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.
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