The Day I Broke My Back

One year ago yesterday, on November 26th, 2018, I broke my back. This isn’t new news to many of you, and I have spoken of it a few times in previous blog posts. But today, I’m going to revisit it namely because I need to process it, but also because I’m told it makes a somewhat interesting story. So, here goes.

📷The Meadows Ranch

Before you can truly grasp the accident part of the story, you need to understand the days and events leading up to it. Last year at this time, I had been in Arizona for over a month and was feeling especially introspective and reflective. Thanksgiving had come and gone and I had been away from my family on that day for the first time ever. Two days later came my birthday, and again, I spent it in the desert many miles from home and my family. As fun as the week ironically was, I was also feeling a bit homesick and very much depressed. So, like I do when I feel strong feelings, I picked up my pen and started to write. What came out was very enlightening in a lot of ways.

Without prompting, surprising both myself and my therapist at the time, I penned an appreciation letter to my body. This letter sparked a lot of thoughts, feelings, and realizations for me. I talk about this letter and my realizations HERE. I hadn’t ever thought very hard about my body and its capabilities except for when I was mad at it or frustrated with it for being tired, injured, or sick. However, when I sat down to write the letter, I stretched my brain and started to realize that I take A LOT of what my body does for me on a daily basis for granted. I don’t think that I’m alone in this. Our bodies are something that many of us like to complain about, but they are also extraordinary in what they do for us despite what we put them through.

I was pretty proud of myself for this letter that I wrote, without anyone assigning it to me or asking me to write it. I sat in this contemplative state for a few days, letting myself reflect and become aware of not only what my body has done for me, but how harshly I’ve treated it especially over the past few years. As I let all this sink in, I was starting to feel bad and was practicing giving my body more grace in the moments where I would normally get frustrated. I felt my heart softening a bit in the hatred and disgust that I had been holding against my body for a long time, and I felt myself making some positive progress, not all the way to loving it per se, but at least appreciating it. I felt pretty good about this progress.

Then came November 26th and everything I had been reflecting on that previous week or so completely went out the window in one freak accident. At the Meadows Ranch, one of their main treatment modalities is equine therapy. This means that a few times a week, patients go out and spend time with the horses doing an assortment of things meant to help with reflection and healing. When patients get to a certain point, they get to go on trail rides in the desert once a week.

November 26th was a riding day, and we were excited. There weren’t many of us around that day because of an assortment of reasons, so there were only two of us going out to ride. Since there were only two of us, and because we both had some basic knowledge of horses and how to tack them up, we made quick work and had the horses ready in record time. We were going to get a long ride, which doesn't happen very often. I was going to ride Rosetta, a horse that I had spent some time with previously, but had never ridden.

I’m not going to say I was cocky, but I did feel pretty comfortable around horses after growing up taking lessons and owning a few. So it was business as usual that day, but admittedly, I wasn’t super focused. My mind was elsewhere and I was probably going through the motions as I used the mounting block to settle into Rosetta’s saddle. We set out around the corner to line up behind the other horses who were waiting in line for the trail ride to start.

As we rounded the corner, I sensed that Rosetta wasn’t very focused either. Instead of finishing the corner and lining up with the other horses, she made a beeline to the hay that was in a shed with a low hanging roof. My previous experience with horses kicked in, and I started talking to her and using the reins and my legs to redirect her away from the shed. She ignored me, and I had to duck to avoid hitting my face on the roof. With my ducking motion, I pulled the reins hard to the right and Rosie stepped into a wooden pallet that had been laying there after unloading hay. At this moment, she panicked and with her leg stuck, started dragging the pallet around. Trying to think fast, I came to the conclusion that she would have a really hard time getting unstuck with me still in the saddle, so in a split second decision, I decided to bail. I hit the ground hard with my right foot and then crumpled onto the ground. I looked up and saw Rosie still spooking and trying to get unstuck and covered my head as she came bucking back toward me. One of the equine therapists jumped off her horse, ran over and grabbed Rosetta’s reins, saving me from her hooves. As I lay back onto the dirt, I felt an intense sharp pain in my back shooting up and down my body. I pulled one of my legs up toward me and twisted so that I wouldn’t be laying flat on the ground. The pain swallowed up my words and all I could do was grunt and groan in pain as I lay on the dusty ground.

