11 Things My Broken Back Taught Me

On October 21, I put on my new boots, grabbed my new saddle, and hopped on my horse, as I'd done hundreds of times before. But this time, she bucked. I fell off and landed on my back. Here's what I learned.

1. Just because it's your birthday doesn't mean horrible things won't happen.

Did I mention October 21 is my birthday? Yeah. I spent my birthday in the ER.

2. Just because horrible things happen doesn't mean you can't laugh.

The first thing I said from the ground? WELL, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! And every time someone in the hospital or pharmacy asked for my birthday, I said TODAY! When the fast food restaurant asked what flavor milkshake I wanted, I shouted VALIUM FLAVORED. When I walked out of the hospital room holding a disc of my X-rays proclaiming a compression fracture in my T12 vertebrae, I sternly asked my kids which one of them had stepped on a crack.

Outside of the crippling pain and tears, it was pretty amusing.

3. Trauma is traumatizing.

Falling off a horse isn't necessarily a big deal. This was my first time doing it, and it was fairly straightforward. I didn't get dragged or stepped on or trampled. I wasn't paralyzed. I kept smiling and cracking jokes. Hell, I drove myself home from the barn before asking my husband to drive me to the ER.

But then, after my X-rays came back, I was getting dressed in the hospital, and I couldn't buckle my own bra, and I started shaking uncontrollably and crying. Big, gulping, uncontrollable sobs. My brain and mouth said it wasn't a big deal, but my body said GODDAMMIT THAT WAS TRAUMA AND YOU WILL STOP AND RESPECT IT.

For the first few nights, I would wake up when the pain meds wore off and have recurring panic attacks as my brain presented me with a thousand ways it could've been worse. They were basically waking dreams of me getting my head busted open, of being dragged half a mile over rocks with my new boot caught in the stirrup. Such a minor accident, really, but the nightmares were insane. When I started acknowledging the fear and the pain, facing it head on instead of drugging it away, it started getting better.

4. Being broken is emotionally disturbing.

Outside of recovering from an unwanted emergency C-section (when everyone is super sweet and attentive because NEW BABY), I've never had a major injury. Never been in a car crash or an ambulance. Even when I was raped at knifepoint, I wasn't physically damaged. I have always felt strong in my skin, and breaking my back was the first time that I felt physically helpless.

I thought the first few weeks would be the worst, but it didn't work out that way. At first, when the back brace was new and I had pain meds, everyone around me was accommodating and sympathetic, happy to bring me water or drive me around. But a month in, I was still helpless, and people were ready for me to be back to normal. It was horrible, asking for help. My husband went out of town at one point, and I was scared that something would happen--a fire or a break-in or a random bear attack-- and I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in time to take care of it and save my children. 

For the first time as an adult, I couldn't take care of myself. It was terrifying.

5. People don't know how to deal with weirdness.

And by weirdness, I mean things they don't understand and are socially conditioned not to ask about... like a weird back brace that looks like a silver cross worn over your chest. I flew to Tucson to teach a writing workshop, and people seemed to treat me 3 ways:

1. Like it was a rad costume.

2. Like it was a major inconvenience to them and unnecessary to me.

3. Like I was SO SO BRAVE.

One TSA guy in the Tucson airport made me take it off and put it through the X-ray machine. One old lady thought I was advertising a science fiction book I'd written. One lady started sprouting tears because I was SO SO BRAVE. Really, I was 90% of my normal self but with a major backache and hindered fashion sense. I had to ask my host to stop by the drug store so I could buy a heating pad, and that was the extent of my bravery.

Most people ignored it, because people are good at ignoring things that make them uncomfortable. I understand that my experience with a removable back brace is probably 1/100,000 as troublesome as people with disabilities or physical differences, and I have a new appreciation for what it feels like to be in the world and not fit the default.

