The setback

I don’t remember falling. I remember tripping and feeling pain in my foot, and then I remember being on the ground. And there I sat for what seemed like an eternity, my left leg out straight, my right knee pulled to my chest so my right foot could rest directly on the ground. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew it was something bad.

It’s not like I’ve never felt pain before. I’ve had my fair share of surgeries, not to mention the now-omnipresent body aches from Lyme disease. Pain has been a familiar companion in my life for quite a while, yet I had never realized how shallow my experience of pain had been.

In some part of my mind, I knew the pain was coming from my right foot, however, I felt the pain in my entire body. My nervous system, so shocked by the intensity, refused to obey my commands.

“Let me help you get to the chair,” my mother said as she ran into the living room where I sat motionless. She had just arrived the day prior from across the country, and I’m silently thanking whatever deities are listening for that benefit of timing. She reached out to touch me.

“No, let me sit,” I barely managed to mutter. My speech was slow and getting those four words out required a lot of concentration. “Ice,” I whispered, “please.”

She quickly turned out and returned with a bag of ice. I motioned for her to place it on top of my right foot.

Then another wave came over my nervous system. My whole body was in revolt over this experience. I took a deep breath in the hopes I could get out another full sentence.

“Can you get me a bag? I think I’m going to throw up.”

When my injury occurred, I had already been mostly homebound for 15 months due to Lyme disease. I was working from home via the internet whenever I had the energy and my symptoms were mild enough to focus. I had fallen into a nice, if boring, pattern. The internet made me feel as though I was still interacting with the outside world even though I wasn’t seeing it up close.

My work gave me purpose, something to focus on every day even during the days when I didn’t feel well enough to do it. I could still spend hours thinking about the problems I was trying to solve and how I might attack them the next day. To an outside observer it may not appear to be much of a life — only leaving home for doctor appointments and spending most of my time online — but it was sustaining.

All the while I was thankful that I didn’t have any other problems to deal with. I was still making money, I could still feed myself, and I was safe in my home. I counted myself blessed to live in a time and place where a chronically ill 30-something man could still live independently. There were people far worse off than me, I reminded myself, and I’m lucky to be living this life.

In many ways, my life was like anyone else’s. I woke up, ate breakfast, and went to work in my home office. When I was done working, I unwound by reading, meditating, or watching TV. On the weekends I’d order a movie from iTunes and do my grocery shopping online. Friends online remarked that if they didn’t know any better, they’d think I was perfectly healthy.

Panic began to set in. I looked down at my foot as my entire body tingled. I knew I eventually would need to move, but for the moment my mind has convinced me that the pain might dissipate if I stay completely still. The physical stillness doesn’t reflect the growing inner turmoil as my mind enters hyperactivity.

My foot must be broken. I can’t walk. Maybe I need a cast. Don’t broken bones in the foot require surgery?!? Oh no, I don’t want surgery. I’m already too weak from Lyme disease, I can’t imagine going through that now. Dear God, please don’t make me need surgery! This is so unfair, I’ve been doing so well with my Lyme treatment, did I do something wrong? Am I being punished? Why do these things keep happening to me?!?

The pain was intense and unrelenting. My mind kept going back to the moment I hit the ground and the warm panic that spread throughout my nervous system as a result of the pain. I didn’t realize something could hurt this much. Then a thought was triggered: you mean I could feel this type of pain anywhere in my body?

My mind dizzied. Oh my God, this pain is possible anywhere in my entire body at any point in time. What if it happened to my other foot too? What if it happened to my arm? How horrible life would be. How can I make sure I never feel this type of pain again?!? I can’t! There’s literally nothing I can do to make sure I never feel like this.

I’ve been living a privileged life without this pain. I had no idea pain like this was possible. I know I’m going to get help, but what if I was in a third-world country? They wouldn’t be able to help me and I’d be left to feel this pain. What about the poor people in third-world countries right now who hurt themselves and can’t get medical help? Why am I so lucky to have been born here, where I can get help while they suffer???

My next life could be bad. I could feel this pain all the time. If I’m reincarnated, I could be so much worse off than I am right now. I might have already had horrible, torturous lives that I don’t even know about! Existence is so terrible. I can’t believe it.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. My mind was spinning out of control, creating disaster scenarios and reliving the onset of this pain every few seconds. Each cycle creating a new wave of panic in me. A few more deep breaths to try and focus.

