#patience – Something From Everything

The fall was entirely my fault.

It was July, and our decision to camp near Lake Chilliwack was centered around the surrounding mountains and extensive hiking options. The day’s excursion was to the top of nearby Elk Mountain. It was only 3.5 kilometers from the parking lot to the summit, but hidden in that very pedestrian sounding distance was a demanding 800 meter elevation gain.

At the start of the trailhead I selflessly offered to take the leash for our excited pup, and selfishly attached said leash to the waist strap of my hiking backpack. 60 lbs of furry, slobbering, whining, barely constrained excitement became my own personal beast of burden, continuously pulling me forward up the mountain, my arms once again free, hiking poles stabbing rhythmically beside me.

Even with the (considerable) assistance, I was panting and breathless by the time we reached the summit.

By the time we had refueled and rehydrated, I was no longer breathless. But I was exhausted. The heat and elevation had spent me, leaving me weary even before beginning our return. We began our slow, cautious, thigh burning descent, and the worst guide dog in existence remained foolishly tethered to my waist strap.

I hardly remember the fall. A ledge of no more than 3 feet appeared in front of me, and I turned suddenly to the left to side step it, at the exact moment that my beloved dog leapt over the ledge, pulling me unexpectedly forward and downward with such momentum that I fell hard on my right chest, and was dragged along the ground for several feet.

For the longest moment there was only the panic of being unable to breathe. Bent over on all fours, head low, flirting with losing consciousness. My mind screamed at my body to take a breath, and also calmly reminded myself that it would be a few seconds until I would be able to do so. When I could finally breathe, I heard the gasping, agonizing cry as if it were coming from someone else.

Breath returning, I sat up and stared at my left hand. The pain to my chest was so all consuming, that I saw my disfigured digit before I felt it. My thumb had become tangled in the wrist strap of my hiking pole, and was now turned unnaturally sideways. I took a deep breath and returned it to (more or less) proper alignment. All while the adrenaline was still surging through my body. All before any member of my family had reached me.

It was a long, painful hour until we reached the car. Another hour until we had reached the hospital, and many hours before an Emergency physician would wrap my thumb in a splint and tensor and tell me that I had fractured the distal tip of my thumb, but that it was (more or less) in proper alignment. What he did not say – what he did not see behind the swelling, high patient demand and short staffing was that I had also severed my ulnar collateral ligament, requiring imminent surgical repair. It would be two whole weeks until this information was discovered at a follow up appointment.

I was squeezed into surgery the next day. The plastic surgeon reconnected my already receding tendon, and placed my hand in a (new) immobilization splint. After the two weeks in the initial splint, I would be in the second splint for six weeks. Then a month in the third, and the beginning of hand therapy.

I suddenly had the summer off. A difficult feat in most professions, nearly impossible in nursing. I would not be able to return to my regular work in the emergency department for another two months, until my ligament had the strength to handle the strain of regular work, and the stability to remain attached if my hand was unexpectedly grabbed, hit, or overextended during an emergency (all distinct possibilities).

I lost track of the number of times coworkers joked that I had fallen on purpose. Made the calculated decision to throw myself down the cliffside for an extended vacation A thousand variations on “anything for a few days off, hey?”.

I admit, it was not horrible. My days were early morning walks before the rest of the house had awoken (with my partner holding the dog’s leash), extended afternoons reading in the backyard or beach, sitting out on the deck with my family playing cards, and picking up my love from work in the sunny afternoons to explore each and every new microbrew that had recently sprung up.

But neither was it ideal. I was frequently frustrated with my new limitations. Future camping trips were cancelled. Biking and swimming (two of our most frequent summer activities) were impossible, and pain was a constant for the first few months. Previously routine activities were unexpectedly difficult. I couldn’t grip socks with two hands, shirt buttons were nearly impossible, turning a pepper mill was a challenge. Each and every day I would discover a new mundane activity that was now challenging or impossible.

More than anything though, I began to wonder if my hand would ever return to its former state. Progress felt agonizingly slow; exchanging one splint for another hardly felt like forward movement. It was two months before I was even allowed to move my thumb, and when I finally could, I spent hours flexing and extending it, watching as it moved unevenly by a meager few degrees despite considerable pain and effort.

Every few weeks I checked in with my hand therapist and received a new regimen of exercises and stretches. Each time she inquired about my pain and daily activities, and would measure my grip strength and angles. Each time she was happy with my progress, but I always wanted more. I worried that my sensation felt abnormal, or that my thumb would become fatigued after only a few exercises, or that my flexibility or strength wasn’t where it should be.

My therapist, with decades in this particular, specialized field, with a wealth of knowledge and experience, placed a hand over my splint and held my gaze.

“It’s fine, Matt. Really. You’ve done what you can. It just takes time”.

I wonder how many of us need to hear those words.

I know we’re just talking about a thumb. My thumb. And my specific accident and surgery and recovery. But I can’t help but wonder, how many of us are staring at that thing that is wounded, that thing that is in recovery, willing it and wishing it to heal, to advance, even to return to what we enjoyed before. Maybe it’s your own injury, maybe it’s a wound from the past that won’t stay past, maybe it’s a relationship, maybe it’s your community or even all of society. How many of us are impatient, frustrated at the seemingly glacial pace of progress – if we even believe that progress is occurring at all?

I’m not naive enough to think that time heals all wounds. Left untreated, time will only cause some untended wounds to fester. Had my tendon not been reattached properly, had I not been splinted, and resplinted (and respinted) properly, had I not received and practiced helpful stretches and exercises, time would not have been kind to this wound. We (and others) have a considerable role in our healing.

