Tag: recovery

Fit Not Thin

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I know that in the past few months I’ve slipped a little on my fitness. I’ve still got a strong appreciation that I can use my body after the accident, but there were a bunch of reasons I just lost motivation. You could say they’re excuses, maybe they are, but they’ve impacted not only my motivation but the way I felt about myself. I started reverting back to old ways, attempting to cut out food and give myself tiny portions, which made me absolutely miserable. I hated having to log everything and feeling guilty if I went out for dinner.

I like food, a big part of hanging out in my office revolves around the local burger place and I don’t have to tell you that sitting and eating some rice and possibly chicken if my calories will allow it is no fun when the guys are tucking into some beautiful burgers. I have the willpower, I’ve done it before but back then I didn’t mind, it was the only way I could control my body and the way I looked, now I have a little more scope for fitness and less time to faff around with calorie numbers.

I came to the conclusion that I need to separate being thin and being fit. I’ve been self conscious about weight since I was bullied at school. I was not fat, not at all, but I had a little puppy fat and most of the popular girls in my year were naturally very thin, I had curves and was frequently told to go to weight watchers. I used to get stressed about food, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t now sometimes. I don’t like salad and fruit on its own makes me really nauseous (no idea why, it just does), so eating lunch at school was a nightmare. Now it’s better I can eat vegetable soup or something where the veg is in a sauce (I know, I’m like a baby) but then I could eat the mush from the canteen or my packed lunch, that was it. I fretted and stressed because I didn’t have a ‘perfect body’ and hid under baggy clothes and jumpers whenever I could. Part of this was teenage insecurity, honestly though the picture below from my 15th birthday I hated and thought I was ‘fat’, I very clearly wasn’t.

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Anyway, back to the focus of this post. I realised I had some of these thoughts again, panicking and stressing about food all the time, it’s not fun and it’s not how I want to spend my life. I’m going to focus on being as fit as I can whilst recovering from my spine still. I don’t want numbers to dominate my life, because I’ve been there and it doesn’t always create the right results. I refuse to let myself have scales in my house because I know I’ll just get obsessed with some numbers and a BMI chart, where’s the fun in that? So there it is I’m going back to the gym, the workouts and just wanting to be as fit as I can.

Sunday Seven: Seven Things You Should Know About Depression

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I wanted to write about depression tonight. It’s an illness I’ve had since I was a teenager and it’s definitely misunderstood, especially in young people. So here are seven things I think people should know about depression.

It impacts everyone differently. 

Depression is a very personal illness. For come their depression makes them feel irritable, teary or numb. For others their depression may mean they will work and work to make themselves better. Everyone has different triggers and emotions and everyone has different routes to recovery and feeling better.

It’s exhausting.

Mentally and physically depression saps energy. Whether or not you suffer with insomnia, which I do when I’m incredibly stressed, it can impact the quality of your sleep. So even if you’ve had a perfectly chilled day, you can still find yourself wanting to sleep for hours, or being tired at odd times.

A lot of people have jobs and lives whilst having depression, other people don’t, it’s not a competition. 

There’s a common misconception that people with depression stay in bed and don’t leave the house. Sometimes, that is true, personally I’ve been at the point where I’m so sick I can’t get up or haven’t gotten dressed for days. Some days I have to fight those feelings because I have a job and I know that I need to just look after myself a bit more on days like that. Like I said before the illness impacts everyone differently and it doesn’t mean anyone’s depression is better or worse, it just means that people have different ways of dealing with it.

Medication is a personal choice and not for anyone else to judge.

It works for some and not for others, depression is an illness and some illnesses need medication, I don’t understand why it’s judged so much. Would you judge a person for having an inhaler?

There doesn’t need to be a reason. 

A lot of people think there needs to be an event or trauma for depression to happen, but this isn’t always the case. My depression was started by bullying at school but I was also more prone to it anyway. Life can be going incredibly well and you can still be depressed, it’s just a part of the illness.

There are good days and bad days.  

