A Holiday of ‘Nos’

This past week I went back to school for another year. This, unfortunately, meant the end to a lovely, relaxing holiday. Towards the end of my holidays, I spent most of my time at the beach. This is when the fun Christmas break started to turn into a holiday of ‘nos.’

Although I have been allowed back to most activities after surgery there are still a few things I’m still not allowed to do. One obvious thing is contact sport but I definitely wasn’t playing any sports on the beach. While I was there though,  I noticed a few things I couldn’t do which I hadn’t thought about before this holiday.

My first ‘no’ was trampolining. Now I’m not the kind of person who enjoys things like jumping on a trampoline so this was never a big deal for me. This was until I realised we had a jumping pillow where we were staying. I still wouldn’t normally use it but when all your friends and everyone you’re with is jumping on it, it’s not fun standing on the side watching them have fun together.

My next ‘no’ was at the beach when like we did last year, we decided to go surfing. I definitely can’t say I’m a surfer as I learnt last year when I tried but I still really enjoyed it. Because I knew I would be falling off a lot (more falling than succeeding for me if I’m honest) I knew that surfing was an immediate ‘no.’ The pressure of falling off wasn’t good for my back so while everyone was surfing I was jumping over waves and reading on the sand by myself.

I was also told ‘no’ and ‘stop’ multiple times by my mum on this trip while I was out in the water. Simply jumping over waves was often a ‘no’ for me. Not because I can’t swim and I was going to drown because I was more than capable in the water but because sometimes the strength of the waves was too strong to be crashing onto my back.

Many times these holidays I was told ‘Bethan don’t do that’, ‘Bethan that will hurt your back’, ‘Bethan you can’t do that’, ‘Bethan maybe just watch this one.’ This was very frustrating and I wanted more than anything to join in with what everyone was doing but if I want to be able to do these things sometime in the future I know I need to sit out for now. Not long now though because in just two months I’ll be one year post op which means I’ll be back to contact sport and maybe at my appointment I’ll find out if next holidays I can turn a few ‘nos’ into a ‘yes.’

I know it can be very frustrating needing to sit back and watch all your friends have fun without you. But if you look hard you might be able to find ways that you can get involved so that it won’t hurt you. You just need to keep reminding yourself that this is all helping you recover and that it will assist you in turning your holidays of ‘nos’ into the usual fun holidays you always look forward to.