It's Gonna Be a While - Reflections on Wishing Recovery was More Complete Already

I’m tired of not feeling right. I’m tired of not feeling like I feel like I should. It doesn’t get to me every day, but the list of ways I obviously don’t feel quite right gets to me once in a while.

The most frustrating part is that my muscles don’t work the way they’re supposed to – don’t work the way they used to. Which means that:
* I get up really slowly from chairs
* It’s a long and involved processes for me to get out of bed
* My gait is really slow, awkward, I walk with a significant limp
and I either have to use crutches or I weave all over the place

Add that to the neck and torso braces (which together prevent me from bending above the waist) that I’ll be wearing for at least a couple more weeks, and I’m feeling pretty physically incompetent.

Beyond that, my brain (which was never the sharpest or quickest), isn’t quite keeping up the way it should. Plus, unrelated to the injury from a couple months ago, I’m having my glasses prescription updated ... which means that I get to get used to wearing glasses.

I'm not feeling right, not feeling like I want to. I'm not moving around like I'd like to, and I’ve started resigning myself to the truth that I may not ever again be able to some of the things I used to love doing.

Yes, I'm still working at recovery - doing the stretching and strength training and muscular electro-stimulation that I'm supposed to - but running and jumping, cycling and skiing, climbing and backpacking, all are impossible right now, and it seems like a stretch that I'll ever get back to those things.

There are times that I believe fully and completely that after recovery I'll be back to being able to do 100% of what I used to do.

There are times when I dream that everything goes to hell and that everything I've gained back over the past couple months was a fluke - that I'll lose all the progress from the past couple months and will end up needing to use a breath-powered wheelchair to get around.

And there are times when what feels more true than the rest is that I've permanently lost some of the physical capabilities I once had.

I feel like everything's going to hell very rarely; I feel like everything'll be completely back to what was normal a little more often; most of the time, though, I just wish that I felt right again.

I'm tired of not feeling right, and I long for the day when what today doesn't feel right will all of a sudden be normal. I think it's gonna be a while.

I Don't Feel At Home In My Own Body

I don’t feel at home in my own body.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I experienced an accident while skiing. You know that I spent almost seven weeks in the hospital recovering from my injuries and rehabilitating my body.

I’m getting around better now that I was six weeks ago ... better, even, than I was when I was discharged. But I’m still nowhere close to moving the way I did before the injury. Perhaps I’ll never make it back to that standard. Perhaps I’ll never get close to the standard, and my foot will always drag along the ground. I hope it doesn’t – I hope I get close to moving the way I did before. But even though I’ve figured out how to navigate current reality (slowly, carefully, and with a great deal of thought and attention paid to every single step), I long to be able to move the way I did before.

I don’t feel at home in my own body.

In addition to the loss and alteration of movement, part of this injury is that I’ve experienced a loss and alteration of sensation. Walking outside on a cool and snowy May day in Colorado, I notice that while one leg is cold, the other feels warm. Walking barefoot on the bathroom floor, one foot feels like the floor is heated while the other notices that the tile is cool to the touch. Stretching my hamstrings (which I know have been tight since like 1974), one feels the stretch while the other gets to a point where it just doesn’t move any more. It’s disorienting, and a little confusing.

I don’t feel at home in my own body.

It feels a little like I’m staying for the holidays at a relative’s house. The surroundings are sort of familiar, but not really home. And it feels like as soon as whatever’s happening is finished, I’ll be back in my own home.

Except I won’t. This is my residence from now on. This is how I exist from now on. Disorientated in my own body. It’s obviously not my first choice. But if I’m optimistic, I’ve got a few decades to get used to it. But the truth is still obvious almost every time I move around.

I don’t feel at home in my own body.

Home Today

Today’s the day. Today’s the day they told me to go. I had lived in the same room for just over five weeks; today’s the day I walked from that to my car, and my love drove us to our home.

In the hospital, I found myself moving quickly up and down the halls. The wheelchair rolled quickly down the smooth hallway. And when I walked, I made better time than most people who were living in the rooms near mine.

Today, though, I move back out into the not-hospital world - where I notice that as comparatively quickly as I locomoted in the hospital, I’m slow compared to most people. I’m slow, and my gait is stilted and shuffling.

Now I sit in the comfort of our home, recognizing that the hospital is safer and easier to navigate than an apartment complex or a grocery store or the sidewalk next to a parking lot. I sit here, recognizing that I’ll be slow and clumsy for a while.

And today - the day I’m released from the hospital, the day I come home - today, I realize again that it will be challenging to make my way through this world. And embedded within that realization, I begin to understand the truth that I'm just the same as every single other person.