Some days I will be in a great mood, chatting, laughing and going out with friends. Other days I need to cancel all my plans and have a day to myself because the slightest thing is too much. It’s all about good days and bad days.

I’m still me. 

No matter what a person with depression is still the person you know and love. They may be a little lost for a while or not act like the person you know but try not to treat them differently. There are quite a few people who have deemed me a bitch or not wanting to bother when I’ve had a particularly bad time, not understanding that it’s just a rough patch and I’m still the person I always was, just struggling.

Book Review: Faceless – Alyssa Sheinmel

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Maisie has a good life, she has a boyfriend whom she loves, a great best friend and athletic ability. While out on a run her life changes forever, after a freak accident during a lightning storm leaves her left for dead, she could never imagine her new reality when she wakes up. Maisie wakes up with most of her face destroyed. After coming to the decision to have a face transplant Maisie should feel lucky, but instead she’s fighting herself. How can she look at herself ever again? Will she ever have a normal life, friends? Or will she be confined to first her hospital room and then her house, living the life of a freak?

I picked this up on offer at my local Waterstones a while ago after reading the blurb and immediately wanting to read it. Since reading Katie Piper’s books and meeting her last year  disfigurement has been something I’ve been really interested in. The fact that Sheinmel has chosen to write about something that most people have had no experience with or wouldn’t understand just shows her guts as a writer. Very few could pull this off but she has done it with care, attention and incredible character voice. Maisie really comes into her own within a few chapters and we begin to see the complex and difficult situation that no one expects to deal with playing out in front of her.

I will warn you the book is an emotional one, you feel as if you are living alongside Maisie throughout her ordeal. You want to cry when she hates herself or when she feels like giving you. I wanted to reach through the pages and hug her. You also learn a lot though, it’s clear that a lot of research went into this book in the way of medical and the emotional process of someone who is learning to cope with a disfigurement. It also makes you think about other types of injury. I know that there were times when I understood and felt so close to Maisie because I’d felt those same feelings, especially after I had my own accident and we didn’t know what was going to happen (there was a point when we weren’t sure if I was going to lose total feeling in my legs). I felt the confusion, the pain, the expectation from those around you and I understood when she wasn’t sure if she could carry on with her physic therapy, the days when she didn’t feel like it was worth it.

My reasoning for giving it 4.5 rather than a straight 5 stars is simply because I found Maisie to be a little too perfect prior to the accident. Apart from her parents fighting she just seemed very much the all American girl. I guess that’s the only thing that niggled at me a little and it’s not to say it was bad it was just something that meant I didn’t connect to her as much at first. Although within a few chapters I was liking her more and more and by the end of the book I just wanted to know her, if that makes sense?

All in all I would highly recommend this book, it’s incredibly well written and tackles something that most people wouldn’t give too much thought to unless it happened to them or someone they loved. It’s clear that Sheinmel has clear talent and is one to watch on the YA scene. I would also love to hear what happened to Maisie after the end of the novel, how she deals with the rest of her life because I really did fall in love with the character in the end.

Fighting Fit: When Your Body Won’t Cooperate

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Fighting Fit- When your body doesn't cooperate

It might have been well over a year since I broke my spine but sometimes it throws a bit of a fit. I’ve been really busy for the past few weeks and travelling to things, boxing up the flat and all that jazz, meaning that I’ve put quite a bit of strain on my back. This evening I’m sat with a big fluffy pillow resting, writing, reading and just feeling a bit frustrated. I’ve come a really long way in the past year but sometimes I try and do too much and pay for it later. I don’t think there’s anything more frustrating than when your own body lets you down.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the accident and my injury lately, more than I normally would. With the warm weather coming and my friends heading to fun days out, theme parks and long walks I can’t help but feel a little jealous. It does still get to me but more than anything I get really self concious about it in public. There are still times when I get a limp on my left side because after doing too much I’m in a lot of pain or my leg will start to go numb. When I go to Comic Con or any big event like that, I sometimes need my crutch just to relieve some of the pain. As someone who wants to be seen as strong, who is used to getting up and getting on (just like getting up straight after I fell) it’s hard to let people see me on the days when I am a little more vulnerable. This is particularly the case when I’m getting to know new people, such as at my new job.

