The Fist Step is the hardest

 

Life is a magical experience, but it also includes a host of potential #health trials over which we have absolutely no control. We all have the best friend who has been living the epitome of health-conscious lifestyle and still died from cancer. We all know someone who was caught in a freak accident and ended up on a ventilator, or the person who literally caught a deadly virus in the last days before it was declared extinct worldwide…. I call this all a subgroup of Murphy’s law and I am no stranger to its quirks; after all, I had to rebuild myself from scratch on several occasions before.

It’s been two years since I was diagnosed with a fracture of the spine and ensuing complications. This is a diagnosis that is right there on the same level of terminal diseases (at least in my mind) because of the probability of becoming an invalid. I am all for positive body image, being optimistic and looking at the bright side of things, but any #mobility issue carries the threat of discrimination from society, regardless of all the supportive laws and slogans out there. If you add to it #livelihood #challenges and any obstacles that an able-bodied person could face, then it would be even worse for this person. This is compounded multiple times if one lives in a #conflict zone. But the worst fear is losing #control of your own body and #privacy.

Of course, there are wonderful souls out there who have risen to the occasion and overcome all difficulties by forging a different path against #adversity. These are #exceptional people whom we hear about exactly because they #influence us and become a role model.  We ordinary humans prefer an easier route and if I can be in the best health possible with all my wits, limbs and senses, than that would be my first choice. Deep down we would all prefer that to life changing #transformation through adversity.

Being someone with a high #pain #tolerance - because of course it would be shameful to be seen complaining (another of my pet peeves) -I have been known to ditch a cast after 48 hours and walk with a brace because someone in my family needed help. Most times I have the impression on running on pure adrenaline. I used to be proud of this to the point of imagining it a #heroic feat. At some point friends used to describe me a cross between Wonder Woman and the Iron Woman. I’m not sure if either is flattering, but I always felt I had to live up to that hero #syndrome. So that day in November of 2021 when I was in the emergency room in hospital complaining from difficulty in walking and pain in the spine, pelvis and left arm and leg after a fall, I accepted with a tinge of relief the doctor’s diagnosis that it was just a contusion which would take a few weeks to a month to resolve itself. What bothered me was the phrase “for your age maybe a bit more, but you will be fine”. The #ageism, #mansplaining and #chauvinism heaped at me in one single instance hurt me to the core. When I challenged him and requested an x-ray, he refused and maintained that he was confident I did not need it. Because I was capable of walking despite the pain and my previous experience with sports injuries, I wanted to believe that I was ok. That was the logic I had used to accept the diagnosis plus the idiotic #hero-syndrome.

I did not need to sacrifice activities since many of us were still mostly working from home in that late Covid era.  A few days later I had to travel unexpectedly and this is where it was revealed that my range of activity was severely limited. Plane seats were terrible, I could not lift my carryon bag let alone checked luggage. Pure agony. My leg mobility started to become even more restricted, and the pelvis area felt totally off like I was somehow twisted. Two days later my initial limp intensified and I was visibly dragging my right leg. The number of locations that  became numb in my body increased too. It was the scariest sensation feeling numbness and being in pain simultaneously. I checked myself into a hospital. It had been about  a week since my terrible fall and the trauma orthopedist in attendance requested an MRI and some x-rays after the examination. The results revealed two fractures in the sacrum that reached the pelvis, some slippages at the level of thoracic and lumbar areas of the #spine and a hairline fracture of my elbow with a damaged ligament in my shoulder. The doctor was shocked of how I had been withstanding the pain, let alone walking. On hearing the diagnosis, I became totally unraveled and suddenly every ache I had been sucking in became a waterfall of torment as I had released the dam.  The body has immense capabilities in time of need, but I could not understand why this would be one? It’s not like I was chased by a #saber tooth tiger and needed to be on the move! Why did I not allow myself to dwell on the pain and check again its origin? This is what I kept asking myself. Now I know it’s probably because of how I have been all my life, that damned hero syndrome and #prioritizing #others, #duty, #work, #deadlines and wanting the best for my family and team because this is what I had promised. This  was actually a rope I had used to hang myself with, and I realised it is in the nature of  people to might want to to take advantage of that if allowed, sometimes without an ounce of remorse.

