What I'm Learning
Sometimes you just realize how weak you are.
I've decided that I am not good at dealing with physical injury, to myself. I'm quite capable of helping others in pain or treating others as necessary for physical issues. I don't get queazy and I don't get nervous. However when it comes to my person, I'm finding a lot of flaws.
I've found that I lack, whatever it is, that some people have that gives them the ability to deal with injury and being 'down'. For a while I bitched and moaned doing the whole whoa is me thing, then I felt as though I was wasting the time of my wife and kids and that they spent far too much time having to worry about me and not enough time having fun. That was quickly followed by the internal realization that I was not nearly as bad off as others.
As I sit here laid out with zippy medical advice on how to get better, I think about how much I appreciate my family and how much I love them. Even the things my children do wrong or when I disagree with my wife, I've realized that being out of the game of the family is far more painful and depressing than any issue that has ever arisen. I missed Easter, I missed my mom's birthday, I'm going to miss my sons field trip, and so on and so forth.
I know this is a pity party post and self-loathing but writing this is helping me to understand my character flaws. I always knew at some point God would test me with something physical, mainly because I'm a very physical person. I guess I didn't really see how much I took for granted in life and how many people I judged. Now that I can barely stand up for more than 10 minutes without feeling pain, I realize that maybe I was harsh in judging some and while I think about how I act I realize that I really need to be far less judgmental. I would tend to, in passing, right off people for being what I considered 'weak' or lacking that macho characteristic that makes you a man, at least in my eyes. This is shocking to me, personally. I always viewed myself as the type of person that didn't judge and took people for who they were. I'm realizing, while I lay around like an invalid, that this was a false impression. I find that far too often I made and make quick calls on people and events. This comes to work as well as family.
I'm realizing, slowly, that I need to spend more time enjoying life and less time worrying about paying bills and pressuring myself and those around me to be better, more efficient, faster, stronger, etc.. I was cut from a cloth that you didn't cry about pain, you didn't ask for help and you never admit failure. I was taught to always strive for success and never back down from a challenge both in life and in pain. It is the latter that has caught up with me. I very much brought my current physical problems on myself. I did this by feeling an injury and pushing through it. I continued to push until the point that my body itself attempted to pass out in an effort to stop me. I did enough damage that my body threw in the towel for me. It's funny. As a 'guy' you feel like it is your duty, or at least I did, to hide pain and even if it hurt to keep going. If you weren't bleeding out, keep going forward. I think this was hardened in my mind by my parents.
"The Parents"
My father was born on the streets of Philly and broke enough bones to be a science experiment. He also had one of the hardest upbringings I can imagine. Now me. When I was a boy I was shot with a .22 (long story) my dad didn't take me to a doctor, instead the following morning we drove 11 hours to Vermont for a 2 week vacation. I spent my days swimming with a bag tied to my wound and at night my dad would pick fragments out of my open wound. When we got back he finally took me to a doctor to inspect it. I shattered a bone in my knee on a Thanksgiving Thursday football game. My dad didn't take me to a doctor until the following Monday. On yet another vacation, I had a nail cut into my knee under my knee cap. My dad pushed the tissue back in my knee and taped it up, I never saw a doctor for that injury. All these occurred before I was 16 years old. Now throw in to that mix, my mom. My mother had cancer from the day I was 14. She survived it for 11 years. Watching her endless fight she never once complained about her plight. She fought till the very end, never crying, never feeling sorry for herself, never giving in to pain.
So with that upbringing it was nothing to me to look at pain or injury as a very temporary setback and to be taken day-to-day and not to be thought about. For me growing up, missing school for something "physical" was not allowed. You weren't sick, you weren't hurt. You simply had to do it. That is how I was raised. So, when I injured my leg a month ago it was no big deal for me to suck it up, get dressed and head to work. And I'd better not dare show a sign of pain or weakness. Again, that whole 'macho' thing.
