Wounded Healer

Wounded Healer.  Am I a wounded healer?  I am wounded.  No question there.  Each morning I wake up and begin my day with a deep stretch.  I have to be cautious not to stretch too many areas too far, as pain will welcome me along with the satisfaction of that stretch.  I can use both my arms, thank God, but my left arm can only be used to a certain point before the pain that is untouchable and deep in my shoulder stops me cold.  Before the road, before that night, I would examine a patient’s shoulder and demonstrate the movements I would like them to make in order to test the integrity of their tendons and muscles.  Now I can only do that with one arm, as the other will not painlessly move into the very positions I am asking them to do. 

My hands are in pain almost all the time these days, especially on this day, with the cold and damp rain we are having.  My right thumb will swell at the place where it joins my hand, which is a new phenomenon for me.  My hands were gripping the wheel as we spun in terror that night.  Violent collision after violent collision.  As it turns out, the human body is not meant to go from high speed to suddenly stopped by means of violent interruptions caused by thousand pound vehicles meeting each other.  As my hands clung to the only thing stable they could find to try and brace my body, they were wounded as well.  No broken bones in them, but muscle and tendons and nerves and joints that are intended for fine movement, were holding my upper body to the steering wheel when our world shook.  They aren’t fully recovered yet, and the reality is that at almost 41 years old, this may be their new state of normal.  They function.  They continue to type, a little slower now, and write and they could be worse.   I will likely have to start using a larger needle for injections into my patient’s joints, because I have less strength in the muscles needed for plunging a syringe.  Praise God, I can still use them, but they never hurt before, and suddenly one night, in one moment, they entered the state of wounded, and they have never fully retreated. 

My pelvis hurts.  Not like it did in those first horrific weeks, but there is pain.  When I sit I have to adjust my body so that the healed fractures don’t have too much pressure placed on them.  If I have been in a car for more than about 30 minutes I start out walking with a “hitch in my get along.”  In order to right myself I have to contort into odd yoga-like stretching positions to fully extend my legs and pull the muscles and tendons back towards a more natural alignment.  I’m not sure if that will ever go away, it hasn’t yet, and I am aware of processes that I took for granted before.  There is a popping in my back that was never there before.  The toughest ligaments in the human body were stretched and moved in one of the joints there, and today, 6 months later, they allow movement that didn’t occur before.  I’m told this may or may not improve.  And for now, I move on, and try to adjust myself safely.  All the while I am well aware that I have patients who have aches and pains just like these, and some in many of the same spots.  Granted, many of them are in their 70’s.  But there are some, in a group that now includes me, who had these all come on in an instant.  An unexpected, violent event, in which their bodies became acquainted with the reality that living through something doesn’t always mean that you walk away unmarred.  The human body is beautifully designed, and it is fragile.  And for my fellow survivors, of whom I am newly a part of their crowd, I have a whole new tenderness and empathy that wasn’t possible before March 31^st.

But do my wounds stop at the physical?  No.  Sadly what is physically wounded doesn’t even scratch the surface of my immeasurable aches.  There are some that are deeper, and harder to describe.   I got dressed yesterday, practically for my day and for the weather.  Sweater, nicer pants, warm socks, and a pair of my favorite shoes.  And as I walked out of my closet, I glanced down and realized that I was wearing almost exactly the same ensemble 24 weeks before.  Well the socks were different because along with my pants they were destroyed in the wreck or shortly after as my clothes were cut away from me.  The sweater was different too.  But the shoes, they were the same.  And I had this thought, “Change clothes now!!!!  You are crazy.  It is a Friday.  It’s cold and damp.  You are going to be shopping with your husband and daughters after work.  After you have dinner with them.  And you are wearing essentially the same outfit you wore that day!  Are you crazy?  Change!  Change now.  Never wear those shoes again on a Friday.  Never again shop after work.”  Mental assault at 530 in the morning.  It doesn’t matter what I wore that day, and my logical mind knows that.  I have spent years in the past not liking what I had on, and feeling I didn’t look good in it.  But panic, panic and terror gripped me as I tried to walk out of my closet over my shoes.  MY SHOES!!!!! 