The injury undid all the hard work achieved during lockdown in gaining my fitness back. It hurled me from someone who was preparing herself since September 2020 for the ski trip of a lifetime in February 2022, into a person lying in bed for months and who could not control her right side nor get up without massive effort and pain and we won’t even mention the bladder issues and other ugly stuff. I was supposed to rest and take strong painkillers, surgery was out of the question, a cast was not possible either.  I just had to let nature mend my broken body.

When you are a “certain” age, people immediately imagine that you might have osteoporosis and it gets implied very discreetly into conversations even in the work environment. It was somehow pure chance that I had done a routine Dexa test before the injury which proved that I did not have osteoporosis. But even if I had osteoporosis, I did not need to feel “guilty” about like it was an accusation of wrongdoing?  it is a normal process in life.  Moreover, accidents do happen, and I was both unlucky yet extremely lucky. This kind of injury I was informed can result in severe neural damage or potentially bleeding to death for the time it took an ambulance to arrive at the scene. The average response time we are told should be 7 minutes,  and 90% of ambulances should arrive within 15 mins. From my experience in Libya this is not realistic plus our ambulances are really just two guys who carry a person on a stretcher to hospital. I somehow managed to avoid both fates although I did get  neural damage, but it did not leave me permanently in a wheelchair as I keep being reminded. I still don’t have #osteoporosis by the way!

The first 10 days after the diagnosis, the pain was becoming magnified now that my body was finally resting, and I was not holding it off but rather letting it take its course. I spent more than 20 hours per day in a state of slumber, like a particle suspended in time. At times I thought I was even hallucinating. Then when I started regaining consciousness, I was in terrible pain but refused drugs fearing I might become an addict or worse unable to deliver my work tasks. The pain was #debilitating, the fog it created in my mind was unbearable and I felt sorry for myself at the physical state I reached. I was thinking my life was potentially over, my dreams of athletic prowess gone, my ambitions for a family unattainable, I mean who would want a burden. The lowest point was having my father take care of me at home and drive me to doctors’ appointment. That felt so wrong on many levels. I was the one supposed to take care of him in his old age and not vice versa. I feared my job would be at stake if I could not be on top of everything as I was #bedridden with no clear date of when I will be better. My #mental health suffered greatly as from there to thinking I was headed for the poor house and a life of begging in the street or having to do horrible things to survive or not being able to afford #healthcare  or pay bills… there was one step and somehow with my #feverish imagination I jumped it easily.  

I had neural #compression and  bone marrow edema in the spine I was given dexamethasone injections. I don’t know to this day why did the specialist prescribe (I live in fear of cortisone and its family) but somehow, it relieved the inflammation which decompressed the nerve it was blocking during the fracture and I was able to get myself to limp and eventually walk albeit with difficulty again. In the meantime, I gained weight, started eating all the fattening foods including sugar and chocolates which had not touched my lips for a long time. All the fears that I had about the future, meant I could not even relax to get better, so I came back to work from bed with a vengeance. I think I worked even more than if I were healthy, I was so afraid to be cast aside, as the #weak are usually #trampled by the #strong. As my body healed, the pain would just not go away, and the mobility would just not be taken for granted anymore. Feeling #overweight and a shadow of my former self with no one providing me with a treatment plan to follow because we needed the fracture to close first, I sought doctors’ opinions who all recommended some form of strong analgesic…One of them even joked that maybe I should get “high”. I did not take him up on that as again I feared loss of control and abilities.