"The Injury"
I put on this facade for about 2-3 weeks. Acting as if nothing hurt, every morning waking to pain and having to stretch at 4:30am to get my shoes on. But hey, nobody saw this and I showed up for work on time. So one weekend, bad leg and all, I went to chop fire wood. I chopped and I stacked and I delivered. The next morning, a Sunday, things felt tight but I figured 'hey I have a day to get over it, suck it up'. Monday I went to work, my back was tight as can be. I had to leave work early, which was depressing to me, to see a doctor. I walked in confident, showing no pain. I remember seeing the doc and being jovial about my plight. The following morning, after being told I had a Grade 2 tear to my hamstring, I headed to work. On Wednesday of that week, I headed to work as usual but that morning the pain was far worse. Driving to work I couldn't get comfortable and when at work I immediately started popping Aleve to deal with the pain. However, I didn't show pain and went through my day as usual. Thursday morning I woke up. Things felt far worse than usual. I walked downstairs in agony, but not making a noise. I turned on my coffee pot as usual, then I barely made it to the carpet before falling on the ground in pain. I couldn't hide it anymore, it was simply too much. I felt cold sweats, I felt pain from my back to my foot. I immediately texted my boss to say I wouldn't be in that day. Little did I know that would be April 1st, it is now April 18th and I have yet to return to work. Eighteen days. For a person like me, who hadn't missed more than maybe 3 days a year to injury in his life, this was and is epic. This doesn't happen, not to me. Even in my current state my father is still asking when I plan to return to work. I've visited a doctor about four times now and the best they've done is give me pain meds. The meds make it possible for me to lightly walk around, go to the bathroom and sleep. That is it. The doctor made no effort to solve the problem. This following week I will go to another doctor and a chiropractor in hopes that I get some answers.
"What I'm learning"
My wife through all of this non-sense has been a Champion. I really can't believe how accepting she has been of my failure and how much she pulls the extra line without complaint. I'm learning a lot from her. I'm learning that she is far stronger a person than I am. She poses the ability to take things in stride and to see the better side of things. I can complain with the best of them and I have broken down at least twice now and she is always there immediately to pull it back together. She really has command of her surroundings, command I was pretending to have it seems. Maybe this strength comes from bearing two children or maybe she had it before. I don't know, but she has it now for certain. I truly envy that. She is very strong.
I know eventually my plight will be resolved, unlike those with harder roads to travel, and I realize that all my whining and crying in the end was just that. But I'm hoping that through this month or two out of my life time I learn something important. I learn to realize what I have in front of me and around me, realizing where I came from and realizing what I want to instill in my children. I don't fault my parents at all and wouldn't change my upbringing for anything. That said, I've learned that the 'macho' road I took, whether directed or not, is not the road I want my children on. Maybe next time when my son falls off his bike or trips on the sidewalk, I'm not going to be quite so quick to say "get up you're fine". Maybe next time I'll check him out and ask how it feels. Maybe that is the first step.
Well thanks for reading the rambling. I guess we all have our 'poor me' moments in life.
I've decided that I am not good at dealing with physical injury, to myself. I'm quite capable of helping others in pain or treating others as necessary for physical issues. I don't get queazy and I don't get nervous. However when it comes to my person, I'm finding a lot of flaws.
I've found that I lack, whatever it is, that some people have that gives them the ability to deal with injury and being 'down'. For a while I bitched and moaned doing the whole whoa is me thing, then I felt as though I was wasting the time of my wife and kids and that they spent far too much time having to worry about me and not enough time having fun. That was quickly followed by the internal realization that I was not nearly as bad off as others.
As I sit here laid out with zippy medical advice on how to get better, I think about how much I appreciate my family and how much I love them. Even the things my children do wrong or when I disagree with my wife, I've realized that being out of the game of the family is far more painful and depressing than any issue that has ever arisen. I missed Easter, I missed my mom's birthday, I'm going to miss my sons field trip, and so on and so forth.
I know this is a pity party post and self-loathing but writing this is helping me to understand my character flaws. I always knew at some point God would test me with something physical, mainly because I'm a very physical person. I guess I didn't really see how much I took for granted in life and how many people I judged. Now that I can barely stand up for more than 10 minutes without feeling pain, I realize that maybe I was harsh in judging some and while I think about how I act I realize that I really need to be far less judgmental. I would tend to, in passing, right off people for being what I considered 'weak' or lacking that macho characteristic that makes you a man, at least in my eyes. This is shocking to me, personally. I always viewed myself as the type of person that didn't judge and took people for who they were. I'm realizing, while I lay around like an invalid, that this was a false impression. I find that far too often I made and make quick calls on people and events. This comes to work as well as family.
I'm realizing, slowly, that I need to spend more time enjoying life and less time worrying about paying bills and pressuring myself and those around me to be better, more efficient, faster, stronger, etc.. I was cut from a cloth that you didn't cry about pain, you didn't ask for help and you never admit failure. I was taught to always strive for success and never back down from a challenge both in life and in pain. It is the latter that has caught up with me. I very much brought my current physical problems on myself. I did this by feeling an injury and pushing through it. I continued to push until the point that my body itself attempted to pass out in an effort to stop me. I did enough damage that my body threw in the towel for me. It's funny. As a 'guy' you feel like it is your duty, or at least I did, to hide pain and even if it hurt to keep going. If you weren't bleeding out, keep going forward. I think this was hardened in my mind by my parents.