Okay, let’s focus on one thing at a time. Right now I need to get to the doctor. Mom is here so she can drive me. I don’t know anything about what’s going on with my foot, so let’s not panic until we have some more information.

The Lyme doctor had instructed me to take short walks of about 15 minutes every day to aid in my treatment. He said the walks would help keep my lymph system working and generally aid with the detoxification that is such a difficult part of Lyme treatment. Since I was already suffering from sluggish detoxification, I was willing to do anything to improve the situation. And the walks did.

I ran into a problem on my second walk. Had gotten to my turnaround point when I got dizzy and tired. Dizziness wasn’t uncommon for me and I was quite used to being tired, but now I was outside of my house. I lumbered over to a street sign and grabbed onto it to prop myself up. After a few deep breaths and some calming self-talk, I slowly moved from street sign to street sign, stopping at each to catch my breath and reorient myself to the world.

Eventually I made it home. The first thing I did when I got inside was to order a cane. If I was going to be out walking, I wanted to make sure I had some support for when I became dizzy or tired again. I was proud of myself for ordering it and quite happy with my purchase when it arrived.

The cane was black and collapsible, lightweight but strong enough to support someone twice my weight. On my first walk with the cane, I was amazed at how much sturdier I felt. I hadn’t realize just how uneven my gait was prior to using the cane. The addition of this $25 accessory made me feel more confident in my stride and as a result I walked further than I had before.

I alternated holding the cane in my left and right hands on my walks. I knew that you were to use the cane on the opposite side of any injury, but without an injury, I wasn’t sure which hand to use. Eventually I settled on holding the cane in my left hand and made sure to move the cane forward when I took a step with my right foot. This is the correct usage for a right leg or foot injury.

Mom loaded me into my car and I directed her to acute care. This would only be my second time there, and I counted my blessings that I had once noticed the building while out running errands in my healthier days. It was only ten minutes away but the trip felt like it lasted an eternity, with every bump in the road causing my foot to throb.

I had used my cane to help get me to my car, but I could put so little pressure on my foot that the slender cane was proving too unstable for the task. We were relieved to see several wheelchairs lined up outside of the entrance. Mom dropped me off and got me into a wheelchair before going to park. She came back to wheel me in.

The waiting room of acute care was empty accept for a young mother with a toddler. The toddler had that look on his face that said, “I’m miserable, comfort me.” I smiled and thought to myself, you and me both, kid.

It wasn’t long before I was wheeled into to see a doctor. After poking at my foot to see where I yelled the loudest, he sent me to get some x-rays. I figured this would tell me the extent of the injury and I started imagining how many of the small foot bones I might have broken. One? No, too much pain for one. Let’s go with three. Three sounds reasonable.

When the doctor brought the x-rays up on the screen, he started pointing out the major bones in the foot. I squinted so I could where the breaks were. I think my jaw dropped when the doctor announced that there were no broken bones. This was the first time I’d hear what became a common refrain: sometimes sprains hurt worse than broken bones.

“Never trust an ER doctor.” The text from my brother made me chuckle. My brother is a doctor and always seems not to trust any other doctor about anything. I had texted him a picture of my foot to ask his opinion. He was quick to say I needed an MRI and to see an orthopedist immediately. The previous year, he had suffered a broken bone in his foot that was missed by an ER doctor and he was still experiencing pain as a result. An MRI, he texted, would save me from a similar fate.

The ER doctor hadn’t suggested an MRI, and hadn’t even suggested I follow up with another doctor. Instead, he had sent me on my way with crutches and instructions to ice my foot and take Advil for the pain. Those instructions, my brother continued, will only lead to problems.

My primary care doctor was able to get me in to see a podiatric specialist the next day. He ordered an MRI and wanted me to get a weight-bearing x-ray. I refused the latter on the grounds that my foot still hurt like hell and I might cry if he made me do it (these were my exact words). He said that was okay, I could wait until I felt comfortable enough to do it, he just wouldn’t recommend waiting too long. The weight-bearing x-ray would be key to determining whether or not I’d need surgery.