That said, I know that these frustrations are just a part of recovery and of having to take things one step at a time. I found a lot of comfort in a TED Talk I watched yesterday (click here for 7 TED talks you need to watch!), it reminded me that while my body is still working hard and healing, it’s not the only thing I have going for me. My body being in pain and breaking took things from me, but it gave me opportunities too. It taught me a lot about myself and what I want, it taught me to appreciate every step I take because I could so easily have lost the ability to walk.

In all of this, the good days, the bad nights, the medication changes, the occasional limping and the jokes that I make to make others more comfortable I realised that I need to keep my mind fighting. I can’t let myself go into a place of wallow and self pity. I can’t let myself give in when I’m sick of physiotherapy or don’t feel like going to the gym or when the doctors try and palm me off with silly answers. Keeping my mind strong is what will, in the end, keep my body fighting, even on the worst days.

Feeling your heart beating – Exercise and Mental Health

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If you’d have told me 5 years ago that I would fall in love with the gym and it would become a kind of therapy I would have laughed at you. I was the clumsy kid who was awful at sports even from the first year of school…I look like a chicken when I run. I also get red, sweaty and gross whenever I do any sort of exercise and so when I tried to go to the gym at my college and beautiful skinny girls were draped over machines posing rather than working out I decided that maybe I wasn’t meant to  do sport, that’s cool. In fact I was more than fine with that fact.

Fast forward to when I found horse riding, I’d been told exercise was really helpful for people with depression but, let me tell you, in my darkest times I just saw myself as a chubby teenager with dodgy knees, you don’t like yourself and you don’t want to be around other people. I basically could go to the school gym, then the college gym, full of kids who couldn’t stand me and the thought of exercising in front of them sent me into a tear filled panic attack at 16. I looked into sports in the first year of university and found nothing that interested me, honestly I think I was so anxious about everything I didn’t let myself even think  about joining a team. By second year I felt more comfortable, signed up for horse riding and fell in love. I worked hard, only ever missing one lesson because I was sick and would always come away feeling lighter. That was a solid 30 minutes of the week where my troubles disappeared I had to work on my body, the horse’s body and making them work together. This was my first taste of exercise making me feel mentally and physically better in a long time.

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When I broke my spine and knew I probably wouldn’t be riding again it broke my heart. Not only had I lost the connection with the horses and my hobby, I’d lost a way to make my mental health better. I was scared, on a lot of painkillers and not ashamed to admit that I did slip back into depression after the accident for a long time. I’d gone from feeling like Jessie the Cowgirl, ready to try jumping and hack across Richmond park in the near future to the news that riding wasn’t going to happen. I still don’t know. It wasn’t until I was fit enough to start going to group physiotherapy in the rehabilitation gym that I found another way to get the hormones pumping and kick my negative thoughts back into gear.

In physio gym no one cares what you look like, everyone has their own struggles and a lot of us had pain while working out. Everything was very slow and most people were 15 years older than me and above. I could try and get into some kind of groove again under the watchful eye of a physiotherapist so my spine didn’t freak out, that was all the way back in November. Now I try and go to the gym weekly, I have the best gym buddy and although I’m still not very fast I’m getting there step by step. I left the gym after a session today with the biggest smile, in part because of my dazzling company and the other because I was covered in sweat and happy that my body had gotten a workout (my back can only sometimes manage a light walk but today, thankfully, was not one of those days.

Feeling my heart beating reminds me I’m going to be ok, just like the Sylvia Plath quote – ‘I am, I am, I am’. Sometimes you just need reminding that your head doesn’t control everything, because on a day here or there it can feel like that. I know that for some reading this, they might not be in a place where they feel they can exercise, getting out of bed is difficult enough and I understand, I’m not here to be preachy, just to say I was like you and keep going. Exercise isn’t going to have this result for everyone and it’s not the only thing I use to keep myself going, it’s’ a combination of talking, writing, exercise, being creative and working… keeping busy.

