Healing. . . when are we done?, and what does it look like afterwards?

When I got my knee Injury it felt like a 2x4 hitting the side of my knee, I was running around in a gym with some camp kids I was supervising, and I remember thinking as soon as it happened “who in the heck just hit me with a piece of wood?” Then a split second later I was on the ground. my knee was in pain and I could not stand up.

Years later, I was at another job, I was operating a machine called a “tilt hoist” aptly named as it tilted large loads of lumber down a metal slide as it hoisted up the lumber. in between each each row was stripes of wood that separated each row of lumber, those stripes travelled down a belt to the stripes area where another employee would fill a box. usually the stripes would jam up and the hoist operator would go and help the person on stripes to unjam the stripes. this particular night there was a new person who wasn’t confidant enough to say they needed help, so I was in and out of their station helping them out.

Long story short, as i was helping that worker, I kept having to jump over a barricade, and as i did many times that night, I jumped over, and landed just right enough to injury the same injury I did years ago.

The doctor later said I have a torn meniscus, and possibly a torn PCL (Posterior Cruciate Ligament) it’s a ligament that connects and holds the knee from going to far backwards, and possibly torn ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) but we would not be sure until we could go in and have a look.

So that is exactly what we did, scheduled a time for surgery, and went it, the ligaments were not torn, but stretched out and that is what happened, I over stretched my ligaments and tore my meniscus, so the surgery fixed my leg, but I still have times of trouble where I say to myself “oh I can’t do that, what if I injure my knee again.”  My leg was healed but my mind kept telling me that I am going to get hurt.

When something like this haunts you for a lot of years, in my case it was almost a decade, after my surgery when my leg was fully healed and given the okay by the Dr. I was hesitant to move forward with my life, I started saying no to things, I was afraid to hurt my knee again, as the years went on I started to say “no” more often, mountain trekking “no”, running with friends “no”, any kind of physical activity where there “might”, and I mean like 0.00001% chance that I might hurt my knee, it was a no for me.

When I hurt my knee, I was around 18-19 years old, when I finally got the surgery to fix that knee, I was I think 26-27 years old, roughly 8-9 years, I am now just over 40 and the things that I hold on to are from when I hurt my knee, it wasn’t until I went to therapy that I was able to start letting go of these issues that I was unconsciously holding on to.

What does it look like now?

I have to remind myself of when that was, when I hurt my knee i was a teenager, and yes it took a long time to get the surgery for my knee, but psychologically it until 3 years ago to heal from that experience, and it’s not even fully healed, so what do I do?

I try to remember to exercise, even more then that I try to stretch my knee, sometimes the thought “ what if I hurt my knee again?” comes up, but now I question that thought, “what if I do hurt my knee again?” “I can have the surgery again” when we question those fears that come up it can help us understand where to go next. Trusting this process is going to take some time, but it will help you to understand that there is a reason we say “yes” or “no” when taken down to the Core Value of it, I realized that the reason I was afraid of hurting my knee again was because I thought no one would want me because I would be unable to do anything on my own, only to have pushed people away and make them think I didn’t want to do anything.

When the healing comes it takes time to undo all the things that was done, and that is okay, when we have supports in place, and exercises to help along with time, and a plan then it doesn’t seem as bad.

“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls your life” -Akshay Dubey