27 Lessons I Learned After 27 surgeries: A Test in Positive Thinking

Information technology's been quite a full decade for me. In ten years, I've lost my stomach, started college at 25, got married, spent six of those years without a working digestive system, launched a chocolate business concern, discovered a new-plant passion for mixed media artwork, created a mental health program, and wrote a ane-woman musical to chronicle it all.

Mixed Media Fine art past Amy Oestreicher via amyoes.com

Welcome To Me

Called both a "surgical disaster" and a "medical miracle," I don't have a body quite like I'd imagine everyone else's to be — a feminine figure with smoothen flesh, voluptuous curves, effortlessly flaunting tight mini-skirts, and throwing on a tee-shirt without worrying if certain medical additions are exposed. Or at least, that'south how I thought everyone felt near their body.

At 18 years old, I was sucked into an alternate universe of IVs and CT scans. I was cutting autonomously and put back together. My body was manipulated like a medical marionette. 10 years later, it'due south hard to recollect what my trunk looked like before the scars, ostomy numberless, and IVs became a mainstay in my physical life.

A Hit One-Woman Musical Doesn't Hateful You're Invincible

Afterward my one-adult female musical, Gutless & Grateful, premiered in 2012, I felt similar I was on acme of the world. I finally closed the door on a coma, organ failure, and the PTSD that comes from years of medical instability. To gloat such a huge big milestone, I got my get-go constituent surgery, praying that a very "gutsy" surgeon would successfully contrary my ostomy.

Amy Oestreicher in "Gutless & Grateful" (Photograph Credit: Brandon Thetford) via amyoes.com

Knowing how risky this surgery was for my already-compromised beefcake was further compounded when the surgeon actually bent over and whispered in my ear: "Are you SURE you really want to practice this?"

I lifted up my caput, and with my terminal ounce of strength, I said, "I just did a one woman prove, I tin can do annihilation!"

Manifestly, not anything, as three extra surgeries, a few catheters, and 2 months at Mt. Sinai later, I woke up with more bug than I came in with. The New York debut of Gutless & Grateful felt similar the climactic catastrophe to a virtually-death medical saga, and now hither I was back at foursquare one.

A Life-Changing Regret

My 27th surgery left me with complications that all the same haven't been resolved. As years become by, I will have spent more of my life in my mail-coma body than the one I recollect as a teenager. I don't remember what it felt similar to slumber on my stomach, or to leap in the pool fearlessly. However; in exchange, I've learned things about my body — the vessel for the vitality that flows within me — that I volition never forget.

These lessons accept made me who I am.

Mostly, I've learned that through my body, I can experience the best of what life has to offer. Sticking with hard times has allowed me to experience some of the most cherished moments in my life, like performing my one woman testify across the land for the by four years, in spite of setbacks, disappointments, and surgical disasters.

Mixed Media Art by Amy Oestreicher via amyoes.com

Each surgery taught me some kind of lesson in the ability of positive thinking.

Here is my dedication to all 27 of them.

Positive Thinking 101: 27 Lessons I Learned Almost Life Later 27 Surgeries

1.) Life has many obstacles, many challenges, many blessings, and many triumphs — merely y'all simply have one body. If yous want information technology to experience the good, you lot've as well got to withstand the bad.

2.)  Emotions are powerfully confusing animals. "Talking things through" or "thinking information technology out" isn't always the respond. Some of the most powerful feelings only come to light when you can express them in artistic ways, similar drawing them, taking a walk, or finding a song that embodies what yous're feeling. Let your heart know that your heed doesn't always accept to run the show. Emotions are really just arrows in your life. Listen to them. They point you in the direction yous need to get.

three.) As long as there is breath flowing through y'all, you are alive, then wake upward. Throw some ice cold water in your face, scream at the superlative of your lungs, and give yourself a jolting reminder that you'll never experience this moment again. Do you really want to miss it?

4.) Life is about moving on, merely it is not about running away.

5.) You trunk needs every kind of nourishment — whole foods, a bit of pampering, and a daily open dialogue (torso-talk, if you will) to make sure you give it exactly what it needs.

6.) You can't alive a full life if you don't accept the good with the bad. Only when y'all tin feel the depths of despair will yous exist able to experience the lightest of joys. I'd rather feel everything than nothing at all.

7.) The magical quick-ready solution to finding happiness wherever and whenever you lot are is gratitude. When I was stuck in the hospital for four months after a disastrous trio of surgeries, I forced myself to continue a gratitude listing from A to Z. It wasn't e'er easy to fill up out, merely by the time I reached "Z" every night, I e'er ended up feeling a bit better than when I started

viii.) When you've been through a difficult and trying period in your life, a part of you becomes "wounded." This wounded self will always be with you lot, even when the darkest times are over. If you lot are able to listen to this wounded part, award its story, and larn from what it has endured, your life will be deeper and richer.

nine.) Laugh — even in the roughest of circumstances. Laugh when the surgeons put your family on lockdown considering your parents have unsuccessfully tried to sneak you out of the ICU to go shopping. (Truthful story.)

