The Dream.

I remember suddenly hearing my name, “Krisha, it’s time to wake up.” I knew it was an unfamiliar voice and in the moment, I had no idea where I was.

My eyes shot open and I saw a familiar scene. I could recall entering the operating room, being asked to get comfortable with the way they needed me to lay and then the rest was blank.

We were at the point where I needed to be awake so we could test the placement of my leads. It felt like forever, however I’m sure it probably was not, of trial and error. They would fire up the stimulator, I would tell them where I felt it, it would be shut off then as my surgeon would make his corrections with the leads.

Sometimes it felt like a giant cramp shooting down my left butt-cheek, others it would pull horribly at my lower back, I would feel it in my thigh and eventually we began to move them enough that I could feel it in my foot and my calf. Of course, once there we had to ensure it was hitting what I refer to as my “hot spot” because those are the spots where the fire from CRPS would burn the brightest.

Finally, my anethesologist told me it was time to go back to sleep so they could finish the leads and put the battery inside me. I was relieved, my body felt like it had been hit by a semi with all the trial and error with the stimulation.

As he was getting ready to send me back off to dreamland, he told me to think about vacation….that vacation I wanted to take. I laid there for a moment thinking about a true vacation and realized I did not have a “that vacation” to dream of.

Instead what I imagined as I fell back asleep was me moving. I was hiking with my family, I was at the beach without a sock, I was running a race.

I was smiling.

But it was not the “I’m fine” smile that always does it’s best to hide so much underneath.

It was a real smile. It was not an exhausted one, it was not one where pain was hidden behind.

Trust me, I do realize that one cannot understand the way that living in such intense pain can do to your life as a whole until you live it day in, day out.

When I woke back up in recovery, I saw my husband’s smile and his eyes filled with hope the same way mine were. I know, without him telling me, that he had been dreaming the same scenes as I had been.

My recovery from the DRG stimulator was a bit rough. I laid on my stomach or on my right side for two weeks with ice on my back for twenty minutes at a time. I had a staple that felt like it was pulling at my skin every time I moved. When my staples were removed, I could tell when she pulled that one out that it was “the one.”

I am now just a little over a month post-surgery and I am still dreaming. There are some days where the glimmer of hope seems to get lost in my eyes. There are days where I am back down at the bottom of the hill, looking up, feeling entirely too exhausted to begin again.

This part of recovery is tough. It’s an emotional and physical rollercoaster ride of hills. You can have days where you see those dreams coming true. But, then you have days where the pain flares back up briefing brighter than ever and your eyes lose the glimmer and those dreams seem as if they belong in a different lifetime.

Today I keep holding on to my dream. My dream to give my husband back a wife who isn’t sick and to give my daughters back a mom who is full of energy again instead of hurting too much to live life fully.

Tonight I may sleep with my sock on as the air causes too much pain, I may be standing back at the bottom of the hill and I might feel entirely too exhausted to start climbing again….

But with dreams in my heart, I will start and let the glimmer of hope shine bright.

Until Next Time~