Rehab

15.5

Oh, thank goodness, finally some good news.

I got called into the hospital and told that I had been initially misdiagnosed. What they mistook for pulmonary fibrosis is actually just a particularly nasty set of pulmonary adhesions. The symptoms are very similar but pulmonary fibrosis is a degenerative, terminal disease. Pulmonary adhesions are crappy but are far less likely to kill me in the next five years.

So, in the long term, that's absolutely, breathtakingly (sorry, bad taste pun) wonderful news. I'm not going to die before I'm thirty. I'm not going to need a lung transplant. Probably. But in the short term, as far as recovery goes, nothing has really changed.

I'm still in "Pulmonary Rehabilitation". This basically means I'm doing physiotherapy to get my lungs up to par. It's like learning to walk all over again. I'm starting from scratch. I'm a newborn.

Instead of whining about it I'm going to just have to go ahead and embrace it. That is very much my intention, in any case. I am not going to treat this as a condemnation of one of my vital organs, I'm going to treat it as a rebirth of my entire body. Knowing that I am limited means I can push my limits, but gently and constructively. I don't have to lie down, bound by the indictment of my scars. Where before I've felt like I've had to push myself too hard now I have to listen to my body, to be intuitive, to do exactly as much as I can so that every day what I'm capable of is a little more than I was capable of yesterday. My limits will change. I will challenge them.

I have to treat my body as a clean slate, like a fixer-upper of a house. There are a few cracks in the walls and the paintwork is peeling and the roof has a few missing tiles. But the foundations are solid and, with a bit of work, I can make his house a home.

I can't remember the last time I let this bad and this incredible.

Ylva is howling with joy.