The rhythms of Healing

Almost two months past surgery and Ive thankfully graduated to walking with a removable boot cast, being mostly independent around the house. I can finally drive again and I’m working with a physical therapist to strengthen my ankle and associated tendons and bones.  I relish my daily showers and find joy in small steps forward, such as bringing in the mail and morning newspapers.  Using a shopping cart as a walker, I ventured out to Trader Joe’s and was able, carefully, to transfer the packages to the car trunk and then a rolling shopping cart into the kitchen.  And yes, exhaustion crept in and it was clear a nap would be next on the agenda.
So I go through the days with increasing optimism, looking forward to a nearby time when walking becomes an unexamined routine and forgetting something on another floor an “oops” rather than an “expletive deleted” as I trudge back up or down the stairs slowly.
I find it hard to settle into a rhythm, a steady movement through space and time.  Waves of sadness can devour me, leaving me longing for the nearest bed or couch.  Will this ever end?  Will I ever be able to move through space led by my muscle memory and not my hyperactive awareness of space and its many roadblocks?
On a good day, moving through the house with purpose and plans to pay bills, do the laundry, read a book or write a poem, I’m filled with optimism: look how much I can do now. I’ve been cleaning out old files, work long finished and out of date; reports written for programs I helped start to provide mental health services to children and their families; planning for and overseeing the construction of a new, state of the art pediatric rehabilitation hospital; minutes of committee meeting to create a way to transform one Maryland County’s drug abuse services from jail time to rehabilitation.   I can still think, and stay invested in making improvements in health care, turning my focus to adults like me, facing new sets of challenges. 
And then it hits me without warning and I suddenly feel helpless and hopeless, looking at how much I still can’t do given an aging body and a very broken health care system. When I’m lowest, I try to remember what a young boy said to me when he was leaving the hospital with the prospect of a life lived while tethered to a ventilator so he could breathe.  “I can do more things than I can’t”. 

So can we all.  Carefully, one foot at a time, one task at a time, one life breath at a time.

September 7, 2014