Today I went to the surgeon for a fractured leg from a fall a week and a half ago. I also fractured my hand, and that was dealt with-casted and put to rest. The doctor who I saw couldn’t believe my leg or my knee and referred me out to the biggest sports medicine surgeon in the area.
I had my appointment today and was braced for the impending surgery I knew needed to happen and the long road to recovery. I was really ready for it; all the gruesome details, the risks, the long timeline, everything. What I wasn’t ready for, and I don’t think any of us ever are, was to be told never to expect to run again.
Immediately my eyes welled-up, my bottom lip quivered, and I fought like hell not to cry like a baby. For starters, I was a division 1 full-scholarship basketball player who also played on the Junior Olympic team. I have since giving up basketball, been a running and been competing as an obstacle course racer. What I was hearing from the best of the best doctors, couldn’t be right. I came to him because I still needed to be able to run and do obstacle course racing. Instead, he talked earnestly about being active such as walking, and maybe some hiking. Did he not realize this was not an option that I had a daughter, with whom I planned on road racing with for many years to come? I was willing to go through whatever hell was necessary to get back to my level of activity.
I was leveled. My whole life my body has been my temple and its a machine to me, one that I am able to do many special things athletically. Besides I am too young not to be able to run around crazy with my daughter and any other children I might have. I was completely unprepared, and I fe1lt immediately selfish. People have real problems, like they don’t have two legs, or neither of their legs work.
Today is a turning point in my life today…I have been faced with limits. Limits that never existed for me before. We so often take the little things for granted, and today I am numbed by the fact that life as I knew it in my once superior body is no more. Sure, I will be fine and I am so grateful that I will be able to walk and hike. FYI, hiking is now my new obsession…I will hike and I will set goals about hiking, because that is what I do with my body. I am just stunted for the moment, that I wont ever feel a runner’s high again, or the sense of asccomplishment from finishing a race. I will miss mostly the opportunities I was counting on to continue road racing with my daughter.
If I have a regret, it’s that I didn’t use my able body enough when I could have….so many times I could have taken more opportunities to run or race or take my dog out on a jog. So, those days are behind me, much sooner than I ever anticipated. I will rebound and get back into the new groove…just a bit of loss today, at my body that changed much too quickly than I was ready for at this point.
-Corey
Corey's Chronicles 