A funny thing happened to me recently, I dislocated my left elbow, twice.
While gruesome, and a relatively uncommon injury outside of acrobatics, these were pretty calm incidents and low scoring on my pain scale (which tbh is SKEWED), however after these injuries, it was decided that I needed an elbow reconstruction and so that is what I got.
Pro-athletes are often lucky enough to get access to amazing surgeons, and I am so grateful for mine, he’s a creative guy, and enthusiastic and caring, and because of all of these qualities, he decided that instead of fixing my elbow with plastic or a bit of tendon from somewhere else on my body; he was going to borrow a tendon from somebody else.
I will note that it took me a little while to find the right surgeon, before we started researching Get Well Soon, this was my first real experience of an uncaring medical system and meeting some professionals that definitely skipped the bedside manner class, after a couple of second opinions, I got lucky, Dr Ash, if you're out there, you're a legend.
So it’s nine months post surgery now, almost ten, and I’ve been living with a new tendon, donated by a very generous organ donor. I don’t know anything about the original owner or their life, but by the way little Lefty is shaking, it definitely doesn't feel like they were an acrobat. I've learnt a lot from them though; I can tie a shoe one handed now.
I've also learnt that I live in an apartment building that require you to have two hands to exit, we'll dive into accessibility next week..
Fresh baby Guthrie was my main rehab supervisor and mental health coach
Every now and then I catch myself feeling angry and resentful that I'm not healing as quickly as I want it to, and it's easy to place blame on a body part that doesn't belong to me, but I can't imagine how it would feel to be thrown into the ridiculous things I put my body through with zero warning.
So I just wanted to take this post to express some gratitude;
thank’s Lefty, you’re doing great.
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