The day before I almost took the shoes I was wearing off and threw them away, because we had bought them that night, and had tarried in the store after checking out once, only to see them, try them on and check out twice.  If we hadn’t stayed and purchased those shoes we would have been off the road at the moment we were rear ended.  We wouldn’t have been in the wreck.  So I took a moment in the bathroom that day and calmed myself down, and walked on in the shoes that I bought the night of our wreck.  SHOES did NOT cause our wreck.  What I wore did NOT cause our wreck.  Where and what we ate that night did NOT cause our wreck.  Shopping after work did NOT cause our wreck.  Cold weather did NOT cause our wreck.  But all of those things have become interwoven into it, and are now entry points into my memories and fear.  And it is a choice that I have to make to move forward, when what I want to do is cry and change clothes, or circumstances, or restaurants to try and feel some sense of control.  This process of choice through fear is exhausting.  Knowing that it could have been worse, and in fact knowing how specifically medically most of the ways that it could have been worse, only add to the choices that I have to make to avoid thought trails which are destructive and terrifying.   It is no surprise that last night, as we passed the place on the road where we broke and bled, I had an anxiety attack.  The day was paralleled to that day so closely.  Because that day when our life changed started out just like any other in our life.  A beautiful day, a day filled with good and right things, time together and time with patients.  And we have chosen to live our lives with days like that day.  It just so happens that that day ended horribly.  Yesterday didn’t. 

Am I wounded?  Yes.  My heart is broken for the pain my child has suffered without end since that night.  Her pain consumes my mind, and there is nothing, NOTHING that I can do to stave it off.  I pray desperately for her.  I have wept before God, and spent nights without sleep pleading for her relief.  And what I have heard is, “My grace is sufficient.  I am not done.  Wait.”  And my heart stays broken. And her bones do too.  Yes.  I am wounded.  But by that very same grace, God has helped me to walk forward in my brokenness.  And part of my walking forward is being a healer.  Now, not just a physician.  There are tissues right next to the seat in my office.  People often have tears as they expose parts of themselves that are tender, physically and emotionally.  Some days I have to reach for them too.  Since the wreck I have lost patients.  People who had pressing medical needs that I was unavailable to meet.  They needed to be seen by someone who could be there for them and help them feel secure, and I have been absent for almost half of this year, and my own healing isn’t done yet, and surgeries are looming, so I will be absent some more.  I completely understand that.  But it adds to my sadness over what has happened to us.  God has graciously brought new people in to see me.  They are meeting a different person.  They are meeting a woman who is still wounded.  A woman who recognizes now that being wounded doesn’t have to be a weakness.  It can, in fact, make you better.  She also recognizes that she has always been fragile, and fragile has never been a detriment either.  I suppose I am a healer.  I like the sound of that much more than doctor.  I care about their hearts and their bodies.  Before I walk into a room I pray for my time with the next human.  I believe God has blessed my practice.  He will continue to do so.  Patients who meet me now are going to meet a new person, however.  They are not just meeting a healer.  They are meeting a wounded healer.   And even once I am healed, to whatever extent and completeness that will be, I will be altered from before.  Empathy that couldn’t have been present before this battle will remain once the wounds fade. 

Wounded Healer.  One who is wounded fighting for the healing of others while working through healing of her own.  Sojourner.  Fellow traveler in a fallen world.  Each of us possesses beautiful gifts given in order to glorify the Giver.  In this season, the Giver has allowed wounds, which ultimately create me into a better healer.  I am thankful for the ability to heal and serve.  I do not like the wounds, but I never have liked wounds, which is why I do what I do.  Ultimately, my healing will come.  Between now and then, I will walk forward in my current role:  A wounded healer.