Breakthroughs

So, I've had this story idea floating around in my head for awhile. I was planning to really attack writing it for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this last November. However, the Universe had other plans. My back, which has been a touchy little bugger for the last six years, had been getting progressively worse. I would make it through a full day at work and hurt so badly when I got home that the only thing I could manage to do was lay down flat on my back with an ice pack. I debated the wisdom of trying to come home from sitting in a chair all day to sit in a chair all night to try to write. I decided it was probably not the greatest idea in the world. Ten days into November, the month some whackjob (kidding!) decided was a good time to try to write a novel, I coughed and my back completely crumpled and I was flat on my back for a couple of months.
I was incredibly bitter about that for a bit. I had wanted to write my book. I had had it all ready to go. I had prepped the hubby that he was probably going to eat soup or frozen pizza for most of the month, because I was going to be busy writing. I was finally, really going to do it. I was going to write a book. And then I couldn't. Not just I decided that it would be a bad idea to stress my back out that much, I absolutely could not sit in a chair for any decent amount of time, and I hadn't been prescribed painkillers yet.
But, all in all, it was probably a great thing that my back went out when it did. I found a new chiropractor, who suggested that I finally have an MRI to see what was going on with my back, and then I found out that I had two herniated disks, severe spinal stenosis, and some nerve tearing. I finally got some actual painkillers, and I finally got someone to say, "Hey, if sleeping on the couch makes the pain less, then sleep on the damn couch. Who cares what anyone else says." It was nice to know that my pain wasn't all in my head, wasn't made up, wasn't a result of me being tremendously messed up as a person. I wasn't crazy, there was actually a problem.
I've had this feeling before. I swam in high school (junior and senior year) and in college. In high school, I'd experienced a lot of pain in left shoulder, but, and I hate to say this because it sounds petty and bitchy and mean, but my coaches seemed to kind of blow it off. I think I came off as lazy (having never been an athlete, I struggled to keep up with practices), and I think they thought I was trying to get out of practices. College swimming was better. My coach realized that my times weren't improving the way they should have in the sprint events, and so tried me out in the 500 (which is a goddamn distance event as far as I'm concerned), which is a hilarious story for another time. And so we started training me for distance events. And I was starting to maybe get pretty darn good, even though I sometimes downed entire bottles of Advil before practices and meets. My parents were shocked when I came home for Christmas break my freshman year and I talked like a jock. (Everyone in my family is athletic, except for me. I think they were excited.) And then, halfway through training in Florida during the last half of Christmas break, my shoulder just gave up. Just gave right the hell up. It turned out I had lost some cartilage in my shoulder socket and the bones were rubbing together and it was all bad. I went through surgery, because I wanted to be able to swim again. But despite weeks of rehab stretches and physical therapy in front of Navy guys who oogled my boobs, I still can't really swim. And I'm kind of bitter about that. Because if I could've still swam competitively, maybe my sophomore year at Beloit wouldn't have been so disastrous, and maybe I wouldn't have been so depressed, and maybe I wouldn't have to have come home, and so on and so forth. I can play that game all damn day, and I have.
But that game is dumb. It doesn't matter that my shoulder is still a little bit screwed up when I try to swim. What should matter is that I was right. There was something very wrong, and I knew that. I wasn't lazy and trying to get out of practices, I was really hurting. That's important.
It's important to be able to listen to your body and to trust what you feel. It's something I've never thought about, but when I sit and think about this situation with my back, I'm really glad that I have trusted myself. I never listened to those doctors who treated me like I was a junkie, or that I was some hysterical, crazy female making up pains and problems to get attention. I pushed and I pushed until someone listened to me and acknowledged that I was right, and that's pretty darn impressive. I call myself out on my lack of follow through, and that's a valid concern in many areas, but when it's come down to my body, I have trusted myself and I haven't given up.
And so I'm not going to give up on my story, either. I've been thinking about the plot and some of the details and I finally had a brainstorm of brilliance this afternoon about what's motivating the biggest plot point. And I'm going to trust myself to know what's right for my story and to not give up on writing it. It may be awhile before I can actually sit down and start typing it (I see the neurosurgeon next Monday, so we'll see if surgery is in my future), but I can listen to the ideas I have and honor those, like I've honored my knowledge of the workings of my body.
It sounds like a plan.