Facing Adversity

• by donr
• 2013-11-25 01:11:23
• Exercise & Sports
• 1480 views
• 10 comments

Or - "Putting your money where your mouth is." Many times I have quoted Napoleon: "In Battle, the mental is to the physical as three is to one." I go on to say that the same is true in recovering from a PM/ICD implanting and learning how to live w/ you new little best friend forever. MOF, it is true for recovering from any significant medical condition/procedure.

Let me tell you of my experience this past week.

Every year I go deer hunting w/our #2 Son, Eric in north central MO. Every year it is bitter cold - why not? It's nearly winter in the central mid west of the North American continent. This past weekend was no different , with temps varying from 40 F down to 11 F. (That's about 5 C down to - 7 C for those who use the Centigrade system.)

I have spent a miserable 6 months recovering from abdominal surgery where I was partially eviscerated & lost about 1/3 of my colon due to potential cancer. It has just been a very slow process.

Well, you don't hunt deer if you cannot walk - especially if you cannot walk in cold weather. For many weeks leading up to our scheduled great adventure I was very worried about my ability to meet the physical challenges that I would face. Eric rents hunting rights on a multi acre farm that has a lot of deer living in its woods. Along with the acreage, comes an 1835 farmhouse that we stay in, making the bad weather at least tolerable, since we have a heated refuge from the weather.

Eric (& Wife) decided that I could no longer climb trees to sit in stands, so I was condemned to ground blinds, sitting in a chair. Unfortunately, my fear was that I could not withstand the walks out from the farmhouse to the locations of the blinds. I obsessed over it, w/o telling Wife for several weeks. It got so bad that the day before we were to leave Eric's house in St Louis I was practically incapacitated by SOB all day. Thurs, last week, Wife & I drove out to the farm & then got the fabric blind & hauled it out to its location, about 300 yards (meters) from the house. Made the walk fine - out & back, but was still worried about doing it at 6 AM lugging a rifle & dressed up in enough gear & clothing to survive sitting stark still for three plus hours.

Eric & I saddled up the next AM at 0545 & out the door we went. I made it to the blind in acceptable condition & began the ordeal of just sitting. At about the 1 hour point, Eric shot a coyote (A medium sized canine predator that bedevils farmers) at a distance of over 250 yards from our blind. No deer showed up, so at the three hour point, tired of shivering, we called it a morning & went in. Eric relieved me of the responsibility of accompanying him to pick up his trophy & I walked back to the house, arriving somewhat SOB, but in reasonable condition, otherwise. Back out at 2 PM for the afternoon shift of being cold. Walking was easier for me out & back.

The location of our blind stunk! Not a deer to be seen. Sat AM, we went out at the same time in below freezing temps & I peeled off at the blind & sat alone, while Eric walked about 200 yards to his own tree stand in the woods for a better chance of seeing game. We both wasted a morning - seeing nothing.

Sat PM, Eric had enough confidence that he offered to walk out w/ me to a spot about 500 yards out from the farmhouse, put up a second blind & leave me to sit in it while he went back to his tree stand. Temps were still about freezing & I ran out of steam about 5 PM when I could no longer see well enough in the shadows to safely fire at anything I saw, so walked out alone & barely made it to the farmhouse for being SOB. But at least I made it.

Eric was luckier than I. He shot a deer just at the end of the legal hunting day,, when the temps were now down into the 20's (-3 C). Too cold for me to accompany him back out to retrieve it.

Sun AM, the temps were at their coldest, about 11 F ( -10 C), so I stayed in - far too cold for my breathing conditions. Sun PM, it was back up to about freezing, so at 2 PM I walked back out to the farther blind to sit till dark. At just a few minutes before the day ended, I shot twice at a deer nearly 300 yds away. Eric came to help me search for the deer - if I hit it. He wanted me to stay at the blind while he searched. I insisted that I go, since I knew where it was & he didn't.

So - off on a 300 yd trek to search. We searched for half an hour unsuccessfully & returned to the blind. During that period, I must have walked better than 900 yards in temps colder than any other I'd experienced - NO SOB!

If you have lasted this long - what is the moral to this story?

You can do what you WANT to do or NEED to do WHEN you need to do it.

Going into the experience, I doubted if I could handle the potential walking I faced. I REALLY doubted it. It was a significant mental breakthrough for me, so that I will start to go further in daily living now.

The mental aspects of recovery do not come easy, nor are they fun. Somehow you have to convince yourself that you can do what you want to do and then go do it, no matter how bad you feel while trying & how badly you doubt yourself.

You have to somehow gain the confidence that Your PM will NEVER let you down; that those dastardly PVC's are as benign as the cardio tells you they are. That the pains that you feel are phantom & that your cardio is right about all the little annoyances you have. THis does NOT mean acting foolishly & ignoring chest pains that are potentially the symptoms of a heart attack. Thst is what makes the mental part of recovery so difficult. Gaining the experience necessary to ignore some symptoms can be a long,difficult process.

This is the capstone of my experience w/ a recovery from a major surgery that created a lot of severe physical problems of recovery along with significant mental issues.

Hope I have helped some one w/ this problem

Don