Angela's Blog

Hi.

Not too much new here. Just working through three tough new things. One is just confusion, one has me wondering more than anything, and the other I just something I have to sit in until I can convince myself it's not that bad of a place to be.

First one first, ahhh confusion. I was thinking about how I don't remember the accident and trying to decide if I wish I did. It is definitely hard for it to be an unknown. And I know that not knowing what happened will just continue to eat at me little by little for the rest of my life. But there's a lot that I'm glad I don't remember. Like the whole coma, those first three surgeries, and the weeks of non-coherence coming out of the coma. Not to mention the whole pain thing. I'm sure that the accident hurt like you know what and I bet I was really scared for the first 4 hours when I was laying in the street and by myself in the ER. I consider it a huge blessing that I don't remember all that. Nor do I want to. But knowing what exactly happened to cause the accident would be nice. I would like to know that. So do I try hypnosis to help jog the memory? Or try something else to try to bring it back? Who knows. And if I do try to get something to help jog the memory can I be selective about what it jogs? I only want back what happened in the accident itself. I don't want any of the other 7-8 weeks that I don't remember. If it has to be all or none I choose none. I think it's my body's protection system to "erase" all that stuff in the first place. Thank you, Jesus that I don't have to relive any of it! And if I did remember the accident what would that be like? I imagine it might be really scary. Would it just be remembering what happened like watching a movie or would it be remembering it like it just happened like reliving it? And do I really want to know what happened bad enough to want to relive it? Would that make me too scared to even walk down the street ever again? What would the aftereffects be? These questions are fodder for my next session with the psychologist. Should be a good meeting a week from Friday.

On to the second thing, just wondering. I was talking with my mom about this whole thing and she told me to just "let go and let God". You know, give it to God and let Him have it. I would love to but my problem is that I don't have any idea what that looks like. I've given plenty of my life over to God including things I've done and things that have been done to me. But all those things just had emotional aftereffects. Those things lived on in me by making me feel a certain way or be afraid of a certain thing. Like the whole being a teenage drug addict thing, when I gave that to God I felt so free of it. I no longer felt like I was keeping a secret, like I was dirty or stupid from having done it, or guilty for all those bad decisions. I felt like it no longer defined me, like I now found my identity in Christ not in what I had done. Giving it to Jesus really made me feel known and free from from it. It no longer haunted me. I felt cleansed of it, like it was no longer a big stain on who I was. But this whole thing has me wondering. What will it be like to give this accident to God? I certainly feel like this accident defines me in many ways. I feel like my more important identity is as a child of God, but I still get some of my identity by what has happened to this child of God. It feels really weird, not really getting it. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do. If I "give" this accident to Jesus it won't just go away like some of the other things I have given to God. I'll still have the scars and physical limitations to remind me of it. More than anything I want for God to be glorified through this series of miracles He's doing in me. I want to suffer well for God's glory. I want Him to be made much of and for His name to be made great through this whole adventure and I'm really just trusting in blind faith that He'll let me know what I need to do when to get that done. What else can I do? Any ideas? Any responses?

And on to number three - the one I just have to sit in until I can think about it differently. This one has to do with back to work. Big surprise, I won't be back tomorrow. But I'm hoping it'll be in the next week or so. The paperwork that I finally got signed by my doc said that one of my restrictions is that I need a distraction-free environment. So my boss and the occupational health nurse at my job are trying to achieve this by getting me a more private office area. This totally freaks me out because the way I hear this is they're trying to get me an "office". No one at my level gets an office at my company! Or even 2 levels above me! You pretty much have to be a big-wig to get an office at Amgen and a big-wig I am not! I am far from it! So I'm a little stressed about getting my own space and that it'll be super embarrassing. As for the thinking about it differently - I've started. When I take two seconds to assess the situation in reality I realize that this is not a bad idea since I'll be using voice activated software and if I have a more private area then I won't be distracting and bugging others. And when I take a deep breath I hear the occupational health nurse explaining to me that she just wants to set me up for success and to stack the odds in my favor for when I do come back. They're not trying to make me stick out like a sore thumb, they are on Team Sweet and just want this to be a successful integration back into the work force. All these people want is for me to be successful when I come back. And since when is an office a bad thing?!?! Then I can say to my coworkers, "step into my office..." and they can! It might not be so awesome if they stick me in a broom closet or part of the men's bathroom but then I can just work hard to get back to my old desk. In my psychotherapy group this is called adaptive thinking. The yes, I can do this, and it can be good, ways of thinking. I think this whole thing is making me an adaptive thinking pro.

Well, that's what I've got for now. Any comments/suggestions/nice feedback would be much appreciated. You can keep the nasty/snarky remarks to yourself.

Talk at ya soon.

Ang