Can you lose everything you ever had planned? Can you sit down again and play another hand?
These are the song lyrics to one of my favourite songs by the incredible artist Bryan Adams.
Two years ago I had an accident that changed my life. It was not a car accident, it was not a house fire, it was not being the victim of a serious violent crime, it was a mundane run-of-the-mill misstep that I had no idea would alter the course of my life forever. After fighting the good old NHS to give me a scan, and a doctor who really did not want to listen it was revealed that I was born with a defective joint causing my bones to be misaligned in my leg. I was informed that my misstep was "only ever one wrong foot away" and that now the damage from the impact of the bones coming together was done; there was little that could be carried out to fix the situation. That is other than a major life-changing operation that was not guaranteed to work, and would cause me to lose a further 12-18 months of my life. My career, the one thing that I had put before everything else in my life from being 19 years old to just turning 30; was over.
I sat alone in an orthopaedic surgeon's office with only a pity faced looking nurse for company, while the surgeon explained that the fact I had lived such a sport-filled life as a child, and worked endless hours as an assistant manager in a hospitality venue was nothing short of a medical miracle to begin with. He explained with sympathy in his voice, rather than the impatience I had become accustomed to when seeing him; that in all his years of experience as a quite well-renowned orthopaedic surgeon, he had never seen a leg aligned, or rather mis-aligned like mine without the person being in severe pain from the very start. He reasoned that he could perform a complicated surgery where my entire leg would be broken, bones would be cut, shaved and in some cases bevelled, and then put back correctly aligned in order for me to learn how to walk again taking 12 - 18 months total recovery time, or I could live with my new-found condition, leave my job and start again.
I left the hospital appointment in a complete daze. It was like someone had sat me down, ripped out my heart and very soul and then waved me on my way. I sat in my car having purchased a longer amount of time in the car park that required, just because you can never trust the time of an NHS appointment; staring into space thinking "What do I do now?". I pulled down the windscreen visor and stared into the little rectangular mirror inside. Without my job I didn't even know who I was anymore, and the thought of leaving everything I had ever known to start again was terrifying. For me, my job had always been all or nothing, I had a goal I wanted to achieve and I was so close to it I could touch it, and yet my entire world came crashing down in the space of one twenty-minute appointment.
- It's funny that; isn't it? For that surgeon on that day, I was just another name on a list of patient appointments, I am sure he doesn't even recall me. When I left that room with my life in tatters from the news he had just bestowed upon me, he wouldn't have given it an ounce of thought. He probably made himself a coffee and moved on with his day. On the other side of that scenario I left that room completely uncertain of not just my employment, not just my future, but uncertain of my entire identity as a human being.
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