Great Article About Overcoming Tragedy

I ran across this article about overcoming tragedy. It reminds me of the countless clients who have done their best to overcome injuries that sideline them from the physical activities that we all love in Colorado. I think Laura has a brilliant future. Maybe as a writer. David S. Hoover

Before it happened, I jokingly said that some days were the worst days of my life. I said it often when I woke up late and missed the bus or got a bad grade. But when you really experience the worst day of your life, your entire world is rocked and a stupid bad grade just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

I remember September 14, 2011 just like it was yesterday, even though now it has been almost a year. Almost. That day I had a cross country meet after a visit to the doctor’s office. I was awake at five thirty in the morning. I was wearing a blue and white skirt along with a blue tank top and hoop earnings. The day of a meet we always dressed up and I remember clearly putting my running shorts underneath my skirt.

It’s normal for a runner to experience knee problems. I ran every single day; I was addicted to the rhythm of my feet. When the pain became too severe in my right knee to run, I told my mom about the pain and my mom decided to take me to the doctor. When I told my coach about the pain he put pink tape on it and said “all better”. I have to admit the pink tape did help a little. But not enough.

“Hey coach, I am going to the doctor’s tomorrow to see what’s wrong with my right knee.” I said the day before at practice.

“Listen, kid, I’m telling you that what your problem is just plain old tendonitis. The doctor will say the same thing.” He said while putting more pretty pink tape on the sides of my patella. The next day went like this:

My mother and I drive into downtown Denver to see the orthopedic specialists who I had seen years before because of a knee issue. Bon Iver plays from the stereo and I itch with anticipation the entire ride. I feel ready to be fixed up and be able to run faster longer. My mother parks on the street adjacent to the doctor’s office. Together we get out of the car and walk into the building. She walks, I limp. We take the elevator one floor where it deposits us into a fancy chamber that reminds me of Hogwarts. It sure is a weird looking design. It doesn’t feel good, like there is something in your eyes distorting your vision, but the room is real. It just happens to be weird.

In front of us on the floor was a purple squishy puddle of fun. It was obviously a toy for children. When I step on the purple, it parts and moves away from my foot like the splitting of the seas. I proceed to stomp around and laugh like a five year old because it’s not every day you see something like that.

“Play with it later, we’re late,” my mom says while she ushers me into a different room. The room is filled with an assortment of people. Most are in wheelchairs or obviously crippled. I don’t fit in. I am just here with a sore knee, not a lifetime of disabilities and pain. We don’t wait long in the room, a nurse calls my name. We walk through a tan wooden door into a strange labyrinth and into an exam room.

“Just sit down on the table. Right, now your name is Laura right?” She asks while looking over my file.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Alright now how tall are you and how old?” She asks, holding her pen at the ready.

“I’m fourteen and five nine,” I answer. I see her write it down. Obviously she can see the rest of my characteristics without asking. She sees a very tall for her age girl; she probably sees that I am athletic, blonde with blue eyes, and sort of thin. Maybe she thinks I’m pretty or look like someone famous, but she doesn’t say so.

“Your doctor will be in shortly,” She says while she walks out the door. I am always restless at this point in the appointment. The part when you have to wait for the big moment, the truth, the scare. While I wait I think back to the past about previous doctor’s appointments. In the past I have had my fair share of meetings with doctors. To start, my mom is a doctor. Which automatically make most of her best friends doctors so at Christmas parties, I meet tons and tons of them. They’re nice. In the past I have had the checkups with doctors like normal kids. I have also had the not so normal checkups.

When I was eight years old, the doctors found a tumor on my thyroid. Thyroid cancer is not common in young kids. I went to my pediatrician; I went to Children’s Hospital and met more doctors. Five came in and looked at me all at once, they didn’t even speak. Then I met an ultrasound worker, seven more specialists, a man with a large needle, three surgeons, and about a million nice nurses. The needle was stuck into my neck by the way, in case you were wondering. Then after one surgery, I was all of a sudden sort of better. The anticipation I feel now is nothing compared to my parent’s anticipation then.

Right before the second that I know my patience will be lost, the doctor knocks lightly at the door and then enters. He is short yet lean, with brown and gray hair. He looks like a real nice guy and he has a warm smile.

“Hello, I am Dr. Riley. Now I understand that you have been experiencing pain in your right knee. Today I would like to take a look and maybe take some x-rays if necessary. Lie down on your back on the table for me,” he says while walking close, slowly rolling his sleeves up. I don’t like when doctors make you lie down because you feel so vulnerable and exposed. “Alright, I am going to just move your leg around and you tell me when it hurts,” he says to me. He grabs my ankle, places a hand just above my knee, and begins rotating it in all directions.

“Ouch! That hurts, yeah that hurts too, yeah oh ouch!” I accidently shout from the pain. Dr. Riley smiles though and forgives my tone.

