What recovery looks like one year later
Plus: lots of new greeting cards in the online store
In the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, a broken piece of ceramics is repaired using lacquer and a dusting of precious metals like gold, silver or copper. This technique honours the history of the object—its fracture and repair—and also makes something beautiful from its new imperfections.
When I broke my leg in March 2024, it wasn’t repaired with gold and at the time, I had serious concerns about how well it was going to heal.
Would I be able to live the same life that I had before?
The truth is… no, it’s not the same. Like Kintsugi, though, I can recognize and honour those changes a year later.
Slow and steady return to the community
The biggest change that’s happened in the past month or so is that I’m getting out of the apartment more often. When I first got out of the hospital in January, I had to stick close to home because I couldn’t sit in the wheelchair for more than a couple hours without needing to stretch out in bed for a break. Even this was a vast improvement over when I first started sitting in the wheelchair last October, when my time in the chair was being measured in minutes as opposed to hours.
These days, I can stay in the wheelchair pretty much all day if I need to, thanks to progressively increasing my in-chair time over the past several months. I can now attend my weekly painting classes and go into the studio more often, which has been great. I even did a shopping expedition recently to find decent sandals that would work for the ARK Gala.
That said, I recognize being in the chair all day is hard on my body, so I do try to take at least a couple 15min breaks on the bed to take the pressure off my cranky tailbone. I am making an effort to be gentler and kinder to my body after everything that it’s been through.
Committing to making necessary changes
Stefan and I had been idly apartment hunting for years—checking out neighbourhoods, peeking at real estate listings—but there had never been any push to get out of our rental. We also loved where we lived, which made the idea of leaving that much harder.
That all changed when I went into the hospital. While I didn’t know what my ultimate recovery would look like, I knew that our unadapted apartment was not going to cut it anymore.
Now that we’ve lived in our renovated suite for a few months, I am amazed at how much inaccessibility I put up with for so long. It’s the little things like not having to use a backscratcher to flip on an out-of-reach light switch or finding a spot on the lowered counter for the Sodastream where I can carbonate the water bottles myself.
It’s also the bigger changes that we made to the bathroom and kitchen. I’m finding that I’m enjoying cooking and gardening more, thanks to easier access to the kitchen sink. We recently had some amazing gnocchi with veggies and fresh pesto made from the basil in my herb garden. So, so good.
Learning to accept help
While I may look like my pre-fracture self if you see me out and about, I would still say I’m only about 75-80% of where I was before going into the hospital. The biggest change is that I can’t easily climb down to the floor from the wheelchair. This might not seem that significant for someone who has been a wheelchair user all their life, but it means that I can’t climb down to pick up something if I drop it on the floor.
When I first got home from the hospital, anytime I dropped anything, it felt like a catastrophe. I would become overwhelmed with rage at myself for my clumsiness and frustration at the thought of now needing to find a way to pick up whatever had been dropped. The episode would also likely include some loudly shouted swear words as well.
I have a lightweight grabber tool similar to this one that can help, but I wasn’t very proficient with it in the beginning since I’d never needed it that much before. On one memorable occasion, not long after I was discharged, I was trying to pick up one of the dog dishes with the grabber and managed to drop the dish upside down, making it impossible to pick it up again. Both myself and the dogs were pretty unhappy with that situation.
Practice makes perfect, though and after many months using the grabber, I can now pick up the tiniest dropped vitamin pill and place a dish of kibble daintily in Lucy’s crate. Well, most of the time, anyways. I also recently spilled her kibble all over the floor when trying to place the dish with the grabber. Rather than berating myself, I shrugged it off and told Lucy to go to town. I knew she’d find every last piece, which she did.
The other help I’ve learned to accept is home care. I used to take an outsized amount of pride in the fact that I didn’t have home care because I saw this as some kind of disability badge of honour and a testament to my independence. In hindsight, much like putting up with all the quirks of living in an unadapted apartment, I can see now that stubbornly clinging to my independence was short-sighted.
One big caveat about my home care is that we are paying out of pocket for it. I tried the AHS publicly funded option, and all I’ll say on that front is that it was an extraordinary amount of headache for very little actual help. By paying for private home care, I have someone who has the training of a nurse to safely assist with my showering and give my body a quick once-over if I’m having any issues. We also have an extra pair of hands to help with light housekeeping tasks. Again, this might not sound like a big deal, but with this year’s intense allergy season, all that extra cleaning has been incredibly helpful, particularly when you consider that a badly timed sneeze for me can result in a cracked rib!
Not better, not worse… just different
My memories of my months in the hospital are fading rapidly. I know from my past fractures that this is typical for me. It’s not so much that my mind is suppressing the trauma, more that it has processed those memories and no longer has use for them.
It’s moved on, and I’m inclined to let it.
I know that I have been significantly changed by my experience. My body isn’t the same and my spirit isn’t either. I’d like to believe that I’m more flexible and resilient in my outlook, and, hopefully, more grateful for the life that I have today.
Only time will tell.
Hooray for new cards!
I’ve been using some of my time back in the studio to finally—FINALLY!—get all the new greeting card designs into my online store. Many of the twelve new designs were paintings from last year’s exhibit, plus I restocked a bunch of old favourites as well.
Also, for folks in Calgary, you can once again skip the shipping charges and pick up your cards for free from my downtown studio. These pickups are done by appointment only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays.