People ask me if it hurt. If I heard the bone crack as my shoulder hit the ground, the force of my body falling compounded by the hit and protected by nothing but a dry fit jersey.
It didn’t. And my ears were too focused on the calls from my teammates to place the ball back and set up the next phase to catch whatever splitting sound my body made. I finished the game (adrenaline is one hell of a painkiller) and walked with my team for our cheers and high fives, fully knowing something was wrong but not quite ready to admit it. Finally, at the urging of a teammate and sudden rush of dizziness I made my way to the medical tent.
“Yep, broken clavicle…” it took them less than a minute to assess my swollen shoulder and say the words that would turn my next four months upside down.
My first thought – WTF is a clavicle?
I got my college degree in psychology. I learned about all the different parts of the brain and how it functions. I can tell you what the amygdala does, the cerebellum, the cortex. I can name five different neurotransmitters, but nowhere in my overwhelmed brain could I place the word “clavicle.” It wasn’t until the fourth time I heard it that I realized they were talking about my collarbone, and they only seemed to be slightly concerned by the fact that it’d been snapped in half.
Before I could process much more, my body started shutting down on me. The adrenaline had worn off and whatever resources my body had left after a day of rugby were getting rushed towards the swelling of my deformed shoulder. The med staff on hand was asking me who I was, where I was from, who was around to help me. As much as I tried to focus on their questions all I could think was “stay awake, stay awake”… I must not have look too good because they got me lying down on a stretcher just before it was lights out.
By the time things settled down I was strapped in, staring at the ceiling of the ambulance. The endless questioning from the trainers had stopped and I was left alone to pose my own: what do I do now? This was my first broken bone, my first serious injury, and I wasn’t quite sure of how it would go.
Believe me, I learned.
I learned how frustrating it can be to not be able to do simple things for yourself, like put your hair up in a ponytail, put a sweatshirt on, or close a car door. I learned that as much as I love to talk, I was unable to communicate what I wanted or needed from other people because I was so used to taking care of myself.
I learned that there is an aspect of grief in the recovery process. Grief for the able-bodied person I was just hours before, grief for the activities I could no longer participate in, for the time I felt like I was losing. Of course, grief also came with denial. I showed up to work when I should’ve taken time off, went to the gym to “just do legs” less than a week after surgery, hung out at practice and insisted I could toss a ball with my one good arm. When it eventually became obvious that I couldn’t live the normal day-to-day I had before my break, I learned how confused I was without training to structure my routine around. My busy schedule became void of the usual activities and I felt as though I’d lost my sense of purpose. I had to reorganize my priorities in an order I had never seen them before – with my sport at the bottom of the list.
In the wake of the frustration, the grief, and the confusion eventually came clarity.
I learned to ask for help, and in doing so realized my support network ran further and deeper than I ever could have imagined. From strangers opening doors to teammates opening their homes, the journey was not one I had to take alone.
I learned that time was my friend, not something being stolen from me. With each new day, my bone was stitching itself back together and I was making progress. I learned to embrace the little things as big wins – getting my arm above my waist, my shoulder, my head. Being able to put my own hair up again, hold a cup of coffee, a spoonful of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate therapy… More importantly, however, I learned that what my body can do is only a small part of who I am.
I learned that instead of trying to bulldoze my way through the recovery and return to the life I’d known before, I’d have to take a step back and find a path of lesser resistance. In my case, that meant leaving the new adventure I’d just started in Hawaii and moving back home to New England. There were times that changing course felt like letting people down, like I’d failed or was quitting in some way. But doing what was best for me meant something that wasn’t simple to explain or rationalize to people who didn’t see the whole picture of my experience. It was easy to show the surgery scar on my shoulder but harder to express the wound I was trying to heal in my head and my heart.
In time, I learned that breaking is simply an opportunity to rebuild. I came back to my life on the East Coast in a way that felt like fate must have had a hand in. I got a job working with my former rugby team, connected with old and new friends, and found value and opportunities in places I hadn’t thought to look before. I don’t know where my next adventure will take me, what I do know is that I see my future with more creativity and more possibility than ever.
I took things one day at a time and now, twelve weeks later, I am healthy and ready to step back into playing rugby with a titanium rod screwed into my collarbone. It is stronger for the experience, and so am I.
