The Dancer

-1:00:00. The pain was bearable. Two days had passed since the surgery to fix my broken tibia and fibula with three plates and twenty screws. The insult had occurred, though the anesthetic pumping into my leg had blocked my brain from knowing about it directly. Only the elevated, casted foot which I could not feel and a slight tingling of pain told me something had happened down there. Though as the clock ticked down from 1 hour left with medication in my pump, the tingling worsened. I felt my fear creep in.

My fear of what? The insult is there, I’d just told myself that mesmerically. So the only thing that is going to change is that you can sense it. But nothing else will change. It was more of a pep talk than a philosophical exercise.

-00:20:00. 4 milliliters left of this stuff until it’s gone forever. It had been infusing for 50 hours but I was feeling the pain more. Maybe my body was getting used to the medicine. Maybe the swelling was getting worse. Maybe I was getting an infection.  Or maybe, just maybe, my anxiety about losing the medication or the other possibilities was making me feel more pain.

00:00:00. It was like midnight in Y2K. There was no alarm. There was no crushing blow of pain. I was grateful for the anticlimax, as the medication was still in my leg and the moment passed like any other. I knew what was still coming. I breathed.

+00:05:00. A warmth started to grow around my ankle. My leg became one of those electric plasma balls, with the purple light intermittently zapping the outside of the globe. The nerves were reawakening, like they do after a long slumber spent resting on a limb. Be with it, I told myself. Appreciate the fact that your nerves still work, and that they do such complicated work. I laughed almost maniacally and said out loud “How cool is this?”

+00:20:00. My appreciation for my nerves turned to hatred. There was nothing cool about this anymore. I’d pre-medicated with an oral narcotic, anticipating discomfort, but the pressure from inside my cast was causing my back to contort. My mother asked how I was but I did not open my mouth in fear of the language that I would use to express my discomfort. The writhing lasted ten minutes. I was not well. I reminded myself to breathe.

And in that breath, I remembered a phrase. You must dance with life. I breathed again. It’s just pain, it’s always been there. Another breath. It’s already less, see? It increased. Breathe. It decreased. I remembered a passage from Don Miller’s book “A million miles in a thousand years.” He speaks of a trans-American bicycle trip where he was in the middle of the desert, parched and sunburned, taking cover from the attacking sun. And suddenly he smiled, thinking about his future-self reflecting on this moment, recounting the amazing story he was writing with that trip.

And in that moment, I realized I was writing my own story. The assault continued, but I was no longer suffering. I’m gonna tell this story some day, and I’m gonna be proud of how I handled it. My grimace turned to a smile which did not leave my face for the rest of the evening.

The pain remained; though while still physically immobile, I was dancing.

Be the person you admire.