I’ve been a little out of commission these past few weeks, unfortunately. I’ve wanted to write – I’ve attempted to write! But I had shoulder surgery 4 weeks ago and the healing process has been a little crazier than I expected. After the Women’s Weight Loss Solution I was already knackered, and then I had major surgery done and was out for the count until this week.

If you want to know more details about my surgery, I wrote it all out on my other website (it’s a rock climbing training site called TrainingBeta.com) in an article called “Update: 1 Month After Shoulder Surgery”. What I didn’t talk about there, though, is something I’ll tell you about here.

My Health Scare

I had a major health scare 2 weeks after my surgery. I was all fine and dandy, healing really quickly, and all of a sudden I had nerve pain in my foot. That nerve pain then turned to tingling and numbness, which quickly spread up my legs, into my arms, my face, and then my bladder.

I was terrified.

After many doctor visits and phone calls of all kinds plus an ER visit and an MRI of my brain, nobody can tell me what’s going on.

The good news?

It’s not MS, a brain tumor, or anything else awful that they can diagnose. Moreover, it’s subsiding after 2.5 weeks, and I’ve only been feeling it in my foot and face sometimes. Here’s what I think, which I think is pertinent to all of our lives.

I think it was stress.

I freaked myself out over the tingling, and it continued to get worse and worse, spreading to other parts of my body. I was so freaked out that I couldn’t eat – I lost 5 pounds in a few days – and I was having panic attacks (now you’re hearing about me at my worst – I hope you still like me after this! 😉 and I was unable to do almost anything productive. Until finally one evening about 5 days ago, I realized something:

My Big Epiphany

I am not in control of this. If I have something bad going on (this was before the MRI results came back) and it’s life-altering or I’m going to die soon, I can’t change it. I just have to accept it and live with it and do the best I can. The tingling at that point was at its worst. But once I had that epiphany, my whole body calmed down. My mind was at peace for the first time in many days.

And the tingling started to go away. It just started to disappear.

Isn’t that incredible?! I think it was stress combined with bad circulation from my post-surgery inactivity, combined with all the drugs, combined with the trauma of the surgery. That’s what I think. I’m a sensitive creature, and weird – unexplainable – neurological things run in my family, so it doesn’t surprise me I guess.

My Lesson?

Don’t get so stressed out. Don’t try to control everything. Don’t put too much on my plate. And when I have surgery, weird stuff can happen 😉

Basically, I realized that I’d been really stressing myself out recently. I felt very guilty for not working much at all, even though we’re financially ok for right now. I was in the process of buying a house in a city I don’t currently live in. I was trying to heal my shoulder and detox from lots of drugs. I was anticipating some major work projects, my dog is injured and sick, and I’m unable to exercise hard, which is my main source of stress relief.

Basic life stuff, but sort of a lot of it at once.

I decided to nix buying a house, not take on so many work projects, and I started working out as much as I can right now. I did what I could to decrease the stress, and it’s continuing to get better and better. When I do feel it, I can generally stop, close my eyes, take deep breaths and let my whole body relax, and it starts to subside. Also, I’m taking lots of quick yoga breaks while I work :)

Stress is a POWERFUL FORCE! I will never take it lightly again. 

I know this has little to do with nutrition, but it has everything to do with health. It seems that managing stress levels is just as important as feeding yourself nourishing foods. Have you ever had anything weird like this happen? If so, what did you learn? I’d love to know!

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