“There is a fair amount of grinding going on between the bones so we are going to take a few x-rays now.” He says while writing in my file. He then motions me to follow him out of the room and down the sterile hall. I follow, my nerve endings pulsing with the electricity of worry. We don’t walk far before we enter the strange new room. The room is dark.

The room is dark except for some pulsing lights on the huge x-ray machine. A technician who is wearing a name tag that says Sarah grabs my arm and pulls me into the room away from Dr. Riley and my mother. She then closes the door very abruptly. Sarah hands me a lead vest and tells me how to put it on, then she helps me lie down in the right position under the x-ray machine. The machine is huge, I feel like it is alive and watching me. Then all of a sudden it is turned on and its great magical eye is looking at my insides. Sarah comes back and positions me three more times in three different angles. She comes back to me a fourth time to tell me that I can leave the room and go back to the exam room. Which I do in a hurry. I really want to know what’s wrong with me now! I want a quick fix.

I hurry back into the exam room to find my mother sitting in a red chair reading her book. I leap up onto the table and wait once more for the big moment. The scare. I really just want to know when my pain will end and how fast I can get back to running. Running is my life. It’s all I ever want to do and it’s all that my friends do. It’s all that….

“Hello again, I have seen your x-rays and I have some news for you.” Dr. Riley interrupts my thoughts. “Your knee problem is much worse than you or I might have bargained for. I am so sorry to tell you that you have osteoarthritis,” Dr. Riley says, this time interrupting my heart beat. Arthritis? No, not me. That doesn’t even make sense I think.

“What does that mean?” I ask him while slowly trying to process the situation.

“Well it means that the cartilage that should be in your knee, isn’t really there anymore. Most people’s cartilage looks like a smooth piece of cement, your cartilage looks like a badly cut lawn with bald patches of missing grass. Now this means that there is a lot of grinding between your bones going on and this is what’s causing all your pain. This also means…that you’re going to have to stop running so much. You should cut out running and skiing period,” he says slowly enough for me to process. The only thing I heard was “you’re going to have to stop running”.

The world explodes, the ground shakes, a million voices scream and cry in agony, unbearable agony. An agony that I wish didn’t just belong to me at the moment. As childish as I feel doing it, I start to tear up. It’s so hard holding tears back, it’s so hard to look strong. Dr. Riley sees my pain and tells me he is sorry for my loss. To him it is a loss of something I love to do, he can’t see that to me it is a loss of life.

To be honest, I don’t remember the rest of the appointment after that point. All I remember is pain and tears and fears. I remember walking by the purple squishy toy and not even stepping on it. I remember getting outside of the building, walking to the car, and collapsing in tears on the side of the street. I sat down right there next to our car and cried.

A man with a leaf blower watches me cry. When I stare at him, he avoids my gaze, he feels guilty even though my despair has nothing to do with him. Sprinklers turn on and start to get me wet so my mom puts me in the car. The sprinklers hit the car. I try so hard to stop crying, I try to reassure myself that this is not the end of life as I know it. But it is. It is the end of the life I have known for my whole fourteen years of life so far. A life dedicated to tennis shoes and 5k times. My mom begins to drive away from the building. The pain just gets worse the further we go.

When we get back to school, I try to hide my pain and walk through the hallways like a normal girl on a plain old normal day. I feel like I’m doing pretty good until I see Callae, my best friend.

“Laura, are you ok?” she asks timidly. Sometimes is just takes that one question to break you completely down until you have no control. I don’t even answer her, I just walk in the opposite direction. She knows me well enough not to follow. Then I sit through an hour and a half of pure numbing torture. All I want to do is cry, but I can’t cry in front of these onlookers who will tell all their friends later. Sure they’re my friends, but they don’t know my pain now. They can’t be my friends today.

On the bus to the cross country race, I can’t hold in the pain any longer and I tell my closest friends about the doctor’s appointment. Not many words escape my mouth before the cries come in their place. I shake and cry into Callae’s arms. My friends don’t even speak, I know that they’re scared.

That night I had to run a race then I had to ride up to Vail with Callae’s family for the weekend. On the ride up to Vail, I tried to cry quietly. But looking back, I know her family heard me and that just crushes me. Completely crushes me.

Before that day and the weeks to follow, I had never felt more pain. The pain knocked me out, it would come from behind and hit me when I least expected it to. The pain still comes to me often because the loss of running was like the loss of a loved on. The pain hits like a linebacker, it knocks the wind out of me, and the fear of not being able to breathe makes me cry. I don’t run anymore, the pain is too great. But I do believe that I was diagnosed with arthritis for a reason. For some unimaginable reason, the universe doesn’t want me to be a runner. I still have a hard time believing this, but suppose the universe wants me to do something and do something bigger with my life. Suppose it wants to give me challenges like cancer and arthritis so that in the future I achieve greatness. Pure greatness.

Great Article About Overcoming Tragedy was last modified: March 26th, 2014 by David S. Hoover
share

Comments are closed.

Call Now Button