the realisation of how long the recovery process is and the frustrations of not knowing the extent to which I will recover.

There are also the days when I'm fed up, frustrated and generally fuming that this happened to me. I have another health condition which requires multiple doctor's appointments. It does make me think what did I do to deserve this? If you've seen “my story” you'll know that I got sick on the day we were going on holiday. I should have realised at the time that my vision problems from February beginning to return, didn't mean that just because I was feeling nauseous, it was norovirus like the rest of the family a few days prior. I tend to bury my head in the sand. I quite frequently ask myself; what if I hadn't got on the plane? what if I'd gone to the hospital sooner? If I'd seen a doctor quicker, would I have had a less serious stroke? It's then the times when I feel utterly miserable. I'm tired and comfort eat (the latter is probably not the best choice)! These are the days when I struggle to do anything (therapy-related or not)! I'm yet to get anywhere near the “acceptance" stage. To be completely honest, if I never get there or feel 100% comfortable looking at pictures and videos, then so be it. The biggest thing I'm trying to work on is not ignoring and putting negative emotions in a “box". It's a habit I've always had but has got worse over the last year. As this website is about the “new me”, I thought it was important to be honest and share the emotional part of my recovery.