Friday, April 26, 2019

One Week

One week

One week from today
I’ll be done here

One week from today
I’ll sleep in my own bed
in a place I can call home

but today
today, while I’m still in a place
where help is just a push of a button away
where someone is paid
to tend to my needs
and assist with my deficiencies
today, while I’m still in this place
I feel safe

Weeks ago,
my physical situation was dire
today I’ve improved
and seem to be improving every day
over the next months
I’ll continue to work for the same

but in this moment,
releasing me one week from today
from the safety of hospital confines
to a home, beautiful though it may be
feels abrupt

today, I yearn to be at home
because I long to embrace regular life
out of a hospital
alongside the beautiful people
who are creating a family with me
yet still it frightens me to think of leaving
the security of this place

but today, and for the next week
fear and excitement exist alongside one another

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Injury Recovery: Reflections About Rehabilitation on Easter Sunday

Once, when I was a teenager, my friend invited me to go camping with him and his family for the weekend. It was their tradition on this particular weekend to go camping, but their tradition was in direct conflict with my family tradition. See, it was Easter weekend. My family could always be found in church for Easter, and for the Triduum as well. But that one year, I was so psyched that my friend had invited me that I had to go camping.

It was a really fun weekend of camping, and I’m glad I went. But after the weekend, I realized that I’d missed the whole Good Friday and Easter drama – I hadn’t gotten to recognize death and celebrate life.

That was the first year I didn’t celebrate the Triduum and Easter in church. This year, 2019, is the second. This time, instead of staying at a campground by the river, I’m staying in a hospital where I’m focusing on physical rehabilitation in the wake of a spinal cord injury.

Honestly, it’s hard to wrap my mind around my current reality. I mean, so far my experience has been that every time I’ve been sick or injured, I have the capacity to recover fully and completely from my injury.

But this time, that might not be possible. Fully recovered this time around might mean I will forever walk with a limp … or with crutches … or that I won’t have the capacity to walk very much at all. I couldn’t have admitted that even to myself three weeks ago. But this week I’m experiencing some of that death that I talked about on Ash Wednesday. Not death which means life has ended, but death in the sense that a person experiences the loss of something significant. In my case, at this moment, it would be the potential permanent loss of mobility and capability.

This all goes through my head and my heart despite the encouragement that I get from people around me. My beloved and my parents echo the therapists and nurses and doctors and other folks here at the hospital where I’ve spent the past three weeks in telling me that I’m making significant progress. But all I really see is what I can’t do any more.

For the past almost five weeks since my accident, I’ve been almost entirely confined to hospitals. Thankfully. They’ve been safe places for healing and growth. Soon, though, in a couple weeks, I’ll be released from inpatient care, and will move in with my beloved and three small children.

It’s frightening, to consider moving from the safety of the hospital to the relative wild of the regular world, especially when I don’t get around as fluidly as I once did. It’s scary to not know how things will go.

I know I should recognize the gift of new life being presented to me on Easter Sunday. But Easter’s supposed to be filled with joy – and I feel way more anxious than joyous. The hospital is safe. I can do what I’m comfortable doing. And for those things that I need (or want) help with, assistance is readily available. Outside of the hospital, I’m on my own.

Except I’m not. I’m not venturing out of here by myself. There are people who love me who are willing to use some of their own time and energy and resources to make sure I’m safe; people who are willing to make sure I’m taken care of, that I have what I need; people who are willing to invest enough in me so that I can experience the freedom and joy that are beyond the anxiety and trepidation which accompany virtually every gift of resurrection.

Monday, April 8, 2019

Smaller world: Reflections after a ski accident

My world has gotten
considerably
notably
remarkably
smaller
over the past couple of weeks

That same world, which was expansive before
has shrunk considerably in the past month
from looking out the window of my car
or across the front range
I looked to the wilder places
at peaks and valleys to explore
at vistas to take in from the back of a bicycle

my view shrunk
to my love, and the handful of people who are closest to me
to what I could see looking up from an ICU bed
my view shrunk
to a small slice of foothills and building
outside the hospital window
to a couple of nurses at a time,
who made sure I wouldn’t die that day
my view shrunk
to swallowing two pills
and eating one small bowl of Jello

Early one afternoon,
a beautiful day of skiing
turned surprisingly and swiftly (and violently?)
into the beginning of a personal and communal struggle

Weeks later,
I roll around with predictions rattling in my head
that cerebral electrical connections
will reestablish communication
and sinews atrophied by weeks of disuse
will be strengthened by moving again
though in very deliberate and intentional ways
even while I roll around, also,
with the idea that I’ll never stop sitting and rolling