by Dr Anne Malatt MBBS, MS, FRANZCO, FRACS

The wonder-fully inspiring account of this can be read elsewhere on this website.  I just felt to balance it with the other side of the story.

The surgery itself was an amazing healing.

I felt wonderful for a few days afterwards and lay on the couch allowing my family to look after me and feeling the grace of it all.

As my body started to heal, my mind started to play tricks.

I did not deserve to care for myself and be cared for; I was needed here there and everywhere; I started to feel empty because I was not “doing” anything… all my old thoughts and patterns started to rear their ugly heads and demand my attention.

The tension was too much for me.

Instead of going deeper, feeling the stillness and beauty and grace within me, allowing myself to feel that I am enough as I am, and don’t need to do anything to be loved, I got up and moved.

I went places where I thought I was needed, and then I went back to work.

I love my work, but I am not what I do.  The funny part was that the minute I got there, I felt that, but by then it was too late – there were 20 people booked in to see me that day, and 20 more the next.

By the end of the first day I was very tired and sore, but I did not feel able to cancel the next day.

By the end of the next day, I started to bleed.  All that movement, all that pressure I was putting on my healing body, was too much and it had to be released somewhere. My leg, which was supposed to be up, blew up, into a huge haematoma. Now I was in pain.

All that lovelessness, all that disregard, all those years of putting others before myself, of not listening to my body, of over-riding what I did feel, see and hear, of pushing through pain, tiredness, sadness…all came to a head, in my left leg. It really hurt, not just physically, but because, perhaps for the first time, I could really feel the pain of how I had lived, against the truth of what I knew.

So now I am back on the couch, with my leg up, pondering on what happened. The silly part is I have had to take more time off healing what I have harmed than I would have if I had listened to my doctor in the first place!

Some of us, especially the “smart” ones, can be slow learners!