"The Parents"
My father was born on the streets of Philly and broke enough bones to be a science experiment. He also had one of the hardest upbringings I can imagine. Now me. When I was a boy I was shot with a .22 (long story) my dad didn't take me to a doctor, instead the following morning we drove 11 hours to Vermont for a 2 week vacation. I spent my days swimming with a bag tied to my wound and at night my dad would pick fragments out of my open wound. When we got back he finally took me to a doctor to inspect it. I shattered a bone in my knee on a Thanksgiving Thursday football game. My dad didn't take me to a doctor until the following Monday. On yet another vacation, I had a nail cut into my knee under my knee cap. My dad pushed the tissue back in my knee and taped it up, I never saw a doctor for that injury. All these occurred before I was 16 years old. Now throw in to that mix, my mom. My mother had cancer from the day I was 14. She survived it for 11 years. Watching her endless fight she never once complained about her plight. She fought till the very end, never crying, never feeling sorry for herself, never giving in to pain.
So with that upbringing it was nothing to me to look at pain or injury as a very temporary setback and to be taken day-to-day and not to be thought about. For me growing up, missing school for something "physical" was not allowed. You weren't sick, you weren't hurt. You simply had to do it. That is how I was raised. So, when I injured my leg a month ago it was no big deal for me to suck it up, get dressed and head to work. And I'd better not dare show a sign of pain or weakness. Again, that whole 'macho' thing.
"The Injury"
I put on this facade for about 2-3 weeks. Acting as if nothing hurt, every morning waking to pain and having to stretch at 4:30am to get my shoes on. But hey, nobody saw this and I showed up for work on time. So one weekend, bad leg and all, I went to chop fire wood. I chopped and I stacked and I delivered. The next morning, a Sunday, things felt tight but I figured 'hey I have a day to get over it, suck it up'. Monday I went to work, my back was tight as can be. I had to leave work early, which was depressing to me, to see a doctor. I walked in confident, showing no pain. I remember seeing the doc and being jovial about my plight. The following morning, after being told I had a Grade 2 tear to my hamstring, I headed to work. On Wednesday of that week, I headed to work as usual but that morning the pain was far worse. Driving to work I couldn't get comfortable and when at work I immediately started popping Aleve to deal with the pain. However, I didn't show pain and went through my day as usual. Thursday morning I woke up. Things felt far worse than usual. I walked downstairs in agony, but not making a noise. I turned on my coffee pot as usual, then I barely made it to the carpet before falling on the ground in pain. I couldn't hide it anymore, it was simply too much. I felt cold sweats, I felt pain from my back to my foot. I immediately texted my boss to say I wouldn't be in that day. Little did I know that would be April 1st, it is now April 18th and I have yet to return to work. Eighteen days. For a person like me, who hadn't missed more than maybe 3 days a year to injury in his life, this was and is epic. This doesn't happen, not to me. Even in my current state my father is still asking when I plan to return to work. I've visited a doctor about four times now and the best they've done is give me pain meds. The meds make it possible for me to lightly walk around, go to the bathroom and sleep. That is it. The doctor made no effort to solve the problem. This following week I will go to another doctor and a chiropractor in hopes that I get some answers.
"What I'm learning"
My wife through all of this non-sense has been a Champion. I really can't believe how accepting she has been of my failure and how much she pulls the extra line without complaint. I'm learning a lot from her. I'm learning that she is far stronger a person than I am. She poses the ability to take things in stride and to see the better side of things. I can complain with the best of them and I have broken down at least twice now and she is always there immediately to pull it back together. She really has command of her surroundings, command I was pretending to have it seems. Maybe this strength comes from bearing two children or maybe she had it before. I don't know, but she has it now for certain. I truly envy that. She is very strong.
I know eventually my plight will be resolved, unlike those with harder roads to travel, and I realize that all my whining and crying in the end was just that. But I'm hoping that through this month or two out of my life time I learn something important. I learn to realize what I have in front of me and around me, realizing where I came from and realizing what I want to instill in my children. I don't fault my parents at all and wouldn't change my upbringing for anything. That said, I've learned that the 'macho' road I took, whether directed or not, is not the road I want my children on. Maybe next time when my son falls off his bike or trips on the sidewalk, I'm not going to be quite so quick to say "get up you're fine". Maybe next time I'll check him out and ask how it feels. Maybe that is the first step.
Well thanks for reading the rambling. I guess we all have our 'poor me' moments in life.
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