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.