Good morning Steemians!
As I mentioned in my last post, I want to talk to you about an injury I sustained whilst climbing, how that effected me, how I coped with recovery and my ongoing challenges. I feel this is more than simply one man's recounting of personal experience but more that it serves as an analogy showing a few mechanisms of how to stand up and brush ourselves off when the goings get tough.
Step back 4 years, I was climbing stronger and better than I ever had. I was in good shape and making the most of my health climbing mountains in Scotland, mountain biking and competing in local climbing competitions. At the same time in my working life my property business was going from strength to strength and I had started on plans to open my own climbing centre. Life was good.
During semi-finals at a local comp I swung out from a climb, fell and dislocated my knee. Surprisingly the pain from this wasn't too severe at the time, so initially, once it was put back in place I didn't think things were looking too bad. and, other than swelling and a little pain I got through the next few months with minimal disruption to my working life. However, I was loosing my strength rapidly. Moreover, through lack of activity I was finding that I was questioning myself, "why am I pursuing this career?" "what is it all for?" or "is there any meaning to what I am doing?". It turns out that when you are stripped of the ability to follow your passions, the things you do day to day begin to stand out as all the more mundane. On the plus side, these questions lead me to sell the property business and put all of my efforts into the climbing wall. If I couldn't climb well anymore then at least I could immerse myself in it through my work. Alas, I found purpose again! I put my all into it, met some great people along the way, and after a few set backs the dream of owning a climbing business finally came to fruition.
Once we were open, I started easing myself into climbing again, all of which was going great, until out of the blue while walking down the road my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) ruptured. And so started the biggest test of inner strength as I underwent reconstructive surgery to remove damaged tissue and use a hamstring graft to replace the ACL.
The surgery was a success but the pain was unreal! As a result I was taking Ibuprofen, Oramorph (oral morphine) Dihydrocodeine and paracetamol every day for weeks and weeks. I became depressed, lost in myself detached from the people around me and grew more and more angry that I couldn't do things for myself.
Eventually a good friend of mine save me from these painkillers that were sucking my sanity, my ambition and my character from me. He came round, handed me a joint and told me to try not taking the painkillers (at least not the strong ones) and smoke this instead. I couldn't believe it! that night I did exactly that and slept better than I had for months. and even more astonishing was that within a week I had stopped taking all pain killers and within another week I had stopped smoking. My pain was still there but it was mild and bearable.
The next 6 months took me through a gruelling regime of physiotherapy, strength and mobility training. Until finally, 8 months after the operation, I found myself stood at the foot of my own climbing wall, climbing shoes on my feet and chalk on my hands. I was filled with a mixture of fear, excitement and hope. I came back down from that same first climb filled with self doubt, disbelief and sadness. Could I really have become so weak? and more importantly, could I really get back to where I once was? or even close?
Gladly, the answer was yes. But it took a lot of time, a lot of determination and most importantly discipline. I had gotten heavy. so I had to change my diet, I was weak so had to train, and I had become scared of falling which was and still is my biggest hurdle.
As I write this now I feel the injury itself sounds very trivial, people around the world go through the same kind of thing every day and worse, but not many reach out and talk about it, so hopefully this can serve as an aid to some of those people. And to the rest of you, wether its in business or just in life. Remember to always believe in yourself, push through barriers, if you find yourself questioning yourself search for the answers and make changes if you can. And even if we never get all the way back to where we were before we fell down, there is a lot we can learn about ourselves as we learn to pick ourselves back up again.
For anyone who made it to the end of this blog, thank you! For anyone who has any questions please feel free to fire away.
Heres a few photos of the last few months. Times are good once again and life feels a lot more wholesome.