Friday, January 26, 2018

It's two-thusand eighteen!

Hello everyone! I hope that the new year has been good to you all so far! A little part of me still thinks we've just finished celebrating the holidays, but my calendar clearly states that it is in fact January 26th, so there you have it. We've just about made it through a twelfth of the year already. Enough time has passed (in my opinion) to determine if there are any hopes (or not...) of completing our new year's resolutions. I'd like to think that I've been pretty successful so far. I'll tell you all about my resolutions for the year in a moment, but here's some history on my previous New Year's resolutions first.

As any long-term reader of this blog knows, I've had a broken leg for a long time. Like a really really really insanely large amount of time. Seven hundred and eighty-two days, in case you're wondering exactly how long I'm talking about. Before my leg was broken, my tibia was host to the not so welcome chronic bone infection. The infection, which only existed because of a badly broken leg that wasn't treated properly, stuck around for quite a few years. I've obviously been dealing with this issue for a large part of my life (since I was thirteen) and, as such, it makes sense that many of my goals/resolutions have revolved around getting better. Here's a quick rundown of those goals and/or resolutions:

In 2006, my badly broken leg took a disproportionate amount of time to heal. The bone ultimately healed itself, but it ended up crooked and required surgery to re-break the bone and set it properly. Needless to say, I spent most of the year hoping that my leg would get better.

The following year, I had all the telltale signs of infection. I spent 2007 trying to convince my doctor and orthopedic surgeon that something was wrong and hoping that my leg would be okay.

During the next year, it was obvious that something was quite wrong. My doctors still wouldn't believe that anything was wrong but ultimately agreed to remove all the hardware from my leg. My hopes for 2008 were much the same as they were in 2007.

On to the next one: 2009 started off with a sinking suspicion that I might have a chronic bone infection. My surgeon brushed my concerns off.  Unlike the previous years, 2009 was not spent hoping that my leg would get better but instead trying to convince myself that there was, indeed, nothing wrong.

The year after that was considerably normal. I managed to shove many of my fears about my leg into a tiny box and, therefore, my goals for 2010 were surprisingly non-leg related. They had more to do with graduating from high school and passing my first batch of university exams.

Things kind of fell apart after that. It was clear in 201 that things were quite wrong with my leg. I spent the first half of the year hoping for a diagnoses (and a doctor who would believe me when I said something wrong); the second half was filled with hopes that antibiotics could knock out the infection so that surgery could be avoided.

When 2012 came around, I was resigned to the fact that the infection wasn't going away and that surgery and IV antibiotics would be needed. I just hoped to get through all the treatment.

The year following all that treatment was spent hoping that I had finally beat the damned infection. I suppose 2013 could be described as a year filled with a mix of hope and fear. Hope that the infection was gone; fear that it was lurking in the shadows, waiting to rear it's ugly hear again.

2014 was shockingly normal (until the very end when I suspected the bone infection had returned). Thus, the year was filled with other resolutions: graduating university and getting into college.

In 2015 everything cam crumbling down. I was given the undesirable news that the bone infection had indeed returned. The resolution that year was to remain healthy enough to make it through two semester of college and then have surgery to remove the infected section of bone. I was successful, but just barely.

Bring in the next year - 2016. It started with the big blue monstrous external fixator stuck to my leg. Despite everything that went wrong with the external fixator and re-growing my tibia, my goals for the year were easy to define - lose the fixator and re-learn how to walk. We could worry about getting the bone to heal later.

When 2017 came around, I was still stuck with a nonunion. I was resolved to fix this and end the year with two health lower legs! Unfortunately, things didn't go as expected.

And that brings us to this year: 2018. Unfortunately, I still find myself in the midst of non-union territory, and surgery to try to fix the problem is fast approaching. This year, however, something is different. I don't have any goals or resolutions revolving around my leg. Yes, of course I want my leg to get better. I want it more than almost anything else in the world. But this year it's not going to be my focus.

