🌿 Part 1 — The Beginning: When Life Shifted

Welcome back to another chapter of Happycapy, lovely humans.
Today’s post is a personal one — the first part of the story behind why I started this blog and how crochet became more than just a hobby for me.
It’s a story about surgery, independence, unexpected plot twists, and eventually… yarn.

Let’s go back to where it all began.

🛏️ When Surgery Shows Up Uninvited

In January 2024, life decided to surprise me with something I never asked for:
a lower back surgery complete with screws and a long list of fears I didn’t know I had.

It was my first surgery ever, so my brain was running a “What If” marathon:

What if I don’t wake up from anesthesia?
What if I wake up too early?
What if I never walk again because one millimeter goes wrong?
What if this pain eats me alive before surgery even happens?

You know — totally normal first‑timer thoughts.

Meanwhile, my husband tried to lighten the mood by saying:
“You’re not broken. You’re upgraded.”
(He really thought he did something there.)

If you’ve ever suffered from a serious medical condition, you already know:
dark humor becomes your emotional support animal.

💊 Painkillers vs. Reality

Before and after surgery, there was a lot of pain.
The kind of pain that makes you question your life decisions, the purpose of existence, and whether your spine should start paying rent for the trouble it causes.

So what happens when you’re in that much pain?

Strong medication — the kind that helps and harms at the same time.

It numbs the pain, yes.
But it also numbs your stomach, liver, thoughts, mood, emotions, and occasionally your will to deal with people.

It’s a ride.

🏔️ Post‑Surgery: The Everest Stage

After the surgery, even simple things felt like climbing Mount Everest barefoot.

Putting on pants?
A full Olympic sport.

Putting on socks?
Out of the question.
(Who needs socks anyway? Overrated, honestly- haha. But then the reality hits in you are cold 24/7 and your surgery was in January, you need them)

If you’ve always been independent — like me — this part is brutal.

Going from: “I can handle anything alone” to “I can’t even tie my hair properly without help” is a special kind of emotional earthquake.

It shakes the pieces of who you think you are.

Your family helps you.
Your partner helps you.
And instead of gratitude, you often feel guilt, frustration, and fear.
It’s the kind of experience that stays inside the body long after the scars heal.

🌀 When Your Body Heals but Your Mind Doesn’t

Eventually, you stop the strongest painkillers.
You start walking normally again.
You get dressed without cursing the universe.
You find your routines.
Everyone around you says:

“You’re doing great! You’re back to normal!”

Except you’re not.

Here’s the thing:
the body heals a lot faster than the mind.

And I didn’t realize at the time how deeply this whole experience carved itself into me.
How much fear stayed trapped inside.
How much pressure I continued carrying.
How much stress I ignored.

It was like a little emotional time bomb just… sitting there.

Waiting.

And in January 2025, it finally exploded.

⚡ The First Seizures

This part of the story will be explored more deeply in Part 2, but here’s what you need to know for now:

A year after surgery — when everything was “supposed to be fine” —
I suddenly started having seizures.

From nowhere.
No warning.
No explanation.

I didn’t understand what was happening.
No one around me understood either.
It was terrifying. It was confusing.
And it was the beginning of a long journey through doctors, tests, emotions, and discoveries I did not expect.

But that’s a story for the next chapter.

💛 Why This Chapter Matters

This first part is important because it sets the stage for everything that came after:

the stress
the trauma
the loss of independence
the emotional shock
the delayed mental impact
the perfect storm that eventually triggered my PNES

And of course — the path that eventually led me back to crochet, to healing, and to Happycapy.

But we’re not there yet.
First, we need to walk through the chaos.

✨ Coming Next: Part 2 — “Diagnosis Chaos: When the Seizures Began”

In the next post, I’ll take you through the moment the seizures started, the doctor marathon that followed, the shocking misdiagnosis, and the emotional rollercoaster of navigating a condition no one fully understands.

It will be messy, honest, and real — but also sprinkled with humor, because that’s how I survive half of life’s chaos.

Before I take you into the chaotic part of this story — the seizures, the doctor marathon, the confusion, and the emotional mess — I want to give you a simple explanation of what PNES actually is.

Because even though PNES affects many people, most of the world (and honestly, many doctors) still don’t understand it very well. And if you’ve never heard of it before reading my blog, you’re definitely not alone.

So here’s the short, human-friendly version — the Happycapy explanation — of what PNES is and how it works.

PNES – what is it from the medical point of view

Now that you know what PNES is, let’s go back into the story — to the moment the seizures started, and nothing made sense anymore.

Thank you for reading, for being here, and for letting me share this journey with you.

💛 Danka
Happycapy