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Note: If you have not read Episode One of this season, I strongly encourage you to do that before reading this, as the story will make more sense. Thanks for reading!
My laceless pink running shoes were a sign that I had healed. That I was cured, with a devastating incomprehension of the depths behind that word.
It had taken nearly three months for the pain to fade and my foot to be able to support weight again. But it had happened, and by the fall I was coaching a soccer team. I wasn’t in pain; a feeling I didn’t even know I was taking for granted. The new lump in my foot, and strange tightness in its muscles, meant I wasn’t as agile as I’d been before, but I was doing what I loved most.
By the spring of 2020, nearly a year after the injury, I was back to my normal athleticism. Isolated, like all of us, by the pandemic, I had little to do with my time. I biked or ran almost every day, staying away from people, and played tennis with my brother a few times a week. We went to the regional park for archery sessions and long walks around the lake. Each time, I got the rush of adrenaline and air.
When the pain first came back, I ignored it. My parents had taught me that the best thing to do was power through. Mind over matter; will over pain. I couldn’t let something as mundane as discomfort slow me down. When it refused to be ignored, I told myself that I was just out of shape, and it would get better the more I exercised. I often wonder how different things would have been if I had listened to my own bodymind. But I get ahead of myself.
So as I slipped on those pink running shoes on an early May day, I felt the throb in my foot. It’s hard to remember what that newness felt like, but I know well the experience of the pain. Low, when lucky, and persistent. “I just need to warm up,” I said to myself. “I’ll be fine.”
After the first turn, the throbbing had turned sharp. Each impact of rubber on pavement sent a fresh stab up my shin. I pressed on.
Almost a mile into the run, the stab became unbearable, and I once again fell to the ground. I was crying. Not from the pain. I called my mother to come pick me up.
I try not to beat myself up for pushing through the pain. I knew something was wrong, but admitting that would be admitting defeat. And pain, like any perceived weakness, could be exploited. I wasn’t in a safe environment for being in pain, so I felt broken.
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But that refusal of my own needs made the pain worse, delayed access to helpful care, and made it harder to accept my situation. On that run, when the pain overwhelmed me, I had to choose between being safe or listening to my bodymind.
I chose my bodymind.
The following ten months don’t fully exist in my own narrative. I lost all of that time. I don’t remember its details, and can only remember some of its key beats thanks to my medical records.
During that period, I saw every orthopedic specialist at the hospital I went to. At first, they put me in a cam boot again and told me to stay off the foot as much as possible while we figured things out.
Losing my athleticism was excruciating. Not knowing when, or if, I would get it back was worse. I went from daily cardio sessions to barely managing stairs in less than a week. Combined with the fog and isolation of the early pandemic, time slipped away. Weeks blurred into days into months. Video games and writing were my only outlets and, often, my only enjoyable company.
Two months in, my former grandmother, a nurse, said my symptoms sounded like arthritis. I brought this information to the doctor. I hadn’t yet learned to do thorough research before suggesting something to a doctor. She told me that couldn’t be possible; I was too young, and we’d have to be looking at a possible autoimmune condition. Ignorantly, I believed her.
So we kept experimenting. Cam boot, crutches, no support. X-rays and CT scans and an MRI. We considered steroids, but I turned them down. They tried a procedure to treat a potential microfracture. It made the pain worse.
Visit after visit was the same. The next test, the next potential surgery. We didn’t try PT. We didn’t try herbal supplements, acupuncture, or other pain management techniques. They kept hoping to find something worthy of surgery. Something that could be cured. If they could cure me, they could go home satisfied.
But they couldn’t.
My family, mostly my mother, took me to every appointment. They sat and listened as the doctors explained options and treatments. But at the house, my options were limited. There were only so many times I could use my pain as an “excuse.” They would very passive-aggressively remind me of this whenever they could. As the one who had always picked up everyone else’s slack, they didn’t like my needs interfering with that.
Disabled. Disability. Chronic pain. Crip. These words were almost never heard in our house, despite my father being an amputee. When they were used, it was usually to make a joke at his expense. I certainly couldn’t claim them for myself.
No one had told me about access needs. I hadn’t been shown communities of care, interdependence, or the value of disabled lives. Being a crip, I thought, would make me less than. So I struggled on, pushing through as much as I could. Mind over matter, over heart, over life. Over pain.
By the turn of the new year, in the depth of winter, I was lost in a haze of survival and stagnation. Looking back on it now, I wish I could hug that version of myself and tell them, “You’re going to be in pain forever. And that will be ok.”
Ashton Rose 