I can hear you all asking "How can fixing your leg not be one of your goals?" If you look back at the short history of my broken leg journey that I just outlined, you'll notice something. With the exception of 2010 and 2014, my resolutions and goals for all the other years were primarily focused around my leg. Some might say that this is natural. A broken leg that is slow to heal is a big deal. A chronic bone infection that first goes diagnosed for many year despite obvious symptoms that something is wrong, followed by lots and lots of treatment and surgery, is also a big deal. A chronic bone infection that come back despite all that treatment and ultimately requires losing a big chunk of bone and having to relearn how to walk is an even bigger deal. After so many years, it's natural to want to put this all behind me. But if the last years have taught me anything, it is that I am not in control of what is happening to my leg. No amount of hoping or willing it into getting better is going to actually make the ends of my bone knit together. No resolution will fix my leg because, at the end of the day, resolutions are things that you can control. As unfortunate as it is, I cannot control the nonunion.

Looking back, many of my goals, hopes, and resolutions over the last twelve years have revolved around my leg in one way or another. As previously stated, this is only natural. But hoping that my leg gets better cannot be my only resolution. I can, however, control other things in my life. Aside from hoping that my leg would get better, I had several other resolutions in 2017. My biggest resolution was to graduate from nursing school and pass the CPNRE. After having been out of school for a year, this was a big feat to accomplish. But guess what? I did it! Another goal was to get hired as a nurse at a local hospital. I did that as well. I also had to other resolutions - to not buy any more books and to read a book a month. I completely failed the former, but was quite successful with the latter (I ended up reading fifteen books rather than twelve).

The thing about all of those resolutions was that I achieved almost all of them. I still hoped that my leg would get better, but I was also aware of all the other really big things that I could accomplish. I don't regret all the years I spent hoping for my leg to get better. Hoping for that was natural. The initial break and malunion, the chronic bone infection, the relapse, the external fixator, re-learning how to walk... all of those things were huge and took up most of my time, energy (both physically and mentally), and attention. But I don't want fixing my leg to be my resolution for yet another year. I don't know if this will be the year that it finally gets better. I certainly hope it will be. But I don't know if it will be and there is nothing I can do to control the outcome. So it's not going to be one of my resolutions this year. It's not even going to be one of my major goals. This year, doing some actual living is my goal.

So it's two-thousand eighteen. This year I have the following resolutions:

1) Explore! Explore all thing things! The one thing you don't get to do when you have a broken leg, a bone infection, an external fixator, or have to learn to walk again is explore. I can walk now, so I am going to do and see all kinds of stuff I couldn't do and see before.

2) I'm going to apply to Nipissing University for the RPN to RN bridge program.This is a really big goal. Being accepted means dedicating myself to anywhere between three and a half to five more years of school. That is a big commitment. But my previous plans fell through last summer when I broke up with my then boyfriend. This is my back up plan and I think it's a pretty darned good one!

3) Take my road test so I can get my G2. Doing this will allow me to drive unaccompanied and search for jobs in bigger cities. Living in a bigger city will help me with the first resolution. 

4) If I pass my road test, buy a car! My dream car is a Volkswagen Beetle. I doubt that will be my first car, but one day I will hopefully have one.

5) Don't buy any more books this year. We're a month into the year and so far I have been successful. It's been a challenge (there have been some lovely books at both the ROM and the AGO), but I haven't caved in yet. 

6) Read a book every two weeks. It must be one from my own collection. Hopefully I'll be able to declutter my bookcases a bit.

7) Keep growing my plus elephant collection! 

I don't think I have ever had this many goals. It feels good to have them. Of course I want to be successful with all of them, but it's not the end of the world if I am not. The point is that they are all non-leg related. Whatever happens to my leg, it's going to be an amazing year and I am going to be in control of it! I guess that's kind of a resolution in and of itself...

8) Don't let the broken leg define who you are or control the things you do or don't do.

No comments:

Post a Comment