I don't think this is a permanent thing. After I got home from lengthening, I just vegetated and played video games for a week. After that I "hit the ground running" (metophorically) [...] You will get your motivation back fairly quickly after the dull pain/lack of sleep from LL stops.
I've had pretty much the same experience. During the lengthening and the first week or two back home, I was quite apathetic and didn't want to do many things. After that, I started recovering rapidly - especially when I started taking steps with the walker, instead of hopping, then when the x-rays showed I was full weight-bearing. Now that I can drive and get around with a walker, I'm going to work, to the gym, to the supermarket etc. And it's VERY frustrating how painstakingly slow everything is. Here's an example of a "typical" simple day from before and after LL:
Before LL: wake up, get dressed for gym, grab my laptop backpack and the gym bag with work clothes in it, go to the gym, shower there, change, grab lunch, go to work
While recovering from LL, when walking is cumbersome, slow and kinda painful: Wake up late because I don't sleep that well now. Spend a few minutes deciding whether it makes sense to go to the gym, given that I walked quite a lot yesterday, and that showering at the gym is quite challenging now... am I sure the gym has a handicapped shower stall? (it's my first week back to work after ~5 months) I'll need to bring a change of clothes and flip-flops for the shower stall but they don't fit in my laptop backpack, and I can't quite carry both the backpack and a gym bag AND use the walker with at least one hand (oh, and I had to take the trash out on the way). I decide to forget about the shower flip-flops, at the risk of picking up a toe wart from the shower (happened already at that gym), so I stuff everything in the laptop backpack. Oh wait, I forgot to grab a change of socks. Go back to the walk-in closet and grab one. I also need to water the plants on the balcony - something that would take 1 minute normally, now takes 5 (go out, see there's no water in the watering can, go back inside holding the watering can in one hand and the walker in another, fill it up, walker back to the balcony more slowly (filled watering can in one hand), go back out on the balcony, bend over (what a good stretch!) to water the all plants, go back in... realize it's getting late and I might miss lunch if I go to the gym, so I must go grab lunch first, then we'll see about gym and showering. Oh, this guy wants to buy my
Berg Polar Care Cube that I no longer need, but I can't possibly carry that with me to the car because I don't exactly have hands, so it'll have to wait.
OK, am I
finally ready to get out of the house now? Seems so... I grab the walker, throw the backpack onto my back, grab the garbage bag, and squeeze out through the door. Drop the garbage, go to the elevator, squeeze through the
manual elevator door, get out of the building... and realize I forgot my sunglasses. F*ck. No way am I going back for them. So I walker to the car, get in, fold the walker and awkwardly bring it in, careful not to scratch the car. Start driving and go grab lunch at this work cafe I haven't been to yet as a cripple. Park in the handicapped spot (yay). Awkwardly get the walker out and unfold it. Walker to the cafe's door. Realize the door's handicapped button doesn't work. Manage to squeeze through the door etc. Typing this from the cafe. We didn't even get to the gym + shower part. Took me two hours from waking up to getting here.
The point is that when walking - something we normally take for granted - is suddenly much more costly, my brain tries to optimize my path through the world. Just as you plan your errands to hit various points one after the other in sort of a line (instead of going from here to there and back here and back in another place however you feel like), I'm constantly thinking "Is this item I need to pick up on the way? No? Then I'll have to pick it up later when I need to go to point A and it
will be on the way to point B". This sort of thinking causes a mental overload - having to keep track of all sort of silly little things that normally would take you 10 seconds to pick up if you could walk.
Then when something doesn't work out (like my forgotten glasses), the situation becomes much more annoying than it would normally be. If I could walk, I'd quickly run upstairs and get the sunglasses. But now, that means going back to the only accessible entrance of the building, dealing with the manual elevator doors, and all those again back on the way out. 10 minutes at least instead of 1 or 2.
So in a way, it's OK if you're apathetic while recovering from massive surgery and don't want to do anything. That way you don't have to constantly plan your way, and there aren't many things you want to do that don't work out. I didn't feel like going to work, or to the gym, or grabbing warm lunch from a cafeteria when I could just microwave some pre-made meal.
I'm thinking this is a survival mechanism - when a human gets badly injured and can't walk, they become apathetic, so they feel okay just vegetating and recovering.
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Topic: How recovering from LL surgery screws you up neurologically (Read 6065 times)