The Fall, The Fog, The Funny thing about rest

When it Falls

 When I was discharged from the alpine hospital overlooking Lake Geneva, having fallen on a mountain, lost a day, gained a head injury and somehow misplaced my shoes, I left clutching an orangina in one hand and a printed sheet in the other. It was handed to me by a very handsome Doctor (this has been confirmed by my husband, it’s not just post concussion judgement) and written - unsurprisingly - in French.

Luckily we’d had the foresight to invite two very important fluent linguists on our holiday, whom also multi tasked as top class nannies, grandkid entertainers, chefs, general looker after-ers of everyone, bananagram champions and all round great company. 

I hand the sheet to Granny when we arrive back at our apartment and listen, dazed and confused, as she translates the list of stuff to avoid over the next 4-6 weeks: 

“Screens, bright lights, loud noises, stress, tiredness, anything ‘cognitively demanding’, over exertion, over stimulation…” the list went on. And on.

Advised to "return to activity gradually” I drifted off fully clothed on the sofa thinking ‘So how does that one work?!’

What it did not tell me was that "rest" -  a word so small and simple it barely seems worth defining  - would turn out to be one of the most difficult things I have ever attempted.

 So. Concussion. Here is what it actually is, for those of us who were handed the leaflet and left to figure out the rest. 

Concussion is a traumatic brain injury. A mild one, yes (the word "mild" appears in all the literature, which is technically accurate and also feels, when you're living it, a little gas lighty).

The brain moves inside the skull on impact, chemical changes happen, neural pathways get disrupted. The brain, which runs essentially every system in your body and has exactly zero off switches, now has to do all of that while also trying to heal itself. My wonderful friend and nurse said ‘imagine your brain has been bruised’ - which is exactly how it feels from where I’m standing (or more accurately, lying). Infuriatingly there’s no visible wound or marks. Nothing to point to and say: Look! That's where it hurts. To all external observers, I’m absolutely fine. This is, it turns out, its own particular problem. 

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The Fog Descends (and other symptons)

Headache: yes, I expected that. And very much not my first rodeo.

Sensitivity: to light and sound: yes (the leaflet).

Dizziness: that comes in bursts and makes my face spasm.

Fatigue: so profound it feels destabilising like I’m on another planet. A lot like just after birth tbh. 

The cognitive stuff, is the real wrecking ball for me though - which if you’ve ever lived through the torture of newborn nights, sleep deprivation, feeding on demand, looking after a sick child, insomnia, hormonal sleepless nights or anything else that robs you of rest - you’ll agree that brain fog feels such an inadequate phrase for the experience of it all. 

Reaching for a word you've known your whole life and finding nothing there. Reading the same sentence four times and retaining precisely none of it. Looking at a list of tasks or pile of stuff to tidy up and having no clue where to start. Not being able to process a simple question like ‘what do you fancy for dinner?’ Or even hallucinating there are wild animals living in your house (thanks to my first born for this particular experience when immersed in a 4 month sleep regression 10 years ago).

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The Funny thing about rest 

The prescription for concussion recovery is brain rest, which means reducing cognitive load while your brain heals. No screens. Limited reading. No work. Minimal decision-making. Quiet. And if you mic drop that in a busy household with 3 small humans there is literally nothing else to do but laugh at the audacity of it.  

For someone who classes rest as decluttering a cupboard or organising a social gathering (from the sofa - so ‘resting, right?’) - doing nothing has always felt extremely ambitious. I’ve written about this - my relationship with rest is very much a work in progress. So when it was literally prescribed for me, I just had no idea where to begin.

We’ve all been there - after an exhausted run of newborn nights or testing toddler days, we have a good streak and think ‘I AM OK! I have survived and am actually thriving. I CAN DO ANYTHING”...

..then we overdo, we peak too soon, we find ourselves clinging on until bedtime with caffeine running through our veins and a fixed stare in our eyes. My equivalent to this boom and bust approach to rest over the last few weeks has been pure trial and error - surrendering to certain aspects like cancelling every plan, stepping back from work, daily lie downs with podcasts and asking for cups of tea at any given opportunity. I’m still working on the FOMO, the guilt of not being able to mother like I want to, the feeling of inertia at no exercise, little fresh air and lots of time at home and not quite feeling myself. But although I’m craving order to be restored, I’m also fully aware recovery is not a straight line. 

 If you’re reading this and experiencing the demands of motherhood - from the wrecking ball moments to the normal bone tired daily grind - then it’s not a million miles away from a blow to the head.  There are good days where you you think: I'm back, I’m smashing it! and then you do one too many things and you pay for it for a week. There are setbacks that feel like failure but are all part of the process. There are a million moments in between where you think ‘ I have no clue what I’m doing, but we move’.

You don’t need a mountain to be experiencing any of the above, so if you’re still in it, I see you. Unfortunately there’s no leaflet on motherhood that prepares us for any of it, but if you can grab an orangina, and a reframe of ‘this too shall pass’ then I think we’re all going to pull through.