Sixteen
Most days, I’ll walk to work, which takes about twenty-five minutes. I’ll follow a roundabout route home to add another ten or fifteen minutes to the walk. Being unable to run and limited with what I can do due to the damage to my right leg, walking’s one of the few things I can do as exercise. It also helps to spend some physical energy. Getting to sleep is never easy, but it’s always harder on days I don’t walk. Like many writers, I’m a tea-drinker. The schedule at work is regimented: it’ll usually be three throughout the workday (two in the morning, and one in the afternoon). Once I…
Chronic Pain and Perspective
I live with pain every day. The worst of it is in my right leg and foot – a result of being struck by a car in 2011. My leg was broken, the ankle dislocated, the nerve damaged, and the injury developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). After about eighteen months of rehab, hydrotherapy, and pain seminars, the surgeon confessed he never expected me to recover as much as I did. He told me he expected the foot to be all shriveled and shiny from the nerve damage. In my last appointment with him several months later, he laughed when I asked if it’d ever recover fully. He said the…