What helps you guys? Do you exercise or spend time doing something else? Let me know!

 

Be sure to check out my other posts for Mental Health Awareness Week on the home page!

Todays mood update: Tired and a little overwhelmed this afternoon due to a flat visit but right now I’m feeling pretty chilled out and happy, the gym session obviously worked!

Mental Health Awareness Week 2016 on chloemetzger.com

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This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, as my regular readers know I’m really big on promoting awareness, sharing my own experiences with mental health and just generally getting mental health in every day conversation. Whether we like it or not there’s still a stigma attached to mental health issues and it’s not the way it should be BUT with weeks like this we can end the stigma sooner rather than later.

This week I’ve decided to relate all my posts to raising awareness of mental health. I’ve got posts planned around my experience, opinions, books related to mental health, motivation – it’s all going to be going on over here! As always I’d love to hear for you in the comments, on Twitter. I’ve found that when I’m really not doing well Twitter is one of the places I can talk to people to understand and generally be in a better mood.

I also want to do an honest mood update each day, because sometimes I can go a few weeks of feeling fine and then it’ll go downhill, it’s the ways of having Depression. For today I’ve been really sleep deprived so my mood hasn’t been the best, I’m at a really overwhelming point in my life and everything’s changing so I think that’s to be expected.

I can’t wait to write this week and raise as much awareness as possible! As always leave comments and questions below!

Thoughts at 2am…

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I thought that by now, with less pressure and less stress in my life I would be happily curled up and asleep at 2am, but apparently it’s a good time to write. It’s quiet here and just leaves me alone with my thoughts. It’s nights like this were I’ve tried everything your supposed to do that I just turn to writing instead, which some people will nag ‘the light of your computer will wake you up more!’ but honestly nothing’s getting me to sleep right now. I don’t like mentioning or talking about the pain in my spine still bothering me but lately it hasn’t been at it’s best. I’ve been sat in a very rigid chair for about 10 hours a day for the past few weeks, for anyone’s spine that would cause problems, for mine it’s hell. So while I’m trying to wait for the second lot of painkillers to kick in I thought, why not let my mind wander, see where I end up.

I’ve been trying to fall asleep for a few hours so a lot has been going through my head, just thoughts zipping past like cars on a motorway. One keeps coming back to me though, I suppose it’s because of an essay I was writing today, I can’t seem to escape the bloody things even when they’re done! I was thinking that pain, in all it’s forms is something that makes us human. When a person is in so much pain, mentally or physically, they will let go of what they thought they knew, sometimes of their opinions and prejudices, all that matters is stopping that pain, unless you are incredibly stupid that is. Great pain is a humbling experience. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from or anything like that pain and fear make us all the same, because it is.

I’m a true believer that once someone has experienced true pain in their lives it will change them for good. For some people it will make them bitter, angry, resentful. For others pain makes them appreciate more, try and be more compassionate and understanding as a person. For a long time after my spine broke I would be angry, I’d be filled with tears and hatred that my body had let me down. Thousands of people fell off horses all day, why did it happen to me! Why did the doctors risk it! Why did my notes keep getting lost! I was miserable and honestly the anger was just making me more tired, more sad. I’m not saying people aren’t allowed that time, of course they are. In the words of John Green ‘pain demands to be felt’, I know I needed that time because I was so upset and heartbroken and unsure of the future. If you were told that there was a chance you might just lose the ability to walk by trying to walk (and do the one thing that would make you better in the long run), wouldn’t you be?

I held on to the pain and frustration for a long time, I was convinced that I was just a burden and there was no point to anything when it took me so long to take a few steps, when going out somewhere meant having to take my wheelchair or that I had to sit while everyone else could stand. I wish I could tell you there was a wonderful eureka moment where I let go of it all, where I just went ‘ok, enough is enough let’s get on.’ I was always carrying on but after time and after I learnt what my body needed and how to start managing the pain I felt a little calmer, a little more able to deal with the world.

