Last week, I shared how anxiety increases the severity of my Long COVID symptoms and how sometimes medical practitioners mischaracterize the relationship between anxiety and Long COVID. My current primary source of anxiety is my upcoming surgery.
Like when I had a virus in August (2024), my anxiety is due partly to knowing too little and partly to knowing too much. I do not know what the surgeon will find when she goes in and I do not know how my body will react to the surgery given my current condition. What I do know is how an assumed routine surgery can quickly morph into not routine once the procedure is started, and how scary it is to go into surgery being told I’ll be sent home same day and to wake up from that surgery being taken to the hospital room where I’ll end up staying for the next 9 days. I also know that my body often needs longer than the model recovery time.
As the day of my surgery comes closer, I am having some success in managing my anxiety. I think the shortening of the time between now and the moment that epitomizes my anxiety is helping as waiting is always hard. Also, as the surgery comes closer, the list of things I want to accomplish professionally before surgery is getting shorter. With the mental capacity that frees up, I am identifying steps I can take to address the components of my anxiety within my control.
Sometimes those steps manifest with a manic energy. For example, I may finish my current crochet project before the surgery and so I decided that picking the next project now is a healthy way to reduce my anxiety. I stopped myself after placing four orders with Amazon for yarn and other crocheting supplies, including purpose-built crochet markers to replace the recycled twist ties I’ve been using forever. All the afghans in my book of crochet patterns looked appealing, and the manic energy was pushing me to order enough yarn to make them all.
For several days after I got that manic energy out in crochet materials, I calmly made continued progress on preparing for surgery…until I prepped my Kindle. I prefer reading printed books. However, I know in my weakened post-surgery state, I may not have the strength to hold them at first. Especially difficult to hold will be books like Dicken’s 1000-page Bleak House that I’m currently just over halfway through. Hence it’s time to dust off my Kindle.
After charging the Kindle, I scrolled through the contents to verify that the selection will likely keep me entertained post-surgery. It has a diverse array of fiction and nonfiction from the last 200 years, including mainstream, western, murder mystery, fantasy, and sci-fi fiction; history, women’s rights, urban planning, and sexist and racist primary materials from the 1920s. I think there will be something on it for me to read, regardless of what mood I’m in post-surgery.
The manic energy often tied to my anxiety popped up when I clicked on The Women’s Suffrage Movement by Sally Roesch Wagner. Unlike most of the titles on my Kindle I didn’t remember when this one was written (sometime in the last 100 years) and why I had downloaded it. Once I identified that it is a current (2019) and engaging anthology of the history of women’s suffrage in the US from pre-European settlement to 1920, the manic energy took over, pushing me to devoir this book.
I am now torn between feeding this hunger and continuing to check-off items on my pre-surgery preparation list as the best approach to managing my anxiety.
Feature image credit: anxiety by Daniel T. from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Carolyn Ristau 
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