First, he wrapped my leg and foot in a heavy black boot designed to keep my foot at a 90 degree angle to my leg. While I never actually weighed the boot it felt like it weighed about 20 lbs. I could use crutches to get around, but he recommended I look into getting a knee scooter for longer distances. And I was to put zero weight on my foot and keep it elevated for at least six weeks.

Six weeks. I’m supposed to lie around for six weeks? That sounds awful. And boring. Oh shit, how am I going to work?!? I have to stand to use the computer due to that weird problem in my neck. I’ll have to sit to use the computer. I can’t do that, it will make my neck and arm hurt! Shit, how am I going to work!?? If I can’t work, what am I going to do all day? How am I going to make money?

And if I need surgery…shit. It could be even more than six weeks. Surgery would be awful. How would that affect my Lyme treatment? I bet that would be bad. It would weaken me even further and I already have a rough time recovering from surgery. Oh God, I hope I don’t need surgery. Why is my life so terrible?

I pondered what my immediate future would be like with this injury, and a thought started circulating in my mind. Since I had first been homebound with Lyme symptoms in February 2014, I had tried really hard to keep up with my responsibilities at work. I was still working almost full days, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, and still dealing with the normal stressful parts of my job as a software architect. That meant a lot of planning and, normally, a lot of debating.

Looking back over the past 15 months of pushing so hard to keep up with work I wondered: had I been doing too much? Could this foot injury just be the universe’s way of slowing me down because I was incapable of doing so for myself? The thought resonated deep inside of me.

Eventually I made a deal with myself. If I didn’t need to have surgery, I would take a medical leave from work. I didn’t know all the details, and I knew I wouldn’t get my full salary, but that didn’t matter. If I could go through such pain and yet be spared surgery that must be a clear sign that this was only meant to slow me down so I would finally take care of myself.

Both tests took place a week after seeing the doctor. The MRI showed massive tearing in my ligaments and the weight-bearing x-ray showed no stability problems, which meant no surgery. The worst pain I’d ever felt in my life was now officially labeled a sprain, a word that seemed downright insulting for the amount of pain it caused.

I was relieved to not need surgery, but life was not going to be easy going forward.

The shock to my nervous system was profound. I had achieved a sense of peacefulness prior to my foot sprain through meditation and hypnotherapy. Despite barely leaving my house for 15 months, and being cut off from friends and family, I didn’t fit any definition of depression. I was active and engaged with work, I got excited about writing, coding, and cooking, and my mind kept me entertained with stories. Even on days when I didn’t feel well enough to do much, I was able to just accept how I was feeling and go on with my day. It seemed strange that for a person who had battled depression and anxiety for much of my life, finally getting a Lyme disease diagnosis brought me more peace than anything else.

All semblance of peace left my body when I sprained my foot, replaced with a deep and pulsing fear. Every moment of each day that followed was an unrelenting weight trying to crush me. I would periodically start crying at my predicament. To be weak with Lyme and also to be in this much pain was just unfair. The tears came when the enormity of the situation washed over me, and it washed over me repeatedly, breaking me down to my core.

I fell into a depression punctuated by panic attacks. Spending most of the day in my leather recliner, foot up so high that I had to look around at the TV, I couldn’t help but picture my grandfather in his nursing home. We often found him in the same position, staring blankly at the TV or wall, just waiting to die and not quite sure what to do with himself in the meantime. And here I was, at 36, following the same routine.

Throughout the day I’d have flashbacks to the moment of the injury and the onset of the pain. Whenever that happened, my mind would enter into the same cycle of thoughts. This pain can happen anywhere in your body. There’s no way you can avoid it. Next life might be worse. There are people who feel this pain every day. The world is just people suffering.

Nights were no respite from the torment. The anxiety and circulating thoughts made it hard for me to fall asleep. The knee-high boot that I wore 24 hours a day was so heavy that when I rolled over, my leg would get stuck in a painful position and wake me up. Once I was up, a panic attack would kickstart the bad thoughts again.

With each passing night of little or no sleep, the depression and anxiety grew worse as my body continued to weaken. The memory of the pain kept popping into my mind even as the actual pain subsided. This, coupled with my inability to take care of myself, made me feel more and more like my grandfather.

I had taken such great pride in being independent despite the Lyme symptoms that made my body so weak. Being able to feed myself, clean myself, and generally exist as a grownup was a point of pride for me. I might be weak, but I’m not helpless. Now, however, I was about as close to helpless as I’d ever been in my adult life. My mom decided to extend her visit beyond the initial one week she had planned, and promised she’d stay with me for as long as I needed. In some ways that was a relief, but in other ways, it made things worse.

