During the exact time you were in intensive care with your beloved sister, our daughter (my wife's daughter and my step daughter of 25 years) at 39 years of age was in ICU after a blood clot hit her brain. One week later I took her off life support. My wife has never been the same since, and her health has spiraled downhill both physically and emotionally ever since to the point where she's just not the same person I married 27+ years ago. The two (damage to the mind and body) are totally interlinked there's no doubt about it.
I wish I could tell you that time heals all, but after watching my wife continue to erode, I just can't force myself to make this erroneous statement, but I can say it's only you who can decide how your situation will turn out in the end, because there will be no greater challenge in your whole life.
Two years earlier our daughter had placed me in charge on her medical durable (much to my surprise, but she knew the damage it would do to her mother so it showed her insight into her mother hence she didn't want her mother to live with the consequences of making that final decision that I was forced into making) and even now I assure you, the resulting emotional and physical consequences simply can't be fully quantified because of its magnitude.
First, don't face this alone. Get all the help you can at each and every level because there's damage going on in both the heart and body. Each require different types and level of care. Without the professional care of those who really know what they're doing, I'm worried you're only looking at more sadness. So long as you don't try and face it alone and you're willing to make the changes in your life so you can learn how to live with the loss, you can still learn in time how to make a bit better future for yourself, but I assure you, things will never be the same. Hence my cliché, "I stop competing with yesterday but instead just work with what I have today because that's about as good as it's going to get."
With my most sincere sympathy, Bob.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hope4thebest
My feet and lower legs started to burn tonight as I remembered a difficult time:
My sister was very ill in November of 2007 just before my foot surgery was scheduled 2 years after my injury. I postponed the surgery and traveled by train to Colorado to be with her..she had been in intensive care for weeks...She was my beloved sister and best friend..she was on life support and very, very ill, in and out of a coma. I broke down emotionally several times while I was there..
(There were other emotionally painful circumstances and conflict around her illness which were very upsetting...)
I had to leave, which was devastating to me, and come back to my job. Two weeks later I got the phone call that she had passed away. I grieved painfully and for a long time.
I had my foot surgery at the end of February of 2008 which resulted in the RSD.
I've had low pain days for several days in my feet/lower legs, but tonight when I was looking through some lines I had written while in Colorado during that very difficult time, and some some little papers, etc, I had kept from Colorado, and some old photos of my sister and me, my feet and lower legs started to burn and ache, which they haven't done in two or three weeks. It was instantaneous right at the same time as all the memories flooded back to me.
Was this my sympathetic nervous system kicking in and causing this flare of burn? I felt the burn feeling creep over my feet and lower legs as I remembered this difficult time....
I am trying to understand the correlation and the physiology of this reaction...it is amazing..
As i write this at almost 2:00 am in the morning, I am still in a burn flare...
I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this very obvious connection between difficult memories and pain/burn flare...
Thanks for being there to listen...who else would understand 
Many hugs from Hope4thebest xoxo |