Recovery time from surgery! I was meant to rest and keep my leg lifted to avoid swellings. Unfortunately, the month of May is an important month at work with loads of deadlines. I ended up working constantly from home, and had to attend important meetings.
On the one side I was facing lots of pressure at work due to the deadlines (if you don’t adhere to them it will affect the company’s business for the next year), on the other side I was in pain, pumped with medication and I was psychologically affected.
Bloody hell, try to get used to the idea you have a bone tumor with a high recurrence percentage!
The following weeks, I worked from home, I had to fly to Singapore with my mum for visa reasons, I attended a tradeshow for work in Bangkok, and I even went on a resort inspection with our business partners.
The difficulty was to move around on crutches: the long distances at the tradeshow or even at the resort that is reachable only by boat. But I was feeling physically good and considered all of this an adventure, a process to get stronger during my recovery.
For the first 3 months, I had to go for an x-ray check up every 4 weeks to ensure the transplanted bone was strengthening and that there were no signs of recurrence. I returned home super happy after every check-up and with every doctor visit, I was allowed to start putting a little bit more pressure on my leg. Eventually, I was able to train the leg on a bicycle ergometer at the gym and went swimming daily. It feels great when you see the progress you make every day!
Two months after my surgery and after overcoming the busy deadline period at work, I went for a well-deserved holiday to Italy visiting my family.
I guess this was actually the first time since the diagnosis where I had time to reflect on what had happened and to digest it. This two-weeks holiday remains something special: it was the last real summer holiday in Italy where I still had all my body parts and I felt comfortable walking around in a bikini. (I will get back to this later; it’s a topic on its own). Most of us take such things for granted and don’t actually realize how special each moment can be. Myself included I didn’t value those moment as I do now. Strange that at times you need to be confronted with such an illness to bring things back into perspective.
My last bikini picture with both limbs