My depression hung its hat on my helplessness. The voice in my head kept saying, “you’ve lost your independence,” a phrase my grandmother uttered repeatedly in sobs when she moved into an old age home. I now fully understood her pain, and as each episode of a marathon Netflix binge watching session came to completion, I would sigh and press Enter to start the next one. What else could I do?

After about four days of the worst internal torment I had felt in my life, I wrote a frantic email to my doctor:

Can you please give me a refill of Klonopin and Ambien? My anxiety attacks have been very bad since I hurt my foot, and I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping. Thanks.

I was ashamed to be turning to medication to get me through this after I had been doing so well without any medication for so long. I was able to talk myself into it with a single sentence: extraordinary situations require extraordinary remedies. This injury was bad, and there was nothing wrong with asking for help. This wasn’t something talk therapy could treat, at least, not at this point. I just wanted to not feel terrified every day and to get a good night’s sleep.

This turned out to be the first good decision I made after my injury.

Unless you’ve had problems with them, you’ve probably not thought much about your feet. I know I hadn’t. It was only after my injury that I realized just how important my feet were and just how difficult it is for foot injuries to heal. If you want a good measure for how important a foot is, try cleaning a pan in your kitchen sink and putting it away while using crutches and without putting one foot down. It sounds easier than it is, especially when the cost of putting your foot down is pain. That was the first moment I realized I’d need help.

Mom picked up a knee scooter from a medical supply store. The knee scooter is a strange looking device — a tricycle with an extremely large pad on which to place your knee instead of your butt. The intent is to rest your knee on pad and use your good leg to push yourself around. The knee scooter is fantastic because you can actually clean a dish in the sink without putting your foot down and then scoot over to put it away. Problem solved? Not quite.

My place is a three-story townhouse. You walk in on the first floor and see the living room, dining area, and kitchen. The second floor has a bedroom and a bathroom while the third floor is a loft master bedroom with attached bathroom. I was thanking my good fortune to have moved my bedroom to the second floor a few years ago in search of a darker room. In case you missed it, there’s a quirk to my townhouse: there’s no bathroom on the first floor.

The first time I had to go to the bathroom after the injury, I paused and looked at the steps. How was I going to do this? The first thought that crossed my mind was to jump up each step. That seemed pretty risky as I’d have to have good balance (hard with the big boot on my foot) and jumping would take a lot of energy (hard for my fatigue). I ended up crawling up the steps on my hands and knees…it was a pretty pathetic sight.

I realized I had forgotten something once I reached the top of the steps. How was I going to get from there into the bathroom? It’s normally about seven steps, but with a foot that I couldn’t put weight on, how was I going to make that journey? I called down to my mom to bring up my crutches. From that point on, the crutches stayed permanently at the top of the steps for the explicit purpose of going to the bathroom.

I obviously would have to sit down to use the toilet regardless of my intent. Getting up off of it was a challenge, and then I realized I had a new task of getting to the front of the sink to wash my hands. The bathroom is small enough that maneuvering with the crutches was not easy, and I eventually decided to park my butt on the side counter and turn to the right to use the faucet. This too was not really sustainable, so I asked mom to move one of my kitchen stools into the bathroom in front of the sink. That stool would become my destination whenever I went into that bathroom and came in extremely handy, especially when I brushed my teeth before bed.

Getting back down the steps required me to channel my inner three-year old. I sat down on the top step, then went down one step at a time, on my butt. Not the most elegant approach for a grown man but it sure was effective.

It was during this period that I discovered just how frequently I go up and down the steps in my house, and just how much more effort it takes when you are limited to one foot.

Things had been shifting at work and it was making it easier for me to take time off without feeling guilty. The project I had been working on for the past year was looking like it would be cancelled due to lack of resources, so my schedule was about to become a lot lighter and work would be a lot less stressful. At that point, no one batted an eye when I said I was going to take a medical leave.

People probably thought I was already on a type of medical leave because I had been out of the office for so long, but in fact, I was still working from home. Medical leave would relieve me of needing to drag myself to the computer and just focus on healing. I decided to take six weeks off, the same amount of time before I’d be able to start physical therapy.

