A Multi-Year Trek of Hurt and Healing
Surviving one hundred percent of my bad days
November 2021 — Two years ago, I was riding high. My husband Dennis and I had just spontaneously booked a weekend getaway to Boston, where we were planning to celebrate my birthday with an Alice Merton concert. Fun! So with a spring in my step on November 14, 2019, I was running errands, getting a few things done, and then in one nondescript, very ordinary moment in our parking garage, I slipped on a slick spot. My left knee hit the concrete. Hot pain. Profanities. I couldn’t breathe the pain away, couldn’t think clearly, but I knew to call Dennis. “Um, hi, I need to go to the hospital. I’m already at the car.”
X-rays revealed a broken kneecap, and in the aftermath, among the fog of the pain and the painkillers, I didn’t fully grasp the situation. We met with the surgeon who was going to screw and wire my knee back together, and while I was pretty sure the Alice Merton trip was off, I openly wondered how this would affect the beach vacation we were taking in a few weeks. Dr. Honkamp looked at me with kind eyes and said that I wouldn’t be going on that vacation. Nor would I have a spring in my step for a long time. (He didn’t tell me that last part — I’d learn it on my own.)
And that’s how I found myself on a surgery table for my 49th birthday instead of at a Boston rock club, and how I found myself in the following weeks trying to live with a leg that I didn’t recognize — one that didn’t bend, couldn’t bear weight. Crutches are exhausting, and I avoided the work of going anywhere. And then in December, I lost my grandma, and I had to figure out how to go to a funeral that I really didn’t want to face, on crutches or otherwise.
You do what you need to do. What I probably didn’t need to do at the time was bring a new kitten and then a new puppy into our home. That timing was admittedly questionable, but I needed joy. Shockingly, Dennis didn’t stop either of these decisions. I think he just wanted to see me smile again.
About that same time, I started physical therapy, and worked on getting back my strength and my range of motion, which were almost nonexistent. By February 2020, I was finally done with crutches, but I’d been struggling to return to work travel on a knee that wasn’t travel-ready. I took two trips and spent them mostly looking for ice and any spare moment to rest and put my leg up. Would things ever be easy again?? I didn’t want an answer to that, didn’t want to know.
In March 2020, things were starting to feel incrementally more normal. And then in a truly unbelievable moment, I was walking down the sidewalk a few blocks from home, missed a curb and broke my right ankle. My good leg. I broke a bone in my good leg. “I can’t do this again,” I sobbed to Dennis. But saying words aloud doesn’t always make them true.
In that same month, my cat had a traumatic thing happen and lost one of her eyes. And so she and I hunkered in, she with her cone of shame and I with my boot of shame.
And then a global pandemic arrived. I mean, why not?
We all watched in disbelief as everything around us shut down, and while some were freaking out and buying all the toilet paper, I was quietly exhaling a breath of relief that I somehow had been granted some time to rest, to heal. I embraced it, leaned into it. I was ready to shut down anyway, so when societal shutdowns were ordered, I was already there.
And so I rested. And I went to PT. I did the work. I had the time. (I also watched Tiger King, just like you, and wondered if I needed to wipe down my groceries.) I have a weird affection for those strange early days of Covid. I mean, I bought a frickin’ ukulele, and found some cute guy on YouTube to teach me chords. What the what was that?? Surreal.
Days turned into weeks turned into months, as they do, and in summer 2020, I had another knee surgery, this time to remove some hardware. There are some things we don’t need in our lives forever. They hold us together for a time, and then their purpose is fulfilled and we’re better off without them. I don’t miss those damn wires.
Surgery #2 was a little easier to bounce back from, and my ankle was getting stronger too. But it was more apparent that returning to work travel was still on the far horizon of Covid, so I settled into the reality in front of me, setting up new routines at home and focusing on my own wellness. I took online classes, read, exercised, cooked dinners.
Unemployed introverts — say what you want, but we knew what to do with ourselves during lockdown. (I did give up my ukulele aspirations when singing and strumming at the same time became a challenge too great for my limited talent.)
I was figuring out a few things, but I hadn’t yet found a way to approach my much-dreaded fiftieth birthday, which was getting unavoidably closer by the day. And so I defaulted to escapism, which has always been my favorite strategy. We booked a trip to remote Great Exuma in the Bahamas. I intended to spend my birthday off the grid, drinking rum punch on a postcard-perfect beach, and I didn’t care what the CDC thought of it.
Days before vacation, amid an outbreak of new Covid cases, the Bahamian government had their own thoughts, shutting down most businesses on the island and cancelling all inter-island travel. With steely determination, I rebooked us on a direct flight and went anyway. The first two days at our quiet little cottage on the beach were gorgeous and glorious, and then the gale-force winds arrived on my birthday. Perfect.
And this is how it came to be that I spent my fiftieth birthday wrapped in a hammock cocoon, sheltering myself and my semi-cold Kalik beer from the blowing sand, on a shut-down island, listening to the esoteric ramblings of a Matthew McConaughey audiobook in my ears, and trying to reconcile how I got to fifty so much faster than I ever imagined.
It was a weird birthday, and the tropical storm stuck around for a couple more days, but I could walk and I could be on a beach trip, so I counted that as a definite improvement over the prior year. Maybe we were finally getting somewhere.
And on these stronger legs, I marched into 2021 with optimism. I felt good; healthier habits were in place; Covid vaccines brought fresh hope. I was exercising regularly and my knee thanked me for the dedication. I had full flex of my leg, and the full flex of my spirit was returning. But you never know what’s around the corner.
In April, on what was supposed to be a fun trip, my closest friend of five years abandoned me — like, literally left me behind and on my own in Central America, without another word. Sound unreal? It was. That cut deep, and I would have happily faced another bone injury instead. I knew how to recover from broken bones.
I did the only things I knew how to do — I kept breathing, kept moving. I took care of myself as best I could and tried to regain equilibrium. I desperately wanted to get over it faster, but like bones, broken hearts mostly need time. And I’m done wishing for time to move faster, so I’ve had to be ok with patience instead.
In June of 2021, work trips finally returned, and the travel brought comfort and normalcy. That same month I went to my first in-person concert since October 2019, which was as close to a healing potion as I could imagine. I then started making more time for creativity, for writing, for photography, for road trips, for fun, for festivals, for more music. Sometimes you have to just do the things that move you toward the place you’d rather be.
November 14, 2021 — Two years have passed, and I feel good. Content. Optimistic. I just started a new role with the company I love, and I’m excited for a fresh chance to grow. I’m at peace with my upcoming birthday. And in a couple weeks, D & I will board a plane for an Exuma vacation redux. Sometimes you have to call a do-over… especially if you still hold flight credits from the first take. I’m hopeful. And if those harsh winds show up again, I know where my hammock is, and I’ll retreat there again if I need to.
They say you can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one. I’m ready to turn the page, and I do feel like this current chapter is wrapping up. But I like poetic endings, so I’m really hoping the final sentence is an Alice Merton concert.
No need to offer any condolences or sympathy. I’m past that. We all have our injuries. I’ve survived 100% of my bad days, and if you’re reading this, you have too. Kudos to us.
May 2024 — I finally got my Alice Merton concert. In Portland, Oregon. Opposite coast, befitting a bookend.
