The day of the operation; lumpectomy & lymph node removal, I went through a mixture of fear & anxiety, I cried lots & got myself into a bit of a state but also wanted to push forward & get it over & done with; in all honesty the operation was the easy bit, the radioactive dye injection beforehand was painful, but overall, after waking up from the operation, I felt fine, a little drowsy, but virtually pain free (morphine is a wonderful medicine).
I had quite a restless night & must say that the night staff, unfortunatly, were unfriendly, moody & uninterested in checking if any of us on the ward were okay. I had not eaten since the night before & was not offered anything to eat; instead I was informed that I missed mealtime because I was asleep after my op but would be offered breakfast the next morning. The unfriendly & uncaring night staff was the worst part of my hospital stay.
I returned home the next day, tired & sore but glad to get back to my own bed. I had been told to rest & try not to do too much & in all honesty I really couldn't do much anyway as I felt exhausted. Over the next few days I did fret quite a bit as I experienced sharp pains & numbness (never experienced before), as well as irritability, mood swings, fatigue, anxiety & extreme boredom.
Boredom, when you have mental health issues, can be detrimental, as it gives you way too much time to think; if you are plagued with negative thoughts, susceptible to low mood or have problems controlling your anxiety & do not have any distractions, then its more than likely that your mental health will take a dive.
Because I could not concentrate on the TV, reading or other activities that I normally enjoyed & because I was restricted as to what I could do physically, I started to get very down, which then led to me thinking in a very dark, negative way; playing out terrible scenarios in my head, convincing myself of only the very worst outcomes & obsessively worrying about irrelevant stuff.
It's easy for others to tell you to think in a more positive way but sometimes your mind gets stuck in a negative void; occasionally, I did try to think of positive outcomes but then convinced myself that I may jinx things if I dared to think that all would be okay in the end. In a strange kind of way, I was scared to think too positively incase I was bitterly disappointed.
The rational me knew I needed to relax, think nice thoughts, find some distractions & concentrate on wellness; the irrational me though, pushed me into a dark abyss of misery, where I became very insular, sad & lonely; I felt detached from the rest of the world.
