Emotional Barriers

Today marks 2 1/2 months since the surgery and for weeks now it has often felt like nothing happened. I feel normal. So I think it's about time to start back tracking and going over what has happened since we were all discharged. 

As you might have gathered from the complaining tone in my last posts the time after surgery was difficult for me emotionally. Before surgery I read that often times donors go through a period of depression after donation for two reasons. One the surgery is highly emotional in itself and two your hormones have to rebalance. This was true for me. The 1-2 weeks marks were probably the worst but it honestly started the day after surgery to some extent. 

I had so much support from my family and friends but I still felt alone and isolated. I wanted to talk about my fears and stresses but felt guilty doing so around my family so I did so in small spurts and spent most nights in tears. I convinced myself that they didn't want to hear it and anything negative would be against my sister and the donation. I was really moody and had a short temper. It took me weeks after I was home to realize this was simply me projecting. I felt self centered. I wasn't the one who had to deal with dialysis and the many prescription and doctor visits that would continue through life. Eventually I learned to cut myself some slack. Sometimes people need to be self centered to work things out and that's okay. 

If I could do it again I would consider staying close to my family but make sure I had my own room to decompress (at points there were 9 of us crammed in a small 2 bedroom apartment). I would also have asked if the donor advocate was a part of the recovery as well as the application process. If as in my case they aren't, I would make sure that I had someone who was not in my family to be there for me. This is such an emotional time that I think being selfish is a little necessary at times. Having someone to talk to, not involved with the recipient, would be helpful. I think my family would have appreciated this as well. Close quarters with a bad tempered girl is not fun.

All in all things passed and I am back to my generally happy albeit stubborn, opinionated self :)