Embracing Pain on the Path to Recovery
Re-learning how to live, when you’ve almost lost your life
Editor’s note: This is a story written by Ben, a dear friend of mine. He’s been watching us write stories for Pain Talks, and I encouraged him to get his story out. We’ve talked about his pain, and I’ve watched him bravely limp around. I’ve probably teased him about walking like an old man. I’ve known Ben as a wonderfully kind but rugged Aussie cowboy, a showjumping rider and coach, and an incredible mentor to the many young athletes he teaches. I didn’t know the story of Ben’s paragliding accident, and his path back to recovery. As a friend, I am so grateful to Ben for sharing, and I can see how this catastrophic injury has made him, in some part, the person of courage and strength that we know him to be. — Lissanthea
The first steps of finding your “mojo” when recovering from pain can feel terrifying. All you want to do is let the darkness overwhelm you, and you know you must hold fast on to the rope of life. At times, all you want to do is let go of the rope. Somehow, you tie a knot in the end, and you find the resilience you didn’t know was there. You look up, and you’re still here. Again, you find a way to quell the sensation of your nerve ending being eaten alive. You carry on and you keep going.
Getting to the light at the end of the tunnel might be too far off to be a goal. Many days the goal is find calm and equilibrium in the crazy madness of the sensations you body is creating. The information pathways in your body are exploding. I don’t think of them as pain pathways as they often lie to you. I take one more slow breathe, one more try, and one more challenge to reshape my thoughts. Eventually I find some form of peace, when time seems stuck in my nerves and the pain.
Listening for the little voice of strength inside
From the darkest night can come the brightest day. When I was growing up, I’d read stories from World War 1. There were many stories of soldiers suffering in horrific conditions, and they learnt to see the smallest things of beauty around them. I take enormous heart from those stories, and set about finding the same moments. How those soldier’s minds, bodies and souls could be plunged through those times, and still find reasons to live and maintain any sense of sanity just defied my logic. In my life, there have been times of intense rehab and dark times when my brain and body were screaming at me to stop my exercises. The signals to stop and protect, and not push on, yelled loudly. They were pretty convincing, and louder than the little voice that says to keep going. Deep within, that small voice has to step up and tell you persist, to go one more time, get up one more time, and be engaged one more time. There is no limit to the times the voice has to speak up. There is no choice, that voice must be listened to again and again. It’s the voice that grows stronger and louder with use.
Walking in My Shoes on the Road Back
One of the strongest memories of my recovery is a day when, in my mind, I was off to defeat the world. I was going to show the world how far I’d come in comparatively short time. I’d survived life threatening injuries, and I was getting better. It was the second day walking without sticks to get around, but the first day I was out from the protection of home. I decided to go down to the shops to quickly pick up a few things. No big deal, right? I judged the trip to be a good little expedition, and was meant to be a simple short stroll around collecting a few items.
I set out thinking how amazing I was to have made it this far. My great plan unraveled straight away when parking was much further then I’d hoped, and the shop was packed. I was feeling very vulnerable, and dodging people took much more energy than I’d anticipated. By the time I was standing at the checkout waiting to be served, I was starting to shake and was sweating. I was only just able to control my body movements. I had taken on more then I’d hoped, but I was there and standing and I felt elated. As I was mentally giving myself a High Five, I noticed the checkout person and the woman in front continually glancing in my direction. The look on both their faces was a mix of disdain and disgust. They were keeping their distance because in their eyes I was either possibly drunk or on drugs. Either way, in their mind, I was a bit a disgrace. I wanted to explain what an amazing day this was for me. All the blood, sweat and tears that had gone in to rehab had gotten me to that point of a short trip to the supermarket. In that moment, their faces made me feel ashamed.
Even thought I was succeeding in my mission, my strength and endurance slid away under that shame. By that stage I’d mostly come off some very serious amounts of heavy drugs for pain. I’d done it far earlier then even my doctor had expected, and he was always worried about addiction. I knew their judgement of me wasn’t really their fault, but they didn’t know my story or had walked in my shoes. I took a moment to mentally slap myself in the face and use all the strength that was left from pure muscle memory. I smiled as best I could, and made it to the car where I collapsed before finally being able to drive home.
From Survival to Mental Mastery
To a non health care professional understanding the journey through pain is a confronting one. For me, I had a fight with gravity and slammed into the ground at high velocity. It’s something with a higher probability of happening when you love paragliding. I hit the ground, and was dragged along until I could get the glider under control. When I was no longer being dragged across the ground, I checked that I could wiggle all my fingers and toes. To my huge relief and surprise, I could. I knew things were fairly bad, but at that moment I was alive. I could talk with my fellow pilots who came to my aid, and organised an airlift to hospital.
The next month was a series of operations and blood transfusions. For the first three weeks, all I could do was push a button every 15 minutes to help quell the waves of pain that crashed into me. Every hour I had my observations checked, and/or was rolled over to have the large wound on my back checked for any excess bleeding through the bandage. This caused no end of pain, as the pelvis had external fixes to help it stay in place. These usually hit the side of the bed as I was turned, and I had several ribs broken plus my sternum. It was a blur of pain and wishing I didn’t sleep over the 15 minute marker. If I missed those markers, it was hours before the pain levels got back under control.
Controlling my emotions and allowing the body to unwind and properly rest was an enormous burden to take on. The bed became my protection, but you mustn’t let it become your isolation or dungeon. You need it to be your kingdom, and although you may be a King, you’re not its absolute ruler. It’s more a ceremonial role, and it’s important you come to terms with that. If you shut out everything and everyone, your brain and soul will wither and slowly die. The contradiction is that you can’t let everybody over run your kingdom. You must find a way to be aware of your spark and how strong it is , while you protect and nourish it. It’s part of the small voice that keeps you going day after day.
