Annoying but Unwavering: Healing Through the Chaos

I’ve been dealing with ongoing issues in my right shoulder for the past few years. After finally going to physical therapy, I found out the problem is with my AC joint—short for acromioclavicular joint. That’s the point where your collarbone and shoulder blade meet. It plays a key role in helping your arm raise and bend, and allows your shoulder blade to glide and rotate against your rib cage. This fine-tuning between the shoulder blade and upper arm (the humerus) is essential for smooth, controlled movement.

In my case, it’s the AC joint on my right side—which makes sense, since I broke my right humerus 13 years ago this September in a car accident. The residual effects from that accident are still with me.

The truth is, playing the “poor pity me” card doesn’t fix anything. It might make someone else feel bad for me, but it doesn’t take away the pain, stiffness, or restrictions. Feeling bad for myself—or trying to make others feel bad for me—doesn’t equal healing. What does help is putting in the work, physically and mentally, to actually heal. That’s the only thing that makes a difference.

You’re probably thinking, “Geez, she’s being tough on herself,” and you’re right—I am. Not only because going the easy route and playing the pity card doesn’t help me recover, but because I truly believe your mindset going into any kind of healing or recovery shapes how well—and how quickly—you’re able to come back. But also, I’m tough on myself because that car accident was my fault; I was drinking and driving.

Twelve days after September 9, 2012, I woke up at Sinai Grace Hospital with my mom by my side. The next few days were a blur—I had just come out of a medically induced coma, which doctors used to help manage the swelling in my brain. I was heavily medicated, not just for that, but to ease the pain I should’ve been in. I had a traumatic brain injury, paralyzed vocal cords, and I’d broken both my right humerus and femur. I didn’t remember the 16 hours leading up to the accident. Doctors told me it was my body’s way of shielding me from the trauma. The last thing I remembered was being at my little cousin’s first birthday party, where there was no drinking.

One thing I am thankful for is that I seriously hate the way pain meds make me feel. I remember catching a glimpse of a fentanyl patch on my shoulder and asking my mom what it was—after already asking her if I seemed a little off. She told me what it was, and I immediately hit the call light for my nurse and asked him to take it off.

We went back and forth for a while. He kept saying it was helping manage the pain from breaking the biggest bone in my body—but I didn’t care. I told him it wasn’t helping and I didn’t like how it made me feel. Eventually, he took it off.

Not long after, he came back in with another one, saying they had me on such a high dose that I needed to be weaned off or I’d go through withdrawal. I told him I didn’t care, I’d be fine. My mom backed him up on that one though—said it was a medical liability for him if something went wrong. So fine, I agreed to be weaned.

He was my night nurse, and every night he’d come in and ask how I was doing. He’d want to know what my pain level was on a scale from 1 to 10 and if it felt better than when I had the patch on. Then he’d follow up by asking how it felt in the morning—which, honestly, was a bullshit quesion- you don’t move much in your sleep causing you to stiffen up. Of course the pain felt worse in the morning.

What really got to me—and still kind of pisses me off—is how much he pushed to keep that fentanyl patch on me. Why the hell are you trying to keep me on a highly addictive painkiller when I’m telling you I don’t want it? I don’t like the way it makes me feel. That should’ve been enough.

As for my mom? She’s beyond thankful I didn’t like how it made me feel. Addiction runs in my family, and the doctor’s office she worked at dealt with addicts every day—trying to keep them clean, on the straight and narrow, and alive was no easy task.

And with all the trouble I’d already gotten into because of my drinking—like being in the hospital after a head-on collision with a TBI, broken femur and humerus, paralyzed vocal cords, and injuring another person—it was one less thing she had to worry about. One less thing to add to the pile. Even though she hated when I drank and hated some of the places I ended up, or driving around to find me because I’d left the spot I told her I was at, she never left me anywhere.

She never ignored me when I called for help or asked her to pick me up, even when people told her she was enabling me. She never made me feel like she didn’t care about me. She never held anything I did while drinking against me, though she’d always make sure I knew how much she hated it. She tried to make the best out of a bad situation by continuing to be there for me, never yelling at me—whether I was drunk or sober—about drinking.

But I digress. This post was supposed to be quick, but clearly, it wasn’t. To be continued…