Things get hazy for awhile after this. Kudos to the Meadows staff, as they leapt into action and provided me with the best care possible. I had one equine therapist holding my head not allowing me to move much to my chagrin. One of my fellow patients was holding my hand and the other equine therapist ran to get help. In what seemed like no time at all, yet also an eternity, I looked up into the sunny blue skies to see several concerned faces looking down at mine. In a jumble of words and commands and questions, it was deemed that an ambulance needed to be called. The sweet, kind nurse from my house asked who my emergency contacts were and I begged them not to call my parents, I didn’t want them to worry. It’s funny what your brain decides to focus on in moments of crisis. All I could think about were my parents back home in Iowa panicking and I didn’t want anyone to call them until they had something concrete to say about my condition.

By this time, I was still somewhat keeping it together. But as time went on, and I picked up on the growing concern of the people around me, the facade started to crumble. When I heard the sirens and saw the ambulance pull up, I lost it. I had never ridden in an ambulance before, and things had to be pretty serious that they would call one right? When they pulled out the backboard and strapped me in, my mind started going a mile a minute, and no scenario that it brought up was a good one. Because of Meadows rules, I was sent in the ambulance alone while a staff member that I had never met followed behind. Laying in the ambulance as the EMT’s gave me an IV, I had my first panic attack of the day. These panic attacks would continue on, one after another, for the next 3 hours straight.

Although I was able to move directly following the accident, I had not been allowed to move any more afterwards. As the doctors cut my clothes off (which made me cry and panic even more), I was cycled through multiple tests, X-rays, and a CT scan. My body would not stop shaking, and I was sobbing so hard in the midst of panic attacks that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was utterly hysterical. The staff member sent by the Meadows was a sweet girl, younger than me, who had never met me or even seen me before. To her credit, she did the best she could to try and be a calming presence for me but I wasn’t having anything of it.

I lay in bed, staring up at the white hospital ceiling, wishing my mom and dad were there. I felt more alone than I ever had before, and my mind was concocting the scariest, most catastrophic scenarios possible--the number one being that I was paralyzed. In the hours I waited before getting answers, I had completely talked myself into the fact that I was paralyzed and that I would never walk again. My letter to my body popped into my brain and I very deliberately took back every piece of grace I had extended toward my body in that moment. I was so angry at it for betraying me like this, for letting something like this happen. I lay in that hospital bed, over a thousand miles from home, and started bargaining with God. I started to make deals, like I would never go back to my eating disorder if I could walk again, I would never over-exercise if I could run again, I would start going to church again if God would just let everything go back to normal. Those moments are still so clear in my brain today, and were some of the scariest of my life.

As terrifying as that day was, it taught me a lot of things. First off, I came away from that day with a respect for my body I never had before. As angry as I was that I was hurt, I was beyond grateful that it hadn’t been any worse. All the things that I had previously taken for granted, such as walking and running, I was suddenly appreciative of. Wandering around the Ranch in the two weeks that remained of my time there, it would all of a sudden hit me that if things had gone differently, I may not have the luxury of walking around at all. It was the wake up call that I needed to start treating my body with appreciation and respect, instead of hating it and constantly being frustrated at its limitations.

In addition, that day taught me that I’m a lot stronger than I previously thought. For all intents and purposes, no matter how hard that poor girl from the Meadows tried to help, I was alone in the hospital that day. I weathered the scariest moments of my life alone, without my family or anyone I knew to comfort me. I rode the wave of each panic attack, somehow pushing through each one until I finally was able to calm myself down enough to think rationally. I never thought I would find myself tied down to a backboard in the back of an ambulance, and if I did, I never imagined I would have to do it alone. But I did. No matter how scary that day was, it’s the day that I realized I’m capable of a lot more than I regularly give myself credit for.

It’s crazy to think that that day was one whole year ago. There are times that it feels like it’s been an eternity, but more often, I feel like it just happened yesterday. As frustrating as it was to be laid up for three months, I still stick to what I’ve said all along about this accident. This accident, in my humble opinion, was God’s way of slowing me down. He had been giving me all sorts of signs, and I had been ignoring them. Enough was enough, and through this, I was forced to practice being STILL. I slowed down, and because of that, God revealed many priceless moments and lessons for me in the weeks and months that followed.

I’m not always a big fan of the “Everything happens for a reason” thing, but in this case, I think I can make an exception. God has been making all things work together for my good, and even through this, He showed me that He is good.

In a previous post, I wrote these words. I think they still ring true:

My body is resilient and it has been relentlessly loving me, even when I have not loved it back. I may not love my body just yet, but I do love how resilient and tough it has been in the wake of everything that I’ve put it through over the years. I feel like this is a good step. A small step, maybe, but a step in the right direction. I’ll take it.