Perspective and a New Unit of Time

Hey Steph,

Remember how we used to mark time by cartoons? Like, if Mom came up to the game room and told us we needed to leave in 30 minutes, we'd have no idea what that meant. When we'd ask how long that was, she'd respond, "One cartoon." Everything was clear.

cartoon: a unit of time measurement only understood by children, having an upper limit of 5 units (any more and there are no more fingers to count with the pointer finger of the other hand).

When we were little, a cartoon was an immense amount of time, an eternity. Growing up changes all that. A 30-minute period is nothing now. Heck, a year is starting to feel like nothing. Perspective changes as you experience more and more time, more and more fears and successes. Like when I was a teenager, the idea of calling someone on the phone was terrifying. But one telefunding job, four nightmare-filled months later, and I had lived through all my worst nightmares and realized that there were worse things in life than being cussed out over the phone or calling a daughter asking for her father on the day he died. Now, phone calls don't scare me at all.

The past two months I've been dealing with bad back pain along with shooting pains down my right leg (or Battlestar Sciatica, as you affectionately call it). I've combined the powers of medication, hot and cold pads, and physical therapy trying to fix the problem, fortunately, to some success. But I'm not going to lie. It has been hard to stay positive day in and day out. This is where a thought of perspective has come to my head again and again bringing peace to my soul. But first a preface.

As you know, this back pain all really started three years ago after a treacherous hike and a 300-foot tumble down snow and rock, ending in a 10-foot fall off a cliff. Though I remember waiting for my death to come as I fell down the rocks, I somehow survived, with a two-inch gash on my knee and a bruised body but not much else. There's nothing quite like the adrenaline rush of escaping death to get you down 9 miles to your car. It wasn't until a month and a half later that it began to hurt to sit. The following back surgery was a small price to pay for a life to live.

And that's really the thought that keeps me going with this residual pain. When I get annoyed at everyone walking around and sitting down without any pain or when I envy those runners out in the recently warm weather for doing something I will never be able to do again, I'm trying to remember that I exchanged all that for days of life, even if they are pain-filled days. It's a small price.

And the Olympians are helping me out quite a bit too. Skeleton silver-medalist Noelle Pikus-Pace has three herniated disks (and got hit by a four-man bobsled). Dang! I'll take my one herniated disk. And Russian ice skating legend Evgeni Plushenko has had several surgeries on his back (besides other parts of his body) and has an artificial disk. If they can fight through and alleviate pain in order to go 80+ miles down an icy track and do quadruple axles, then I can work through the pain of my far-less Olympic life.

So, maybe this period of pain is just a cartoon-unit of time--a lengthy season to my inexperienced mind, but nothing in the eyes of my future self.

Cheers,

Amanda