I have recuperated from surgeries and illnesses a lot, and when people hear my medical history they often say:

How do you do it!?!

Everybody who has been through it knows the answers. But, we are never sure whether people really want to know or are just looking for something to say. So we smile and say “you do what you gotta do” or “one day at a time”, or any other number of cliché platitudes that come to mind. It’s easier.

But let’s assume that you are here for the truth. You are recuperating yourself, or about to. Even worse, you are watching someone you love go through it and you don’t know what to do. So here it is, the good, the bad and the ugly. And most of all, the truth.

So, how do you do it?

People hate the answer.

You just work at it. There’s no magic, no easy road, you just keep moving forward. The clichés and platitudes are right. Alcoholics Anonymous’s has a famous mantra “one day at a time”; it is a cliché for a reason, it works. Or maybe you believe Finding Dory when she says “just keep swimming”. The answer simple, you just keep going.

Everybody who has ever lost weight, quit smoking, stayed in a job they hated, survived a bad breakup or trained for a marathon knows it, we just forget, or block it out. Because it is hard. Really hard. It is hard to wake up every morning and face the day, especially when you have lost sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. When you know that your hardship will be the focus of most of your attention and energy until you (hopefully) fall asleep. And sleep is the only real relief you have.

Depressing huh?

I know. I don’t want to get anybody down, but you can’t deal with it if you don’t face it. So let’s admit it; it sucks and it’s gonna suck for a while. Having recuperation goals to keep you focused and to give you a sense of accomplishment is important. There are lots of other ways to keep your spirits up.

Read: Your Happy List – Staying Positive During Recuperation

That’s the bad news. But what’s the good news?

This is only temporary; it will get better.

You will walk (or roll, or hobble, as the case may be) this path for a time, and someday, it will get easier. You will be able to think of other things, of other people, of the future.

For now, just keep moving forward with that knowledge.

1. Focus on what is right in front of you.

• Have a realistic, short-term recuperation goal. Don’t focus on the triathlon you want to complete next year. Don’t overwhelm yourself. Stay in the now. If you have a long road ahead of you, focus on the next step. Figure out what you really want to achieve.Walk a mile? Or just go to the washroom on your own? Pick one goal, something you can do in the next week or two. Something that will feel good to achieve. You may laugh, but my number one is always bathing on my own; next is washing my hair. I don’t know why, but everything is easier when you have clean hair.

2. Break it down

• Now you get to break those recuperation goals down into parts. What activities do you need to be able to do to reach those goals? When you are in recovery, you don’t get to see a goal and head straight to it. That would be like waking up one day, deciding you want to run a marathon and running it that weekend. Would you be likely to finish? Not likely. To continue my hair washing example, maybe you need to be able to get in and out of the tub, or stand up in the shower, depending on how you plan to do it. Just remember that you may have to get creative.

With some of my surgeries, showers and baths were out of the question. Once I sat covered by a garbage bag in a lawn chair on our front porch while my housekeeper dumped buckets of water over my head so I could wash my hair. (Go ahead and take a minute to picture it, and yes, you can laugh; I did.) The important part of this story was the steps I identified to be able to do it. First, I had to be able to get to the porch, sit for 15 minutes and return to bed to rest. This may not sound like a lot, but then it took two weeks of working up to it and I don’t remember ever being so exhausted in my life.

I want to put a warning in here, that any activity you do should be with the guidance of your doctors. If they tell you not to overdo it, then don’t. The last thing you need is to be back in the hospital. More than one person has undone all of their hard work by re-injuring themselves during their recovery.

• Focus on what do you need to do today, and maybe tomorrow. Let’s talk about that journey. If you need to be able to travel a distance, start with a small part of that, add to it everyday and make note how you feel. So, if I had to get to the porch and back, I started with the dining room, then the living room, etc… Each of your steps can be broken down in this way.

An important thing to know, is that your body will perform best for you in small spurts throughout the day, and not long pushes. Most of the time, you can choose to push yourself in small ways throughout the day, if you plan. If you want to be able to get somewhere, have somebody put a stool along your path, so you can stop and rest. Then make the trip back and forth a few times a day. Once that is easy, then move the stool or take it away.

3. Do IT!

• Just get on with it!
• You can schedule activities for when you are strongest or for right before your rest times, when you are most likely to be successful. But what is most important is that you make some progress everyday.
• Remember that not everyday is equal. Some days you will get further, some days you will take a step back. Do not measure yourself against yesterday, measure yourself against last week and last month. As long as you are ahead in the mid-term, the short-term is irrelevant. Remember this! Forgetting it is the single greatest source of discouragement.
• If you have a simple recuperation goals that you can achieve in a couple of days, do it! Sounds simple, but it’s not. This is the hardest part. It might hurt, it might be scary; you might even have to sit down and weep halfway through. Do it anyway. The trick is to do something, a little thing.
• And do it a little at a time. It might take you 3 hours to do what you want to do. You might have to try 3 times, or you might have to take breaks every couple of minutes. If you can’t do it one try, that’s okay.
• That may be the hardest part of recovery – having reasonable expectations.

4. Now Celebrate

Reward yourself every time you meet one of your recuperation goals. There must be something you enjoy that you cannot always indulge, now is the time. An episode of your favorite show? 20 mins of social media?

During my last big recuperation, I was struggling with my weight and on leave from my job. Food and shopping were out, so I had to get creative. I indulged in computer gaming or watching my favorite guilty pleasure on TV. We would have my favorite dinner if I reached a milestone. Saving these things as a reward made me enjoy them that much more.

And celebrate the milestones; find people who can be supportive and share your successes with them. We all need our kudos sometimes.

So that’s it. The secret recipe, the magic trick.

Simpler than you thought, but harder too.

We will revisit this topic in another post. I would like to talk about how to achieve these goals without getting discouraged and how to use the progress trackers I created when I was recovering from paralysis. But that is enough for now.