I would never wish my injury on anyone, the fact that it’s causing me to be awake at 2am the day before my final deadline because of physical pain is not a fun thing BUT I do believe that it’s made me into a better person. The injury taught me more than I would have believed it could. I quickly learnt that life was what you made of it when you got given something shitty. I learnt that as much as I wanted to organise everything for the next 30 years I couldn’t. I learnt that life is a mess a terrifying, wonderful and always evolving mess and you just fit in where you can. I realised I was allowed to take a break and not be this built up image of ‘perfect’ I’d associated with myself. Am I annoyed that I might not get the first I worked for because of the early days of fuzzy pain? Of course I am. Am I going to let it taint my whole university experience, final year and the progress I have made? No. Likewise I learnt what I need in friends and that I can be alone comfortably more than I give myself credit for. I learnt that I can handle a lot more than I can give myself credit for and that while my body might not look like a magazine cover, it’s mine and it’s actually a pretty amazing thing. Being in horrific pain lead me to most of this, which is something so strange to me. Either way, the past is the past and my future is my future so I’m going to see what I can do with these experiences and be the best person I can be.

Sunday 7 – 7 Things I’ve Learnt Since Breaking My Spine

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I’ve been feeling fairly emotional in the last few weeks about today. It’s been one year since breaking my spine and I just feel kind of weird about it. I broke down in tears after a particularly bad pain day, because I’m still in all this pain a year later. I just felt so fed up but then I had a hug with Ali and he reminded me of what I’ve been saying to myself for the past 12 months. I may be in pain but I’m still here and I’m still walking. What happened to me was bad enough but it could have been a lot worse! I’ve also really grown as a person in the past year, my opinion on life has changed and I’m truly grateful. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I’m glad it happened, it changed a lot and I didn’t have the best year BUT I am really proud of myself, how I’ve reacted and what I’ve learnt.

You can have all the ridged plans you want, but life doesn’t work that way.

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Before the accident, I had a plan of how my life would go and it would go that way. I was like I’ll graduate then and I’ll go straight to my masters, then my Phd. I’ll have a house by this time, a dog, a child, another child, I WILL HAVE CONTROL. I learnt after the accident that life can throw ANYTHING at you, there was a point where I physically couldn’t walk. Of course, I didn’t plan that, no one plans almost losing the ability to walk. It made me realise that I can’t have this idea of infinite control, so I’ve let go a little. Things will happen as they do, I only have so much control.

Stop being so hard on yourself! 

Recovery was hard, super hard. I constantly get told by my physiotherapists, pain specialists, lecturers, family, Ali that I need to stop being so hard on myself. They’d remind me all the time this wasn’t a small break, this was a huge part of my body trying to fix itself. So what if I put on weight, if I didn’t get the top grade in my class. I realised striving to be great is good but I don’t have to be perfect all the time.

The human body is a beautiful and amazing thing.

For a long time after the accident and sometimes still now I resented my body. I hated that it had broken in such a simple fall, I hated the stretch marks that had bloomed all over my thighs, I hated the fact people commented on how much weight I’d put on and I hated that I didn’t fit into any of my clothes. I had a realisation at a point that I just thought my body has been doing so much work. It’s literally been healing the main pillar in my body that hold everything together, that’s amazing.

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When you’re sick enough, you can cope with your hatred of needles/hospitals/ claustrophobia. 

I still hate needles, I will always hate needles BUT when you’re sick enough (like when I was in the hospital earlier in the year) you get on with it. I still don’t like hospitals (who does) but now it’s just another place I have to go sometimes. I won’t lie having my MRI and CT scans were pretty nerve wracking and claustrophobic but the people running them understood that. Basically you can get through a lot more than you think you can.

The gym is better than any therapy session and any religion. 

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If you’d have asked me a year ago about loving the gym I would have laughed at you, now I’m stressed when I CAN’T go. The gym is a love and an obsession and I can’t wait to get back into routine and slowly keep building my muscles and be in so much better shape than I was a year ago.

It’s ok to have days where it all feels like too much. 

You’re only human, you need these days, it’s okay!

The people who stick around are the ones that are meant to be there. 