10.) Things don't happen for a reason, you lot make things happen for a reason.

11.) Reframing "Why Me" into "Why Not" has the power to change your perspective and open y'all upwards to the possibilities.

12.) Information technology's been said many times that it'south the journey that matters in life, non the destination. Actually, the more detours your journeying takes (the bumps, hiccups, and setbacks), the more cute eye-candy you'll spot forth the way. Every piddling twist and turn in life has made me who I am today. On ane level, I wish I never had to become through a decade of medical trauma, but on another level I wonder if I would ever have the same amazing people in my life, or be pushed to explore new ideas and attempt new things.

13.) You lot are non your life'southward circumstances. Make your life bigger than your present situation. Things laissez passer, just life will always be here.

fourteen.) Life is filled with whatever amount of joy you cull to fill it with.

15.) Surround yourself with the people you love considering they take the ability to ignite.

16.) When yous're non sure of a choice to make, cull the decision that best supports your aliveness.

17.) Finding yourself is non an "result", information technology is a moment-by-moment practice — a practise that has no endpoint.

18.) Children are the all-time teachers on the subject of "fearlessness", "openness", and "presence." Soak in their lessons whatsoever hazard y'all can.

19.) Every imperfection and quirk on your torso is gorgeous and uniquely you. After my surgeries, I like to think of myself as a beautiful mosaic — cleaved apart, but put together again differently, yet withal cute.

20.) To quote one of my favorite Broadway musicals,Sunday In The Park With George by Stephen Sondheim, "I chose and my earth was shaken — and so what? The choice may take been mistaken, the choosing was not. Merely keep moving on."

21.) Speaking of musicals,,, Stay truthful to who you are, follow your passion, and that volition exist your compass back to yourself when you lot've lost your way.

22.) Creativity is more than than craft. Inventiveness is the willingness to view the world in a dissimilar way — to see the world anew. See the world with a bit of creativity and you'll immediately spot the blessings in your life, no affair the circumstance.

23.) Nutrient nourishes your body and invigorates your gustation buds; but more importantly, food is a potent connection to your memories, emotions, and heart.  Considering of my surgeries, for six years out of the past decade I was unable to eat or drink. I didn't realize until I had that first crumb of food in one case again, merely just existence able to savor, sip, and gustatory modality fills the body with rich sensations of existence alive.

24.) Even when life feels terrible, in that location will be a time when you say, "Remember when I went through that? I thought things would never get better!" If you wait it out long plenty, merely equally life changes, all things change. Go far a good alter!

25.) Hope, organized religion, and trust are more than than but pixie dust and whimsy, it is the medicine required for your soul to hold on until things get better. I came out of my coma to hear doctors tell me that I had no stomach, I couldn't eat or drink, and nobody knew when (or if) I would e'er be able to again. I was given no timelines whatsoever, but I fabricated myself believe that "any twenty-four hours at present" a phenomenon would happen and I would exist eating. "Any day" turned out to be years later, but now that I can eat and drink freely, my "willing suspension of belief" was worth it.

26.) If you lot feel lone or disconnected, recollect that you always belong to the universe. At that place are cells and molecules in your torso, just every bit there are cells and molecules in every tree, dog, or person. Essentially, we are all one and the same. If you experience something, chances are someone else has felt it before.  You are always a office of a larger whole.

27.) Since yous're a part of something larger, everything you practice has pregnant. Every word, pace, thought, activity, or feeling affects someone else — even if you can't discover it correct abroad. Keep living your best life, even when information technology seems at that place is "no" manner to — considering you matter.

Mixed Media Art by Amy Oestreicher via amyoes.com

Amy is currently touring Gutless & Grateful (her one woman musical) to theatres, colleges, conferences, and organizations nationwide. See where she'll be adjacent, and larn how to bring her prove to you.

All artwork was created by Amy. Acquire about her mental health advancement programs for students, and find out how to take part in the #LoveMyDetour motion, striving to create compassion through stories.

Featured Photo Credit: "Great Comebacks" Documentary by Howie Klausner via greatcomebacks.com.

Mixed Media Art Photographs by Amy Oestreicher via amyoes.com/galleries. "Gutless and Grateful" Photograph of Amy Oestreicher taken past Brandon Thetford via amyoes.com

Featured photo credit: Amy Oestreicher via amyoes.com

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/404348/27-lessons-i-learned-after-27-surgeries-a-test-in-positive-thinking

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