The process of filing for medical leave and short-term disability was difficult, as I needed to coordinate with three different groups: the state (California has state-wide disability), a company that administered medical leaves, and an insurance company who pays out the company’s disability insurance. I was responsible for coordinating between the three, and all they had different forms that more or less requested the same information in different ways. I kept thinking, thank God my mind is in tact and I’m reasonably intelligent otherwise this would be a nightmare.

My fear around taking medical leave continued to grow. Both California and the company’s insurance company would review my claims to see if I qualified for disability pay. I was scared one or both of them would deny me, and I’d be left for a month and a half without pay. To be clear, I did have savings to live off of, so I wasn’t in jeopardy of being destitute, but all of my Lyme-related expenses are quite high and needing to tap savings to keep up with them was something I didn’t want to deal with.

When both of the disability evaluations came back in my favor, I was entitled to about 2/3 of my normal paycheck. That was enough of a cushion that I could avoid dipping into my savings for expenses, and I then I was able really relax and focus on healing.

It took about two weeks for me to realize it, but going on medical leave was the second good decision I’d make after my injury.

“Why are you crying?” mom asked, running over to me. I was reclining in my chair with my foot up, as usual, when I realized I had to pee. But I was exhausted. Going up and down the steps on my hands and knees several times a day was proving to be too much for me. I was already fatigued from the Lyme disease and needing to exert additional energy going up and down the stairs whenever nature called was wearing my body down.

“I have to pee,” I cried, “and I’m just…I’m so tired. I don’t know if I can make it up the stairs again. My body just doesn’t want to move. Even the thought exhausts me.”

Mom came closer to console me. Her eyes betrayed her stark evaluation of my situation. I was at my breaking point.

“Okay,” she said in her control voice, “I’m going to run out and get you one of those portable urinals. That way, you can use that to pee down here and I can just dump it for you. That should save you several trips up and down the stairs every day.”

Ugh. All I could think about was the indignity of needing to pee into a plastic bottle and then handing it to mom to dump it. The thought mortified me, it was another way I was becoming more like my grandfather…now I can’t even go to the bathroom to pee? I sobbed as my ego was left bloody and battered in a corner, and agreed. The tears continued.

“It’s okay,” mom said in a soft voice.

“It’s not okay,” I muttered as my self-control crumbled, “nothing is okay. It’s really just not fair. I was in a pretty decent place, I think I was handling the isolation and the Lyme symptoms well. It took me so long to be okay with it, but I finally got there. And now, I have to deal with this, too? It’s too much. It’s just too much.”

“It is too much,” mom said, “it’s more than you should have to deal with. But it’s going to be okay. Your foot will get better, you’re just going through a rough patch right now. And I’m going to be here until you get there. You don’t have to do it alone.”

From that day forward, I used the portable urinal several times a day. Mom would dutifully run it up the stairs and empty it, then bring it back down to me. I always felt embarrassed using it and then announcing I had peed like a three year old. It felt so demeaning to be reduced to that, but it did make a huge difference. Limiting the number of trips up and down the stairs allowed me to save precious energy that I could use in other ways.

As often seems to be the case with these types of things, mom was right.

The first two weeks of my medical leave were rough. The anxiety and depression were intense, and I wasn’t sleeping well. I fell into a ritual of taking Klonopin in the morning when I woke up to mute the anxiety and revisiting of the moment of my injury, and taking Ambien before bed to know myself out. Despite that, my nights were an unholy mix of anxiety, pain, and insomnia.

I’d fall asleep fairly easily with the help of the Ambien, but I almost always awoke about four hours later when it wore off. My right leg would usually be in a lot of pain because the heavy boot I wore on my right foot tended to leave my leg in awkward positions as I shifted during the night. The leg itself had atrophied significantly and my foot could still flare up in pain as well. I kept a glass of water and bottle of Advil next to my bed so I could easily dose myself if I woke up during the night in too much pain.

When I woke up, I’d immediately be thrust into an anxiety attack. If it happened in the middle of the night, the anxiety was worse and I’d calculate how soon before I could take a Klonopin (never mix Klonopin with Ambien). Oftentimes, I’d be hours away from medicinal relief and I’d be left stuck in a state of perpetual fear, endlessly reliving the moment I hurt my foot and the onset of the pain. I’d try to calm myself by counting my breaths, knowing that I was so deliriously tired that I would probably fall asleep again. Most of the time, thankfully, I did.

