Eighteen Months: Thoughts on Recovery So Far

It’s been 18 months. Eighteen months ago today I drove up the mountain to spend the morning skiing. They tell me that I ended up riding down from the mountain in a helicopter that headed straight to the hospital emergency room.

It didn’t take too long for the doctors to figure out that I’d broken a few vertebrae. It took a couple weeks for the doctors to start talking with any sort of certainty about the extent of my spinal cord injury. Even then they were reluctant to say much definitively or to make prognoses.

Within a couple weeks, I was told that the extent of my injury officially put me in the category “quadriplegic” … which confused me (and I’ll never use that term to describe myself) because even by then I’d recovered probably 80% of the movement in my one hand, and the other never did seem to be affected.

About the same time I received this information, I was also told what a general timeline for recovery might be. In short what I heard was that the first six months were critical – that I should work as diligently as possible in those first six months in order to realize the greatest gains.

What I heard next was that while gains might not be quite so obvious, that I might expect to continue seeing improvement for as long as 18 months.

I’m thankful that the past eighteen months have proven that prediction right. Early on, the gains were obvious to me and to everyone who watched me move around. Recently, though, the improvements are much more subtle – probably not noticeable by most people, but enough for me to know that I move a little better today than I did a month ago.

One thing I don’t remember anyone saying when they talked about a recovery timeline was that I should expect after eighteen months. Will my recovery and improvements stagnate? Now that it’s been eighteen months, should I not expect any more improvements?  

It’s been eighteen months. I feel lucky that I’ve regained as much mobility as I have. I’m grateful that I can move around mostly normally.

It’s been eighteen months, and I get frustrated that I can’t move around as smoothly as I used to could. Just this morning, I almost yelled and threw things when I stubbed my toe on the (smooth, even, predictable) floor, because that leg doesn’t work right any more.

It’s been eighteen months. I don’t know the future, so there’s no way for me to know today whether I’ll continue making mobility improvements tomorrow; or next month; or next year; or five years from now. But I’ll keep working at it, doing my best to be more capable every day than I was the day before.

$ 0.02

Social Media: What I Want

I like looking at Facebook to see silly photos of my friends and my friends’ kids, to find out about food trucks coming to my neighborhood, and to remember people I don’t see very often.

I like looking at Instagram to see beautiful photos of beautiful places where people I may or may not know go on beautiful adventures.

I like looking at Twitter to hear different perspectives about political topics, and other random subjects. 

I like watching YouTube to find recipes for cooking delicious things on the grill, and to watch music performances. 

That’s what I want from social media. Right now, though, every one of the outlets I pay attention to is riddled with posts related to the murder of George Floyd. A similar thing happened with countless other black people who’ve been killed by our society. Social Media erupted. And rightly so. People have a right to be angry, and to express their anger and frustration through the means by which we communicate these days. 

I want my social media feeds to go back to the way they were. And also I’m glad that they’re being disrupted right now. Because from where I sit (white, male, middle-aged, cis-gender, employed, part of a healthy family, and with access to resources … the very definition of a position of great privilege in this society), I need to be disrupted. We all need to be disrupted right now. Because there’s pain and brokenness and suffering and struggle and turmoil and sorrow in our society today … and if we’re not disturbed about that, all we’ll do is perpetuate the problem. 

I want my social media feed to go back to the way I like it. But I hope that doesn’t happen right away. Because if things go back to the way they were before right away, then nothing will have changed. And we need change in our world, in our society, in our nation. 

I really do still want to see silly photos of children, and beautiful photos of outdoor adventure spaces. And at the same time, I want to see our world become more equitable. It's not gonna be easy, though.

The way I see it, this is what my role should be. 1) Shut up, listen to people who have been marginalized by society for centuries, and believe what they say. 2) Call out other white people when they perpetuate racism and hatred, because 400 years of our national history have taught us that white people don't listen to anyone who's not also white. 

It’s not gonna be easy. And it’ll be worth it. 

I wish: a brief lament

I realized a couple weeks ago that I’ve kind of gotten used to most of the lasting effects of my spinal cord injury. If I’m distracted by other things, I just move. But if I think about the ways I move differently now, I notice deficiencies.

Most of the time when I notice deficiencies, I either focus my conscious brain on engaging the muscles that aren’t working right; or I think to myself something like, “I need to exercise that muscle more intentionally.”

The view from as high as we got

The other day, though, I got frustrated. See, what happened is that we were out hiking. We had just started down when we were passed by this guy who had a child in his backpack. He was moving quickly, and with confidence. He didn’t look rushed. He moved really smoothly and fluidly as he flew by us.

I thought to myself (as I focused almost all my attention on foot placement and muscle engagement), “I used to move like that. I wish I could still move like that.”

When I think about how much more extensive my injury could have been, I recognize that I’m ridiculously lucky to be as mobile as I am. And still every so often I lament what I’ve lost.

It's Been a Year

It’s been a year.

It was a year ago today that I broke myself.

What was supposed to be a short day of skiing has turned into a year (and counting) of diminished physical capacity.

It turned into a year of trying to understand that I don’t move physically through the world the way I used to - the way I wish I did.

It turned into a year of coming to recognize who the people are who love me - and recognizing that they love me because of who I am, not what I can do.

It was a year ago that I broke myself.

It’s been a year that I’ve spent experiencing healing.

It’s been a good year.