 | WAS IT REALLY AN AWFUL APRIL? | | | | | Or Do I Just Need A Good Reframe ... | Posted by Steffi Lewis on 07/05/2012 |
I've been writing these monthly reviews for a while now and as I read them back from time to time I always see the sheer positivity in the writing which reminds me how awesome sblogit.com is, how lucky I am to be working with someone so outstanding she's my closest friend and what a brilliant future we both have as our company grows and matures into the global brand we know it will be ...
 i've finally realised i'm no longer immortal and need to pay attention to my aches and pains
However, looking back over April, 2012 made me realise that what should have become 'Awesome April' (and trust me when I say I was looking forward to using that title) actually turned into nothing of the sort.
My good friends tend to know how dialled up or down my awesome-o-meter is from day to day by the amount of sharing and commenting I'm doing on my social media networks and - I guess - the more awesome I feel, then the more risque my comments can also be. It's been dialled back a lot over the past few weeks - almost switched off at times - and it has quite concerned those in the know.
I wasn't going to write this monthly review at all because in my opinion, April just sucked the life out of me and I believe my It's Raining Shakespeare article may have been an attempt at deflection last weekend. However my wise friend Charles Macadam reminded me that I have to be consistent and that my family, friends, clients and networking contacts appreciate my honesty through my blog posts and do in fact expect it to be written.
The main reason I say that April was awful was because I was just so darn ill for most of it. I've spent over 20 year as a developer and web designer and it's meant some pretty deep concentration on projects which can start at around 8am one morning and find me still furiously coding web pages around 14 hours later. I love what I do, so I find that when I start, I just don't finish until a particular task I've set myself has been completed. This is further exasperated by the fact I've trained myself to fall easily into no-time so I can keep going for hours and hours without a break.
After having a major car accident years ago my neck does play up from time to time but this is normally dealt with by some pain killers and a nap so i've always tended to believe I was immortal and that nothing could hurt me. It's an easy thing to believe when you're young.
But over Easter, after setting myself a huge programming challenge and knowing that I'd have to do all the editing whilst my partner-in-crime Faz was on holiday I tried to push through my neck pain. I was uncomfortable for most of the week but it got to around Thursday and I realised I was in trouble.
I remember sitting there Thursday morning editing a blog post for Card-Lite and not actually being able to see straight with my left eye, I had a pounding headache, the tendons at the base of my skull where aching, my dodgy tooth had kicked off and I couldn't actually move my left shoulder as it had pretty much given up the ghost. I'd pushed myself too hard and now I was paying the price.
I spent the next couple of days working my way through a pack of soluble paracetamol & codine, constantly napping as my mood spiralled lower and lower and almost lived in a steaming hot bath trying to get my shoulder to unlock, allowing my neck muscles to relax and reduce the pain I was in. It didn't work. By Saturday night I was sitting in my bed crying my eyes out and had no choice but to call some friends and get them to take me to hospital. My immortal streak was over and I needed urgent medical help.
My treatment at MK General was a real help. They broke the pain cycle and allowed me to rationally get to grips with what was going on with my body. Thank the Goddess for Tramadol, that's all I can say.
Finally realising that I was subject to the frailties which being human entails has made me rethink how I look after myself. I can't ignore the random aches and pains that flare up in my shoulder and neck and from now on I have to pay them immediate attention. If something starts to hurt then there's a reason for it and I have to find out what I'm doing that's causing it and change my behaviour accordingly. My days of 14-hour program-a-thons are most definitely over.
I'm back with my specialist Osteopath for regular weekly appointments as a pre-emptive measure with my neck, I've got a plan of action with my local dentist to sort my aching tooth out and relieve the pressure on my tri-geminal nerve, I've raised all my monitors in The sblogit.com Secret Underground Bunker so I'm looking straight at them rather than slightly downwards and I even caved in to Faz's demands that I get an orthopaedic chair to replace the executive one I've been using for the past 20 years.
The times they are a changing, and if we are to build on the amazing start Faz and I have made with sblogit.com, then I have to keep those aches and pains in check from now on rather than ignoring them, because they won't go away anymore, will they?
If I was just going to look at April from the perspective of realising my own human frailty then I'd have to say that yes, it was a truly awful month. However, having the NLP skills to reframe myself I'm simply going to consider it a much needed wake-up call and it makes me feel good that I'm being proactive about my health from now on.
Every cloud has a silver lining hasn't it? So here's to a marvellous May!
Love, light & logic ... 
STEFFI LEWIS
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