Starting Over!

My leg is not healing at all. My Orthopaedic Surgeon hung his head and sighed and cringed when I saw him yesterday. Actually his first comment was:

“Happy New Year Darling”, quickly followed by

“and here comes my worst nightmare!”

We laughed, we always do. He was joking, sort of. I am though his worst nightmare. To have a pathological break is so rare and to have an active bone disease that can’t be treated, rarer still. You have to laugh though. You have to make medical appointments as much fun as possible when you have a chronic disease. They are a huge part of my life. I need my medical team to work with me and I need to work with them for a long time, so it needs to be a positive experience, even if the news is not so great!

So, the news is that we are starting over. The break has shown no signs of healing in 15 months. The Bone Stimulator ($2000 later has not worked) and the bones are compressed together as far as they possibly can, without any healing. That means the current rod (intramedullary nail to be scientifically correct), is disintegrating under the pressure of holding together a break for so long and that means it is at risk of breaking in two. Something we cannot afford to happen. On the 23rd February I will be having surgery to, in essence, start again. The old rod and screws will be taken out and a new thicker rod will be inserted with new screws at the hip and above the knee. My Surgeon is also going to be doing internal bone grafting which is a new concept to me but basically he doesn’t need to take bone from another part of my body to do it, so that’s a really good thing from where I’m sitting 🙂

I’m ready for this. We need to try and move forward and starting over may sound like going backwards a little but it’s not. It’s progress. We are not sitting and waiting for something to happen, good or bad. We are responsibly taking the required action to create an opportunity for new bone to grow, for healing to take place.

Life is no different. If we sit stagnant afraid to move, we cripple ourselves. Sometimes there are times in our lives when we have to start over so that we can grow and flourish again. Is there pain with starting over? Absolutely, often physical and emotional. I’m going to be in heaps of pain starting over with my leg but that will ease with time just as the pains we face in life ease over time. For many suffering chronic diseases the desire to hold on to the old life before the disease hit, is understandable but it can be so crippling. Reality is that for most people with chronic illness you can’t maintain or sustain the old life. Things need to change in order to adapt, in order to grow. Taking time, however long, to work out how to start over can be so healing, so freeing.

So here I go again, starting over but I feel good about it. I would obviously have preferred not to be going down this path but I have to, I will and I know there will be new beginnings as a result, which may seem not so great to the outside world but in my experience new beginnings always open new opportunities!