Several #consultations later I learned that I had also become pre-diabetic, apparently this can be precipitated with weight gain, stress but most likely the dexamethasone injections. All this change in my metabolism was messing up with how I perceived hunger. I never felt sated. The doctors said I was looking at physiotherapy once my fracture had healed fully. I was afraid to take the time off  to actually heal lest it delays work #milestones or damages my #career or both, especially in the post pandemic times. A work that you enjoy with a team in an organization that you like are not easy to come by in a conflict riddled country. I had to exert humongous effort to concentrate. I had 3 different diaries and agendas for to do lists just to keep track of my tasks and to feel adequate. A seeker of perfection, I feared any criticism that I would construe as failure. So, I persevered, repeating to myself that I was #resilient and had surmounted challenges before so I could perhaps just combine rehabilitation with the job. I did not succeed with this plan as I kept missing my #physiotherapy sessions as work deadlines were more insistent in that feverish phase getting things into place. On the other hand at work I kept resenting that I was working instead of getting myself back on track, I kept #resenting that others seemed to have prioritized not just their health but actually their #leisure time and that somehow I had signed up to help them do that and insist they do it.

By then I was not only having mobility issues, but I was also overweight and tired. My body image was destroyed – at least in my own mind,  and I had to contend with this sinking sentiment of feeling decrepit and less than what I used to be all while being 24/7 in pain and hungry. It’s difficult to keep up the resilient act when at the same time you want to continue growing as a leader and be there for your team and colleagues and family while you know that you are just too weak physically.  People will tell you to snap out of it and it’s not the end of the world and you will recover in time but tell that to the person who is suffering and is visibly distressed bodily and mentally. This person is only seeing a stretching tunnel with no end. It’s a vicious cycle. Sometimes being a good leader is when you know your limits and let go so you can come back strong again. With hindsight, I find it terrible that I feared disruption to my work more than permanent health damage. The agony I put myself into, in response to some human reactions as a result of my situation fueled the misery.  Of course we know that no one is indispensable; if I had died of Covid 19 or by one of the numerous bombs launched on Tripoli, I would have been replaced after a certain time anyway. It’s cold and logical. But I was not dead. The last straw was when on top of everything else I caught Covid in the summer of 2022; I had to accept my limitations without feeling shamed that this time I could not grit my teeth and bear it. So when I felt that my absence will not be as disruptive, I finally took the long term sick leave to mend my battered body and probably my heart and soul  in the process, but I was profoundly #mortified that I needed to do so.

I have been working hard on this healing journey and to rise above the #indignity and #embarrassment I felt at having to check out from work and focus on walking again. I had to get used to strangers accessing my body, hooking weird machines to stimulate the muscles, heal inflammation, increase bone, infra-red, ultra sound, water exercises, lymphatic drainage, magnetic therapy and God knows what but everything felt like I was losing #agency. I had to leave #modesty at the door. Doing some real assisted exercises brought tears of pain and cries of frustration, because movements that used to be normal before were now something to re-learn. I had forgotten normal posture and how to walk without compensating for pain. My muscles were weak and tight. The book of cures was thrown at me, cupping (very painful), myofascial release (pure torture). My body was covered in bruises, some of which have  become permanent alas. I even had something called #kinesiology tape to help hold my shoulder and  undertook #stem cell harvesting from my own body (brutal) and grafting in my knees to avoid a more invasive surgery. I braved my fear of #anesthesia to which I had PTSD and accepted to be anesthetized albeit through the navel – which was the most frightening sensation ever on a cold operating table in a freezing room full of strangers speaking an unfamiliar language in a foreign country, #alone.

I had to carry out Pilates exercises on a machine that reminded me of  evil medieval instruments and yet is supposed to help with my movements without straining my limbs, because I cannot even lift my legs up properly on my own, I felt horrible. I tried to joke at myself and laugh with my various #therapists, men, women and even the interns who were learning on my body, because these were the people helping to put it together. When I got pain relief in my back I hailed it as a breakthrough, when my arm could be fully raised, I cried. It took 4 sessions just to have my arm move 1 cm to the back. When I was able to do 3 sets of leg raises, I was singing the “Eye of the Tiger” anthem from the Rocky movies. When I was able to do a mini #squat and to raise myself up, with extreme pain mind you, I felt I had completed an #Ironman challenge. 

