Today is the anniversary of rupturing my 'Anterior Crutiate Ligament' in my left knee. It was 6 years ago on Good Friday and coincidently it was also Friday the 13th. I am not superstitious, but could and still can see the irony of the 'Good' v's 'bad' and actually having something excrutiatingly painful happen on that day was quite poignant. Poignant because it happened in a flash in haze of alcohol fuelled joy, I was dancing in the kitchen at my friend Nicki's house joined by others we were dancing to Madonna and I sprung in the air and landed very heavily, my knee snapped back and my very first thought was "shit, I've done something really bad".
It hurt like hell, I limped off into the Laundry, I couldn't move my knee, I was laughing and swearing. We decided it was time to go home, we dropped off a friend and I lay in the back of our car laughing, then MD carried me into our apartment. Amazing as I was no lightweight (could have been a Richard Gere moment) except MD wasn't wearing a uniform and I was very enebriated. I then cried (shock) and we went to bed, in the early hours of the morning I woke up very dehydrated. I hopped to the kitchen and felt faint, drank some water then hopped back to our bedroom, next thing I knew I heard MD calling my name and I had fainted in the corner of our room.
He picked me up and got me into bed. We went to the Doctor that day whose diagnosis was "probably a knee strain", well the long and the short of it was, after two weeks of Physio, then seeing a Sports Medicine Doctor and then an Orthopaedic Surgeon the diagnosis was pretty straight forward, "You have ruptured your Anterior Crutiate Ligament, you'll require surgery".
So I endured Physio, becoming fit for surgery, then a knee reconstruction, then more Physio with slight improvement, then an 'Arthroscopic surgery' for scar tissue (knee healed too quickly in other words) and then more Physio! It was a full on 18 months, but so many positive things came out of it, that it really was a life changing event for me. Interestingly we never took any photo's of my knee after surgery or me with my crutches which I mastered so well and actually relied on for a long time. There were many milestones achieved, like bending the knee and fully extending it, losing the crutches and running around an oval.
The other milestones were I assessed my life and at that point of no return,I managed to find the courage to apply for and find work as an Interior Designer again (I had a 7 year hiatus in sales and marketing).
So it has been a rocky road in terms of my career for me, I have stopped and started and really feel I'm behind the rest in terms of where I should be.(Who are the rest? -a ridiculous benchmark) Yet thankfully I have also realised I am now working in the field I love and I definitely have seen job satisfaction because I am doing what I love.
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