how did i end up here?
you know how i am always talking about nevering knowing where you will end up? i don't necessarily mean in life but in a month, in a week. this year can definitely be defined as unplanned, unexpected in many ways. life has this beautiful and mostly annoying and anxitey ridden way of keeping us on our toes and holding our breaths.
earlier this year my left ankle started having more episodes of stiffness and unexplainable pain. for 5 years i've dealt with a foot that couldn't flex/rotate like it's other partner, couldn't wear heels and was in dire pain after every day of extreme sports/long days of walking (even just existing). in high school, i had seen doctors who have diagnosed my foot but never had i found someone who i believed truly understood what my situation and was definitely not comfortable with them operating on my foot. keep in mind that i've never broken a bone or had surgery so the idea of surgery was never really something i wanted from the beginning.
in april, my parents were moving houses and the house they moved to happened to be owned by a doctor who worked in children's pediatrics and was very familiar with my foot case. as the story is repeated over and over to friends and family, we cannot emphasize enough that it was a total Godsend. i mean, what are the chances that my parents new landlord is a pediatric doctor who specializes in my condition but also knows other doctors who are even better (and can actually work my case because i am over 18). so, late april i flew back home for a week to meet with a doctor who was very confident of my situation and could perform surgery with a quick recovery time. also, i found out that since my bones had been rubbing against each other for so long, my foot was starting to show arthritis and that was devastating because guys, i wasn't even 23 when i found that out...
realizing that when i returned to new york with only a few more weeks in between returning back home, i started panicking. not in my wildest dreams had i planned on stopping mid-job, mid-summer, mid-anything and moving back home for a surgery where my family would have to be there 24/7 for me as i relearned how to walk. i started breaking down because i knew i would be missing out on my first summer spent living in new york. honestly, i was sad that i couldn't spend my birthday in the city with my friends. most of all, i was afraid of telling work that out of the blue, i was taking a 2 month medical leave to have this surgery.
i'm learning that bravery takes a lot of courage and that courage comes from Jesus but also a huge support system. after gathering up the courage to tell my boss and the rest of my co-workers, life started to move really fast. i flew back home on a tuesday, had surgery on that friday and basically spent the remaining time recovering and going to physical therapy.
the first two weeks post surgery were difficult but when are they not? i am a lot heavier on one foot that i thought i was. oops. i took for granted how evenly distributed my weight was with both feet and i think we are all guilty of that. you don't realize how much you can't function as a human being when you only have one working foot/leg. i was crawling at points when my knee hurt too much for my knee scooter.
i know this is a long post. bare with me.
*fast forward to july* my short disability was coming to an end and even though i wasn't 100% ready to return to new york, i did. guys, it was hard. it is hard. i struggled a lot. i still struggle. i cried in public, like a lot. i still come home and feel defeated because i could be doing something way more fun that laying in bed with my foot up. i was ashamed that i had to pull out my cane because i couldn't stand to take another step. i'm so so thankful that my stride is way more fluid and i don't need a cane. it took me to literally be put under the knife for me to realize what self care meant and what it looks like. my incision is healed but i still have a big scar. i still cover it with bandaids which have become part of my weekly budget. i have to stretch every morning and night because it really shows when i don't. i know i've still got a ways to go but seeing how in retrospect my body really needed this, i know it wasn't for nothing.
as i close this post, i just want to thank the real superheros: my family. it wasn't in their plans to spend their summer taking care of me. i'm 100% sure they would have rather been doing other things but they put my needs first and i can never thank them enough. i thought last year was the last summer that i would officially be sending with them but i'm glad it wasn't. family will always be family but we are at that stage where we are also friends. thank you so much for being there with me for this road bump; i wouldn't have chosen anyone else.