More Than Our Bodies

Sunset in Baja (photo by Dave)

Next to "It's benign" and "the margins are clear," hearing "it's not broken" is the freaking greatest news.

Two weeks ago I took a bad spill and messed up my ankle. Initial x-rays were inconclusive. I had no idea that sometimes a break won't show up for a week or two after a trauma. So...today I went back for another x-ray.

I was trying not to catastrophize. But we are supposed to take the long drive up Baja in two weeks to get to a housesit in California and I was wondering how that would work with a broken ankle...much less one that might need surgery.

Bizarrely, in the past days, THREE friends have fallen off their bikes and suffered compound arm fractures that required surgery.

I just keep reminding myself that a) the body knows how to heal, and b) we've faced a lot of surprises and unknowns in this nomadic life we live, and we're always able to figure things out.

My mantra has been LOVE on the in-breath and HEALING on the out-breath. One of my arm-healing friends said this helped her a lot, too. It's so soothing that I think I will continue to use it, especially to help me get to sleep. 

So today I went back for the second x-ray...and, yay, it's a bad sprain, not a break. Doc told me to start walking with the boot. I did immediately when I got home. It's like being half non-automated robot. But I'll take it.

My 50s have been quite a ride for my body, what with brain surgery (for a benign tumor), thyroid surgery (for a benign tumor that had initially been diagnosed as cancer), surgery on my leg to remove a squamous cell growth (clear margins), and now this.

In Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying, Ram Dass talks about how if we live long enough, all of us face physical changes. This is an opportunity to learn we are "more than our bodies and our minds."

This decade has been teaching me this, it seems.