About Resiliency

As I mentioned yesterday, today my grade got lectured at about resiliency. Well, up until we actually arrived in the library to be lectured about resiliency, everybody was hoping that today would be a surprise bowling trip, including a decisively not-able-to-bowl myself. As it turns out, bowling did not happen, or come close to happening and we were deprived of fun for the morning.

That would be because, instead of going bowling or playing laser tag or doing some other fun activity, we got talked to for a sadly literal three hours about resiliency. To be perfectly honest, I did not pay attention particularly well. I picked dog hairs off my sweatpants. I played with and removed the bandages from my ankle incision, exposing the incision to the air for the first time (it had some distressing amounts of goop on it…I did not approve). I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the floor. I stared off into space. I fidgeted in the wheelchair. And I listened. Occasionally. Long enough to gain some concept of what the talk was about, at any rate.

Now, I've never really given resiliency much thought. I figured I wasn't bad at it, given my previous experiences with surgeries and recovering from surgeries, getting back on my feet and walking. As it turns out, my conception of resiliency was more or less accurate.

According to the wonderful Dictionary app on my computer, resiliency is the ability to recovery from or withstand difficult circumstances.

Before continuing this post, I think it's really important to note that there are millions of people out there who are more resilient than I am, billions who have dealt with more difficult circumstances than I have. In short, I have no special knowledge about resiliency. I am, for the most part, a completely ordinary person (or at least I think of myself that way). But at the same time, given that this blog is the story of my recovery after having this frame, I probably ought to address the subject.

So, how do I deal with recovery?

There are a couple answers (of course). Answer number one is that recovery really hasn't been that bad. As I've said before, I'm more or less completely off of pain medicine now. I no longer use the wheelchair at home. So this hasn't been that hard to deal with.

Answer number two is that there have been some hard, frustrating moments. There was a fairly brutal night at the hospital after I got behind on pain medications. There were my problems with the blister on the bottom of my foot. Some of the pin sites are still a bit sore. And then there's the issue with the sheer bulkiness of the device. I deal with these moments mostly by having focusing on the fact that I will get better and have made ridiculous progress. I suppose you could call it faith, but I think it's more like knowledge. I'll get better soon. Knowing this makes dealing with smaller temporary adversities much easier.

Answer number three is consoling myself with the knowledge that at the very least I won't be able to remember what the discomfort felt like and that once this whole frame endeavor is done with I'll just have some pictures, some scars and some isolated memories to cling to. Heading into the surgery, when I knew full well that this could be a very painful experience, I used this tactic to console myself. Well, this tactic and the fourth tactic.

Answer number four is recognizing the progress I've made from before starting the surgery. My leg, after all, has been corrected by 11˚ and the weight-bearing axis has gone from alarming to normal. As I said, progress.