Injuries Suck!

To be quite honest they really suck. No hard working person likes to be told to slow down or else . Injuries happen to all of us. From the office worker to the trades person to professional athlete. Everyone gets hurt. Our bodies despite how miraculous are a very poor functional design. It's a vulnerable and is pretty much what keeps medical professionals in business.

Im sure many of you reading this  have experienced a setback when it comes to your body and the pain and suffering that comes along with it.

On a personal level I have been an athlete my whole life. My Injuries started when I was a kid. First with Osgood-Schlatter a bone growth causing more kneecap dislocations in my knee  through my life then my age of 31. Ive also torn my shoulder labrum, herniated 2 discs  in my L4 and L5, torn my ACL MCL and menisci, torn my pectoral muscle and most recently tore my Achilles tendon. Those are just the major ones. It does not even address concussions and pulls, strains and sprains.

Why does someone like me keep going? The first surgery is enough for most people to call it a day and just find a new path or just stop doing physical activity all together. 

In this blog we will talk about what happens in the first stages of injury, the recovery and growth when healed and lastly the blessing that an injury can give your life. 

So it happened. You were playing some basketball with your friends after work or you were in an accident and you tore something. Let's go with your ACL for the sake of this blog.

 PAIN. That’s always the first thing. It's the only thing on your mind. Pain. For some of us we can manage it better than others but first comes the pain then the swelling! Once you are able to manage that pain its always followed up by worry. What happened? Is it serious? Then we pullout or trusty little phones and google our symptoms. By this time we have a fully torn knee combined with some yellow fever after a good session on Web MD. Next comes anger. Oh the horror. Why ME? All bad things happen to me ;( I’m always the unlucky one. We get angry we can’t play sports, possibly go to work, we may need surgery or cannot even drive for a while. 

The anger lasts a long time to be honest. It may go all the way with you till even after you're fixed up and healed. This really depends on your mental strength and your ability to let things go. After we get angry we accept. By now we have seen a decent DR and there is a good idea this is serious. It sucks yes but ligaments and tendons just don’t fuse back together. We need some surgery. In the acceptance phase we still have that denial as we look into alternative treatments like stem cells etc. but it all comes back down to going under the knife or for other injuries months of healing and rehab. 

So great we accepted what happened and our situation and now we have a date for surgery or recovery and we just have to wait it out. This to me is the worst part. Its why I have always pushed surgeons and luckily for me as an athlete I’ve been able to not wait for more than a week or 2 to get a surgery. Connections help! Anyway back to the waiting. It sucks. You have to sit around limited with play/your job and wait for a date some person can cut you open. Like a big meeting or game this  is the only date in your mind. The next few weeks all lead to this big date. 

For me the recovery starts the day of that surgery. You wake up, get ready and head to the hospital. You get in your nice fancy hospital gown and basically sit there waiting for someone to butcher you. Nerves. But at the same time a sense of relief. This will be over soon. It's time to make the walk. You walk to the operating room. You lay on a table in a room that is set up like the  evil crazies in the movie Hostel. The anaesthetic  guy comes in befriends you. Asks you some questions and then……BLACK

Eventually… hopefully lol you wake up. Groggy and in a bit of pain depending on what you had done.  But  if I can share one thing after all my surgery experience. In hindsight this is the best time. It was the beginning of the end. At this point you have to do a lot of dumb shit to end up back in this same spot. 

There may be a week or 2 of really crappy days. Just watching tv eating and sleeping in pain and discomfort. But what you will notice after a week or two is that things got better. With therapy so advanced now days physical therapy should begin days after the surgery.  If you take anything away from this I want you to take this. The therapy is the gift.  For me how an individual handles physical therapy really shows a lot about who they are as a person and what value they really put on their body. I have met and worked with people who have had some major injuries from just regular life. And they come to me years and years later and say they still have issues.  When I ask how therapy went they most of the time said they did some for a few months and then stopped when it was feeling normal. Il explain shortly why this matters so much. 

Now months have passed you put in hours of therapy and you're ready to return to normal activity. You're nervous at first but as time goes you get more comfortable running. Your jump shot feels good. Finally you play that first pick up game since the injury. You're a bit tired but it went well. This right here is when your recovery is done. On that car ride or bus ride home. That feeling. The euphoric feeling you get after a good workout. You're happy. You  got hurt on the court but now you're back. Life is good again. This is when the recovery is over. 

So remember not long ago I talked about how physical therapy matters. Heres why. Here is the gift. In life we get very little. We give a lot  and get very little in return. But here. If you took the time. If you listened to the therapists. If you did extra on your own. If you worked every extra moment you had getting better. Here is the gift. When your body failed you you fixed it and had the determination, grit and patience to put it back together. That  right there will carry you through life. 

When chips are down and shit is just not going your way. You can look back and say I had the toughness to get through that.. I can get through this. It does not even have to be another injury.  It can be just life. And that is the blessing. The blessing you can now have for the rest of your life. And it's a great blessing. Because it's so unique to each and every person. So when I hear a person doesn’t take the rehab seriously I feel bad. Not because we can’t fix the issues there are having. But I feel sad that they never got to have that feeling. The gift and blessing of knowing what it's like to overcome when your body fails you.

Before I leave you I want to add this. As someone who has had multiple setbacks with injury in my athletic career. Each injury was a blessing. Every time I was forced to take time away from sport I learned something new. I was able to do other things I wanted to always pursue. I was able to start a business. I was able to find an amazing hobby I love and keeps me sane with building lego models. I was able to spend more time with my young family.  A setback is merely and opportunity waiting to happen. 

So if you're reading this and your recently had a setback. Look forward to that blessing after the rehab. And start thinking about things you have always wanted to pursue and pick one and do it. If you have downtime the best thing you can do with it is something new.