Pain pills, guilt, and depression

Wow, that seems pretty extreme, but those of you who have been through this type of injury, or even a surgery, have probably dealt with one or all of these. After my surgery I was left in a fairly strange mental place. I was unable to work, unable to do any real physical therapy, and unable to sleep. Fortunately I was able to get off the pain pills in a matter of days after my surgery. I am one of the very lucky ones with a brachial plexus injury in that I do not have any nerve pain to speak of. I did have some at first, but I was on pain medication for almost a month so it was hard to know unless I didn't take it. Mostly out of fear of pain I took it. I continued to take Tylenol for a period, but I stopped taking that sometime in October.
The lack of sleep was due to two contributing factors. The first being I had this injury that only allowed for sleeping on my back. I hate sleeping on my back, I have always been a side to the belly to the side kind of sleeper. Also when I would go to bed I would take my sling off so my arm would just lay there by my side. I am not a claustrophobic person, but when I would lay down and have this arm that I couldn't move next to me it just freaked me out. Right after I would lay down, I would sit back up in a bit of a panic because I couldn't move my arm. It was never as bad during the day, but when I laid down it just became way more noticable. I really began to dread bedtime. The other contributing factor was I had an 8 month old at the time and I am a light sleeper. Put these two together and talk about a pretty shitty nights sleep.
Due to my inablity to do much I also began to feel very guilty. I felt guilty for several reasons, most of which revolved around two people closest to me, my wife and my work partner. I felt like I had left them high and dry. My wife had just started back at work after six months maternity leave. She is a night nurse in OB, so there was no way I could take care of our small baby all night when I wasn't even able to hold him. Once again she was forced to take more time off, approximatley two more months. After two months we were forced to figure something out as our insurance would not cover me if she missed any more work. Aarin (my wife), has a sister who agreed to stay the nights Aarin worked to help out. While all this was going on I was also still the owner/partner of an electrical business which was very busy. We had no employees, just myself and my partner Miles. I guess you could say each of us were each others insurance, and I was the one cashing in my policy. Well, Miles kept the ship right, but the struggle of depending on someone in that sense just increased my guilt.
All of this landed me in a state of depression which I had never seen before. When you have a brachial plexus injury there are alot of unanswered questions. Nobody (at least around here) can give you a true prognosis. This type of injury is very specialized and very mysterious. I mean how many of you have heard of a brachial plexus injury? Probably nobody, unless you have one. This depression lasted pretty consistently and still is surfacing. Some redeeming factors are the fact that I have been able to ride my bicycle again. About the middle of October I was able to get back on my trainer in my garage. That helped but only temporarily. I then was able to get outdoors on my bike, albiet very carefully and somewhat uncomfortably. You would think this would have done wonders for my psyche, but it almost had the opposite effect. I was really concerned I would never be able to ride like I had in the past. I am very competitve and I love to race my bicycle. I, even to this day, don't know if I will ever road race again. Mostly out of fear of crashing and knowing what may happen. Time will tell, and as anyone knows with this type of an injury, patience is a virtue. Enough for now, thanks for reading.