10 Years in a Life Raft
posted 5 months ago in UpdatesThis week, I passed ten years since my first surgery. I had gone in to deal with a fistula the week of Thanksgiving and they pulled me out from the anesthesia, told me they found an abscess the size of a softball and they were going to have to divert my colon.
Origin stories are often shocking and even painful. What I endured for three weeks in the hospital that Thanksgiving is beyond difficult to try and recount. This week, my sensitivity has been on 11 and have had dreams filled with phantom nerve pains from a decade ago. It's strange how the most traumatic events can be the fuel for the blossoming of something far greater than can be imagined. It would take moving our whole family to Santa Cruz, drastic hospitalizations, several years of failing therapies, and a chance podcast listen before I decided to train to ride a 50-mile Gran Fondo. A choice that changed everything. Ten years later, I look back from the finish line of a half marathon with awe at the strength and malleability we had to endure to get here.
Origin stories are often shocking and even painful. What I endured for three weeks in the hospital that Thanksgiving is beyond difficult to try and recount. This week, my sensitivity has been on 11 and have had dreams filled with phantom nerve pains from a decade ago. It's strange how the most traumatic events can be the fuel for the blossoming of something far greater than can be imagined. It would take moving our whole family to Santa Cruz, drastic hospitalizations, several years of failing therapies, and a chance podcast listen before I decided to train to ride a 50-mile Gran Fondo. A choice that changed everything. Ten years later, I look back from the finish line of a half marathon with awe at the strength and malleability we had to endure to get here.