But sometimes everything that can be done, has been done. You have done all you can, and all that remains is time and patience. The average recovery time for my injury and surgery is three to four months before grip strength returns, but up to a year before “full recovery”. I needed time and patience. Now, nearly five months after my injury I can see and feel the progress, but I still get impatient.

It will take the time it takes.

There is no established timeline for some recoveries, of course. But with certainty we can say that it will not come as quickly as we would like it to. We want to see our growth and healing and progress over minutes, hours and days, not months or years or lifetimes.

But it will take the time it takes.

It takes incredible courage to take the long view. To do all the work and exercises we know how to do, and trust that our wounds will continue to heal in their own time. We might not have the vision to see it ourselves. We might not have that level of trust in time.

But we do not wait alone. Perhaps someone can lend us their perspective. Someone who has gone before us, who cares for our healing and wholeness. When you need them, may you hear the words of someone much wiser, much more experienced than yourself.

May they place their hand upon yours, and look you straight in the eye, and say:

“It’s okay. Really. You’ve done what you can. It just takes time”.

And may they be right.

Click above and Matt will tell you a story about bewilderment and wild conjecture!

On March 25th, I was staring at the sky, and I didn’t know what I was seeing.

We were staying at a remote cabin, a campfire in front of us, the gathering darkness pressing in on us, our silhouettes illuminated by licking flames. We were hours from any city or artificial light and the stars were brilliant, scattershot against the infinite and inky black heavens.

Then we saw it.

A single, illuminated object was crossing the night sky. I thought it was a plane, but it was impossibly large and gleaming. Behind it, a trail of fire. The fire was small at first, and then grew, engulfing the whole. Suddenly pieces were breaking away, falling to the ground, consumed by flashes of light. Each piece glittered as it fell, creating the image of an expanding constellation, complete with connecting lines. Eventually these too were consumed, the brilliant display winking out of existence mere seconds after it had appeared.

While the event was occurring, my partner was fast enough to capture a brief video with her phone. We alternated between staring at the sky, and squinting at the small recording of that event for a long time. I didn’t know what it was, but it was a spectacular sight. One that was visible for mere seconds, but left a lasting imprint. One of us remarked that we were incredibly lucky to see such a sight.

Were we though? It depended entirely on what the object we just witnessed was.

We attempted to search for updates and breaking news but as remote as we were, we had little to no cell service. Our search attempts were met with the images of endlessly scrolling wheels as pages failed to load. In the absence of outside information we began to speculate. My brain latched onto the idea of an aircraft, and saw a giant plane on fire, the craft engulfed in flame as it was torn apart and fell into darkness. My partner’s thoughts were less morbid, suggesting that it looked more like a meteor shower, but it was more spectacular and strange then any meteor shower we had ever seen.

If it was a meteor, we were indeed very fortunate to witness it’s dazzling end. If it was a plane, we had just witnessed an event that didn’t allow for any survivors. Wild conjecture and discussions of what we had witnessed continued through that night and into the next day. We wanted to know what we had seen, but we also wanted to know how to see it; how to categorize it. Was it good or bad, blessing or curse, fortune or misfortune. We didn’t know. And we wouldn’t know for a long while.

The next day we drove into town and our phones were once again connected with the outside world. The second stage of a SpaceX rocket had failed to make it’s deorbit burn, and had been orbiting earth for 21 days. The event we had seen was its reentry into our upper atmosphere, where it briefly lit up the night sky for onlookers across British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Some of the remains landed on a remote Washington farm, and the rest disintegrated upon re-entry.

All of our best guesses and conjectures of the event were incorrect. In the end, it was neither a meteor or (thankfully) an aircraft full of passengers. In retrospect, I can admit that the event didn’t really resemble a plane at all. It was merely the label my mind supplied, and in absence of a better one, I accepted it. Neither of us remembers reading of the rocket launch weeks earlier, or it’s failed deorbit. We had no clear label for this spectacular and novel sight. We were (literally and figuratively) in the dark. We didn’t know what we were seeing, and we certainly didn’t know what to do with it. Not yet, anyway.

“You don’t know what this is yet” is a phrase I repeat to myself often. I offer it to you as well. There are a lot of times that I have found myself in (varying degrees of) the dark, both before that night and afterwards. I repeat it to myself when I feel like I’m receiving only the initial, incomplete information. I utter it when I feel like wild conjecture is given more attention span than it should be. I whisper it to myself when I hear shouting and harsh voices speaking of a compex, nuanced and evolving issue as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

We may not witness a mysterious celestial event everyday, but we are regularly surrounded by the unknown, the unfamiliar, and that which is only partially understood. The more we see and experience, the more things are going to fail to fit into our established categories and judgements. As we grow and learn, our world does as well.

We can expect a resistance to this ambiguity, both from outside and within. The last year and a half has been the most uncertain time many of us have ever experienced, but you might never know it from the certainty being peddled, both then and now. Repeated bold and certain predictions based on partial information and conjecture. A chorus of voices telling us how to immediately identify, categorize and react to information. I’ve been guilty of it too. Us humans like categories and labels that are familiar, clean, and certain. But certainty kills curiosity and inquiry. A familiar and well worn label allows the brain to sort quickly and move on, but at the cost of accuracy and wonder.

Some things are worth a little more time. Worth the uncertainty. Worth the benefit of doubt. Time, curiosity, and the uncovering of context are all often necessary before we can see the larger shape of a thing. There are bewildering moments when what you witness does not fit neatly with the well worn labels, categories and judgements. When there is the temptation to make the world smaller and simpler, there is also the grace to let things remain in unresolved tension.

You have the freedom to remind yourself that you don’t know what this is yet.

Maybe the responsibility to, as well.

Tag: #patience

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