After two months of sick leave, I finally learnt to stop checking my work emails, it was liberating. I could focus and quiet the internal dialogue going on in my head. It’s a testament to all the lessons I learned from my Mental Health First Aid classes which I started to apply on myself.  It’s been 11 months since I am back to work after  giving myself the chance to become whole again. I can confidently say that I will make it, the #tunnel is shorter, I can see the light peering through, I am finally on the road to healing. I still think I am fat, I still won’t be skiing anytime soon, at least not in 2024, I still have pain, but some days it almost decreases to none for a few hours and it feels like I am in #heaven. I still have difficulty rising from bed or from a chair or taking the stairs, but I can do it faster and  I’m told this will get better with my muscle strength increasing. It’s been two years of hell and this #injury has also left me with something called #fibromyalgia.  Uncle Google tells us that it is a chronic disease causing fatigue, all over muscle and joint pain, which may come and go. Apparently, it is often triggered by an event that causes physical stress or emotional stress. I learned that it shares some symptoms with multiple sclerosis but is NOT MS and also that it has no cure.

The hero syndrome, combined with #impostor syndrome and my habit of competing with myself, meant that in the summer of 2022 I climbed  #Mount Etna with diapers on and the help of my walking sticks and also went down inside a cave, I don’t know how I managed that. It also meant that in the summer of 2023 I completed several zip lines and a forest activity adventure without the diapers this time.  I’m very hard on myself and maybe this needs to go.

At my last check up with the #neurologist in August 2023 I learned that neural damage at S1 has reached the limits of its healing and what is left is permanent which means I have to live with the consequences of this injury. Acceptance is not easy, having a disability is not easy even if itis unseen. I also developed some veinous insufficiency in the legs which I need to see a vascular surgeon  and apparently with all the radiology + cortisone +  resultant diabetes I developed cataract (I'm too young for this to occur); the specter of multiple surgeries scares me. 

When hearing these news this summer I was heartbroken and ended up binging on Netflix. I immersed myself in  Korean Drama to the point that now I can watch without subtitles and have come to love the characters, culture and country.

I am bit sad to be honest, but I am learning to work on taking  one step at a time. Firstly, I am grateful that my fractures have resolved cleanly. Secondly that I can move my body almost 80% of what it was before the accident, which is another #blessing. Thirdly I am getting better at physical re-education which means with perseverance I will see my muscle mass stronger, and my fitness level improve, which in turn means I could enjoy life better. When my muscles are stronger and I am more active, I will lose weight and reverse the pre-diabetes. I have already started working on accepting my current image and not struggling against it because I know it’s not my fault, I am not a lazy glutton, it was just an  unfortunate accident. With this acceptance, I hope to translate it into health life habits soon, up to the level of pre-injury. I know it’s not easy to retrain a sluggish metabolism, but I did lose 2 kg in one year that’s encouraging. I am excited about not only the future but also the present. The #pandemic had thought us the importance of living in the now, of family of friends of freedom of movement of not taking anything for granted, and my injury had thought me that self-care is not a shameful or  negatively selfish act. It’s a necessity. I am not going to worry about the fibromyalgia now, I just know that I will be OK. The first step is the hardest and I already took it when I accepted to take a long sick leave and I am persevering by writing this story publicly to prove that having health challenges is not a sign of weakness nor is something to be hidden and that it is unjust to be discriminated against because of it.  I had an accident, which happened to be at work, there is no shame in that, I survived, I beat the odds, had some setbacks and found my way back after a hard battle. That’s life!

In the meantime, I am grateful for having a loving family, amazing  friends and wonderfully supporting colleagues.