Mornings were, as you might imagine, not a pretty picture. I was often groggy and on the verge of an escalating panic attack, so my first step was to reach for the Klonopin. Then, I’d go to the bathroom to take my first bunch of Lyme medication. I’d typically wait in the stool I setup in the bathroom for another 15–20 minutes, washing my face and upper body, then waiting to ensure my business in the bathroom was complete before heading down the steps. The last thing I wanted to do was go downstairs and then have to come back upstairs for any reason.

I’d use my crutches to get from the bathroom to the stairs and leave them at the top of the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs I’d hop onto my knee scooter and push myself over to the kitchen table for breakfast. Mom would bring my usual breakfast, chicken soup, and I’d grumpily eat it down. After about five minutes sitting at the table, my foot would start throbbing, so I’d eat faster in order to get over my permanent perch in my recliner.

The entire day was typically spent in the recliner unless I had a doctor’s appointment. Those first couple of weeks were spent binge watching Netflix and waiting until I could go to sleep, only to wake up and do it again. My mind was mostly mush anyway due to the lack of sleep and anxiety, so distraction was the goal each day. I forgave myself the hours on end I spent in front of the TV as I knew it wouldn’t last forever.

Things started to shift about two weeks into my medical leave. I had started sleeping through the entire night (still taking Ambien) and that had done wonders for my anxiety and my energy. I was weening myself back off of the Klonopin and found myself more able to engage in conversation. My mind was coming back to me as the pain in my foot was dissipating. Whereas the weeks immediately following my injury had left me as mostly a passive observer to life, I was starting to have deeper thoughts again and found myself bored by watching TV all day.

On the recommendation of a friend, I decided to start listening to the Serial podcast. I had never listened to a podcast before and this one, she said, was really good. I was hooked. After listening to Serial, I started seeking out other podcasts to fill my time. I was now well enough to sit outside for a couple of hours each day, and I would do so with a lineup of podcasts ready.

As a result of listening to podcasts, and most specifically the Tim Ferriss Show, I ended up with a list of books I wanted to read. I started ordering them in bunches of three from Amazon, and the next three weeks were spent learning from podcasts and books.

I learned a lot more about money and the stock market than I had ever known before. I read up on what it takes to start and run a successful business, as well as the different measures of success. I discovered a wealth of knowledge about how we make decisions, what morality really is, and how modern society has altered traditional communities.

This infusion of new ideas into my brain ignited my creativity. Prior to my medical leave, my blog posts had become less frequent, a side effect of exhaustion and lack of inspiration. Now, the ideas were flowing so fast that I kept a notebook next to me at all times to right them down. By the end of medical leave, my list of blog post topics had over 50 items on it.

I had ideas for new businesses, new books, and new ways of doing the things I had already been doing. I completely changed my retirement plans to better match my new understanding of market dynamics and altered how I save and where I spend. My entire financial picture was overhauled during this time.

When I returned back to work, still working from home, I felt like a new person. I was no longer taken any Klonopin or Ambien on a daily basis and my mind was primed and ready for more creative endeavors. My foot was still swollen and still would hurt if I stood at my computer for too long, so I had to start a bit more slowly and wear a compression sock to prevent fluid from pooling. However, I was ready to get back to work.

I really hadn’t realized how emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually fatigued I had been prior to taking these six weeks off. The difference, now that I was back, was obvious. I reminded myself that when I was healthy, I made sure to regularly take time off to decompress and how great those experiences had been. Somehow, when I got so sick with Lyme that I wasn’t leaving the house, I felt the need to prove that my disease wasn’t going to hold me back. In doing so, I pushed myself further than I should have, and maybe this was my body’s way of saying, “enough.”

My foot injury was a significant setback to my health, and undoubtedly set back my healing from Lyme. However, the injury made it so I could give myself permission to take the time off that I obviously needed. I had been pushing myself too hard, and finally taking the time I needed to focus on healing was a positive side effect from what was otherwise a miserable experience. The things I learned are still having a profound effect on my life, and I have no doubt that one day I’ll look back at this setback as one of the most impactful things that has ever happened to me.