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My relationships changed a lot after the accident, I lost a lot of people and I gained some others. More than anything I learnt that the people that are meant to be there will be. I also learnt that some people are in your life for a certain amount of time and that’s okay too. I’m a firm believer in everything happens for a reason.

Why I’m jealous of YOU at the gym..and it’s not the reason you think

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As all of you know, in the last 5 months I have become a gym bunny. Even though there was  break when I was sick, I’ve gone back to the gym and I’m hungry and obsessed to get back. After going on Tuesday, I spent the week waiting for Sunday morning so that I could go again and now I’m (hopefully) going tomorrow as long as my migraine disappears. I have noticed though, that sometimes I look around and feel myself getting a little jealous.

Now, I’m not jealous of people with beautiful athletic bodies, those who don’t sweat when they exercise or look endlessly cool.  I’m not jealous because I want the results without having to work hard. I’m jealous because their bodies work and mine doesn’t always behave. BUT at the same time, I’m learning to love and worship my body that literally had to rebuild a core part of itself, and know how lucky I am to be walking.

I get a little anxious and self conscious at times, not at all because of the way I look, after all the gym is where people go to work on themselves. No, I feel self conscious because of how much slower I am than others, and how little I can do because of my spine. For me, doing an hour at the gym is another small step towards normality for me. An extra five minutes on the treadmill for me is a huge thing BUT when everyone in the gym wants to go on the exercise bikes at the same time (positioned exactly behind the treadmills and therefore with a full view of my bum) and I’m still just able to do a walking pace, and a fairly slow one, at that. I do feel a little awkward I want to shout at them, ‘I’m in spine recovery, I’m not pathetic I promise!, I’m not just lazy’ because this is how I fear others see myself.

I try and tell myself not to care, that most of it is in my mind  and who actually cares what I’m doing? It might be silly but these thoughts go around in my head sometimes. Then then evolve to me wishing that I was fully recovered and I could run or lift a weight that was a ‘real’ weight rather than the tiniest ones that are there because they’re the only thing I can comfortably lift.

There will be a time where I’m a lot better and that’s happening slowly, just under a year ago I had to have help to get up one step and a small set of stairs to my flat were a huge problem. So the fact that I can go to a gym and try and do some exercise is incredible, and I know that. But sometimes, just sometimes, the green eyed monster will rear her ugly head and make me feel a little down, I know that’s normal and one day I’ll be able to throw her off my shoulder.

 

 

Getting serious – Hitting the Gym 2016.

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Yes I did it, I used a quote from Pinterest, in my defence I love quotes like this and will only post or pin them if I believe in them. Today was my first gym session of 2016, I went past yesterday and had a little inside groan. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to work out, it was because I was nervous about going alone. When I was in the hospital gym I at least had the trainers that I knew and then I got to know some of the other patients and then I went to the gym at home with my Gramps. I’ve never been to a gym alone. Still I paid the £5 for the day pass so that would make me go.

As soon as I had my gym clothes on I was back in the mind set and apart from a few little things (thinking I’d locked all my stuff away and couldn’t get back in, not having any change, generally looking totally new and lost) I was determined. Luckily I spotted someone with a Kingston Uni hoodie and nervously started talking, she’s called Alice and from that point we worked out together and chatted the whole time. Apart from being at the same uni we have a lot in common and I felt so relieved, although possibly I talked too much because you know it’s me.

I left with a pizza date, a new friend and an incredible sense of accomplishment. Honestly through talking and laughing I didn’t even notice that an hour have gone by and I needed to go home and shower before uni. Now, I am aching and pretty tired now but I’d happily go back tomorrow if my spine could handle it. Who know’s maybe one day my spine will be able to handle a lot more exercise, that’s the hope anyway. It’s honestly become a healthy addiction for me, I love it so much.

As for 2016, I’ve now paid for a membership and it looks like I have a gym buddy. I’m really determined to try and be fit and healthy this year. I know there will be times where my body lets me down and I will get frustrated but I’m going to keep going and hopefully I’ll be in a lot better shape this time next year. Plus, like the poster says I’m going to be going to bed tonight with satisfaction :).