Lighting Up the Darkness
Every day was a new beginning. Sunlight would come into my room differently. New songs and podcasts were discovered each day. By now, the staff had gotten to know me, and a little joke or a short conversation here or there made so much difference. Even arguing with the night shift nurse about setting my timer off at 15 minutes so I didn’t miss a pain button schedule was an energy boost in the day. Those little interactions, which seem insignificant, made huge connections for the long stay in hospital. I’d made a conscious decision to take each day as it came, and not to get stressed about the “what if’s”. I learnt the mindfulness that I won’t change the present, and only I could shape the future. I wanted to get better no matter what shape that would take, and I had goals to achieve. Giving my body every chance to heal, and getting back in the air were some of the major goals. I had way more life to live, no matter what form it took, and people to live for as well as myself. Life doesn’t give you heads up for drastic changes, or light up every path you need to walk. All you can do is make the very most life is giving you. Lessons are learned and moments must be cherished because tomorrow anything is possible. Regrets and what if’s don’t improve today, and life is all about the present moment helping to shape tomorrow. Keeping on peering through the darkness to find the light doesn’t tell you when the beautiful aurora lights will arrive, but you have to be looking to see them.
Shifting the Relationship with Pain
The next big mindset shift happened 5 to 7 months after I fell out of the sky. The huge challenge was to push forward to the next stage, and change my relationship to pain. I had to change from putting all my mental and physical energies into getting out of pain and coming to terms with it using mindfulness. Instead I needed to switch to help the brain relax the crazy amount of noise flooding into your brain at different times as I started to move again. I was now putting myself very consciously in to the path of pain, and i knew that improvement and the path back to life was though the pain. Not only did I have to be ok with it, but I had to seek it out. It is quite simply the oddest mix of bed fellows. I had learnt to cope with the pain, I had a comfort zone and I was the king of my bed castle. Moving and challenging my body to regain my function was an endless stretch of comfort zones. The moment something new was achieved, another goal would be looming in front of me. The tiredness and mental fuzziness which came with this effort meant not being able to spell my name on the endless forms that were being filled out around this time. The sleeplessness returned , and finding a way back to mindfulness took all the strength that I had.
Putting on socks was a major challenge. The most mundane and simple task showed my loss of strength and mobility, and caused enormous pain. Pulling those socks over my feet felt like a massive life achievement. It was a great moment of courage, persistence and struggle that I didn’t know I had within me. Losing your mental sharpness and clarity makes you confront the realities and totalitarian of your injuries. I didn’t suffer any direct brain injuries from the accident. I did have to spend some time re-learning basic skills to switch back on my intellectual side. It had been lost in the noise of dealing with the blast of information from a nervous system strained to boiling point. Calming that system is one part of regaining brain function, and allows your brain to function again as a healthy organ. Another part is relearning how to have an open mind, and relearning how to expand your knowledge beyond the walls that have closed in all around you. Consciously being aware of the loss of brain function and sharpness that happens with pain is frightening. Brain rehab, like the physical recovery, must be done in small stages. Embracing it will be hard, and possibly at times humiliating. The humiliation can be tough on the soul, yet leads you to discoveries of gaps and recoveries in your function that you may have been blissfully unaware of until that moment.
Keeping on Top of the Mental Monsters
Eventually the day arrives and you don’t feel like your moving with completely flat tyres. You’ve recovered enough to be just better than the living dead zombie. All of a sudden, you have more capacity and capability. Inevitably in the excitement you overdo it. You use up your feel-good juice in under half a day. Exhilaration flows into every cell like warm fire to inspire you back to greatness. If only that lasted forever!
The time when the joy and elation of feeling good subside, and the energy falters, is one of the mentally dangerous times. Feeling defeated and tired punches you in the guts and in the soul. Waiting at the door of your mind is the flood of pain and helplessness that is ready to sneak in as soon as your back is turned. It’s waiting to smother you in a haze of doubt. If you can fight it off once, it can happen quicker next time. It will still be there, but it gets better. It’s no longer the year or months or days it took last time, but five minutes quicker, an hour quicker, a day, a month. Pain makes time stand still, so one of your greatest achievements is to keep time moving. If you can do this, keep moving however slowly, then you can live in the moment.
The day and night cycle is hard to control, but is really important for recovery. A sleep routine where you can sleep at night time is critical. A few sleepless nights aren’t the end of the world, but it makes it so much harder to turn down the brain noise. Letting the noise volume drown you at night is like death by a thousand paper cuts for the brain. Helplessness follows close behind, and weight of fear, anxiety and pain sensations floods into your thoughts. Learning mindfulness to help quell and quieten the pathways to the brain, and allowing the brain to hear the true messages from body was crucial for me. While this can take a little practice and persistence to get benefits from, it is extremely worthwhile. Take that the extra slow breath, release and repeat.
All you can be is true to yourself, and honest with yourself regarding rehab. The time adds up from days, to weeks and to months. You will of course have bad moments, and it’s definitely OK to get down and want to wallow in the mental mud, but please please don’t stay there. Yell, scream and cry against the world and universe, drain your body mind and soul until it’s empty. Then crawl back up and start again, because in the end only you can make that difference.
When dealing with pain, from an injury like mine, or from living life takes huge resilience and inner strength. You learn that you have far deeper reserves of both of them than you ever thought possible.
Getting knocked down is rough, getting back up is tough, but sometimes the greatest battle is staying up. This is what I tell myself everyday, because everyday is worth staying up for. Life mightn’t give you credit to put in the bank to use later, but it does give you lessons to learn and experiences that either make or break you. Train your mind to understand the information it is receiving and don’t let the nervous system control your mood, outlook and eventually your life. What you choose is entirely up to you.
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