How Quickly Can You Recover From Trauma?

Not quickly is the answer.

I got new temporary teeth, which took over five hours at the dentist on Friday. And after my whole face swelled and then calmed down, I actually ate some food. That was shockingly refreshing. In fact, I felt so good yesterday that I went to a TRX class and did some swimming and water running. People at the gym weren’t quite sure what to make of me. It was no longer obvious that I’d had an accident, but my lip was still swollen and cut. Mostly I looked like I might have had a lip job that went wrong.

I may have felt too good, though, and overdone it. We had an outing planned, which turned into too much for me for the night.

This morning, I was supposed to go to an event, but when I got up for some work it became clear that I did not feel as much better as I thought I was getting. Why? Because it always takes longer to recover and deal with this kind of trauma than you think it will. Because stress is stress. Because, even if I mostly look better, it still feels like I got my face smashed in.

It’s always hard to know how hard these kinds of things are going to be to come back from. But, really, by now I should know that it’s definitely not easy. I was just hoping it’d be different this time.