Denial is a Survival Skill

On Christmas Eve 2001 I was teaching an upper level semi-private ski lesson at Angel Fire Resort. Three and a half hours later I re-engaged in the world to find myself being driven down the mountain to the front emergency department. I was sitting up without neck support in the back of a Subaru on a bumpy road.

I walked into the ski patrol office where I had to pee in a cup and complete an accident report. A report I got entirely wrong because it ended 20 minutes before the accident. We had to come back to the name and address part. I got the name off my name tag. They released me to drive home.

To make a long story short I was hit at high speed by a Oklahoma resident who had drunk lunch, tossed into the air, and landed on my head. I suffered a CBT, three compressed disks in my neck, and a complex injury of the rotator cuff on my left shoulder. Guess what got the most attention once everyone decided I was not going to just die or go away?

Even I paid the most attention to my head injury. And somewhere along the two and half years of medical appointments it was decided the pain in my left shoulder was probably not just because of pinched nerves in my neck. By then I pretty much had compensated for limitations in movement which was good since it was decided surgery might just make it worse. A course of extensive physical therapy was ordered. Mostly it worked.

Some days I believe none of that happened. Mostly life is good and I am functioning within acceptable parameters, as Data would say. Then three days ago I slammed the pickup door shut and knelt in pain. They say you cannot remember pain. If you could then there would be no babies. You remember it is painful, that you could not move that arm, you could not breathe.

Followers of this blog know I don't do idle well. And yet that is what I have had to do to get on the road to recovery again. Fortunately I can remember all the physical therapy exercises so I begin again restoring strength and mobility.