Falliversary

Five years ago this evening, I took an unscheduled ride on my rear end down the basement staircase at Recycled Books in Denton after my legs slipped out from under me at the top of the stairs. If I had continued the slide to its completion, I might have had nothing more than a bruised ego...but instead, I grabbed the banister to stop myself, which resulted in one leg stopping and the other one continuing. I felt and heard a loud popping sound from the stopped leg, followed by excruciating pain. A trip to the doctor later that week revealed a ruptured quadriceps tendon and a torn meniscus.

It would take a while, but I would eventually have everything surgically repaired that June, wearing a knee brace until around September and using a cane until October. It felt like a long road to recovery with physical therapy and all that, but looking back, I was really only disabled for a total of six months.

My time of recuperation was not without its inconveniences (most notably related to driving; even when I could angle my knee enough to get behind the wheel again, I couldn't use the clutch until August), but I also gained some valuable perspective as a temporarily handicapped person, and and I learned out of necessity how to slow things down for a bit. But I also found out just how much I was able to transcend my challenges with dogged determination and hard work (I resumed teaching four days after surgery, and I hopped on a plane three weeks later to attend the Sinfonia National Convention, where I freaked out the rest of the Province Governors' Council by hobbling into the meeting room using a walker).

As I look back on the past five years, I'm grateful that I made a full recovery, with only a few visible signs of the procedure, and I'm grateful to my wonderful friends and family who helped me out along the way.

TL;DR: Today is my "falliversary." I can't believe it's been five years. TS; WM (too short, want more): Click the link under "Labels" at the bottom of this post to read the whole thing as it went by, week by week.