After weeks of torture, my second surgery was upon me. I was finally going to be free of this traction device. I was very excited to get this second surgery so that I could get closer to going home. I looked forward to living a more normal life because of reduced pain. However, I was unaware of how much my life was about to change.
The surgery took about ten hours. I was under for over 24 hours. When I finally woke up, I was intubated, as if I wasn’t already tortured enough. I now had to deal with that for the next two hours. Doctors and nurses came flooding in, asking me questions when I obviously could not answer them, as I had a neck brace on and a tube down my windpipe. It was a tremendous relief when that finally came out. Once that was out, they immediately got me walking. They were surprised to see how well I was walking right off the bat. However, to me, it felt very weird. It was going to take a lot to get used to. I remember little of the hospital between my mind blocking out the trauma and the fact that I was on meds stronger than morphine. I remember I was in a lot of pain at certain times during the day when I was coming down from the meds. It was miserable.
I was in the hospital for about 5 days after the second surgery. The day when I got to go home finally came. I was ecstatic. I could not wait to get out of there and get back to the comfort of my home. Plus, I had not seen my cats in almost a month. I needed them. I remember getting emotional when I finally got home as I was so relieved to be home again after being in the hospital uncomfortable for so long. I was unaware of what was in store for me on the road to recovery.
One extremely unexpected part of my recovery was that my left arm was causing me more pain than my back. My left arm was swollen to probably three to four times its normal size, and no one knew why. However, it was extremely painful. It continued to stay like that for a couple of weeks.
Let’s get into the real wrench that was thrown my way. This occurred about a week and a half after I left the hospital. On that day, I learned from one of my doctors that I could not move my neck ever again. At first I had no response to this, I was just mind boggled. About 30 minutes later, I tried to move my neck while looking in the mirror and it did not move at all. That is when my new reality truly hit me. I broke down right on the spot. This brought me down a continuous spiral into depression. It made it much harder to recover.
This depression began with a lot of breakdowns where I would just start crying. My whole life, I just wanted to live a normal life and now that was even further from my grasp than ever before. It then turned into a much more quiet depression. My mind would just go blank. I wrote a text to a family member that took an hour, however; I thought it was 5 minutes. I could not eat, I could not sleep, I could not even play video games without my mind going blank. I was completely lost. I have been through a lot in my life, but nothing had ever made me feel lost. This was unlike anything I have experienced before. It felt as if my life was at a standstill as time moved on around me.
So how did I turn this around, well it’s no secret and it’s not much of a surprise either, it was with the help of a therapist. This helped me to understand my emotions in a much better light. I have gone through a lot in life and video games had always been the answer. It always allowed me to escape reality and put myself into something that I loved to do. However, when this no longer helped me, I had no idea what to do. It helped me realize I was using video games to cover my emotions. It was a suppression method. It worked for much of what I went through because it was not extreme and I was not bottling up emotions; I was just relieving my negative thoughts. However, when it came down to it, all the sadness that I had felt regarding being unable to live a normal life was never really addressed, so they all just pooled up and collapsed with this final blow. Once I understood this, I could better address my emotions. It allowed me to come out of this depression. I once again realized that I was capable of anything. I had been through so much already to achieve my goals, I would not let this be the end.
I adopted a more positive outlook on life. I won’t lie, it was difficult and I still have negative thoughts about my reality to this day. Everyday I wish that there will be some way to restore my mobility. My career in sword swallowing was destroyed. How could I not be upset (I have never swallowed swords and I have never wanted to). However, all of the things I love are still accessible to me. I know I can do anything I set my mind to… except, of course, move my head. Trust me, I have tried. Titanium is stronger than my neck. However, it is not stronger than my will to rise up again after every time I am knocked down. You can say a lot about humans but, you cannot deny the powerful will that we can access. There are so many baffling stories out there about people overcoming the odds. I am one of many. I just want to spread my story to help inspire others in the same way those stories empowered me to continue to reach for the stars.
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