6. Sometimes, the fix is worse than the problem.

For the first two weeks, I could barely function, and the back brace felt like a benevolent cage that kept me upright. At night, flopping braceless, I had to build a nest of pillows so I wouldn't thrash and damage myself. But after that, after the rest of my body had unclenched and the pain meds ran out, the brace became a torture machine. It made writing painful, driving awkward, and everyday activities uncomfortable. I couldn't even sit in a chair without squirming. 

I wasn't mad at the broken back or the horse or bad luck; I just wanted to murder the brace.

7. Chronic pain makes you a different person, one you might not like.

I remember seeing an episode on House M.D. about chronic pain, and several of my loved ones live with chronic pain, but GODDAMMIT, PAIN MAKES ME A BITCH. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't want to listen to anything anyone else had to say. Small talk made me murderous. People asking for favors were likely to get covered in growlspit. And my pain was temporary. Temporary!

The thing is, there are tons of ways people can be invisibly hurting. You never know if the person who cut you off in traffic is in pain and on their way to the pharmacy, if the lady bitching about the post office line has fibromyalgia and could barely get out of bed. Most people who live with pain don't advertise it. Breaking my back made me want to give people a break.

8. You have to get back on that horse.

Right after I broke my back, I was sure that I would have to give up horseback riding. My horse was dangerous, I was a bad rider. Then I thought I should sell my horse and buy a dead-broke pony who would never hurt me and who would be so short that my feet would drag the ground. I wrote a long, complicated, excuse-filled, perfectly reasonable message to a horse friend asking for her thoughts on how to find Polly a great home where she wouldn't be mistreated--like the one I rescued her from--and right after I hit Send, it hit me.

I was being a total wuss.

It was right there, in my own words. I was too damn scared to get back on my own horse.

So I sent a follow-up message telling her to ignore everything previous and emailed another friend asking for help with training my horse to make us better partners. The day my brace came off, I was at the barn. After two weeks, Polly wasn't so much a different horse as a horse who'd been taught not to buck me off. Yes, I asked my friend to get on her before I did. Some days, I still do. But the point is that getting back on Polly's back wasn't even scary because I'd put in so much work to insure she wasn't dangerous. If I'd done that work in the first place instead of assuming everything would be cool, I wouldn't have broken my back.

9. Accidents happen. Your job is to use them to level up.

For the first few weeks, my brain would serve the accident to me again and again. How I put my boot in the stirrup wrong, where I held the saddle wrong, the bad leg placement that made her buck, the lack of speed with which I failed to correct myself. Like sports commentators watching footage again and again to see what went wrong in a play, I kept studying what had to be 15 seconds of my life, hunting for meaning or the moment it all went wrong.

Once I got out to the barn, however, I realized that it all went wrong way before the accident. It went wrong a year ago, when she gave a little crow-hop as I mounted, and I said, "Whatever--she's fine once I'm in the saddle." It went wrong when I saw a problem and glossed over it, assuming everything would be cool. It went wrong when I noticed she was sensitive to boot tips in her side but didn't stop and desensitize her to that feeling. When I let her be precious instead of working through her fear and discomfort.

Accidents are accidents. They don't always happen because you did something wrong. They don't mean you're a bad person or you made a stupid mistake that you should feel guilty or angry about. The point is what you do afterward. The changes you make to become better at not only what caused the accident... but everything else around it. 

Breaking my back made me more proactive. Instead of waiting until the last minute to pay a bill, I take care of it. Instead of walking by my messed-up closet, I toss out all the crap that weighs me down and organize the rest. Instead of putting off writing that hard email, I just get it out the damn door. It's a lot easier to solve problems when they're little and new than when they've gotten big and grown teeth.

10. You can't let discomfort stop you from doing the things you want to do.

I had two questions for my orthopedist: can I still go to my book signing on Saturday, and can I still fly to Tucson for my workshop in November? Thank heavens he said yes to both. People (my mom, mainly) freaked out. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE GOING TO GO DO THE THING? WITH A BROKEN BACK?

Uh, well, what I was going to do at home was mostly walking around and sitting uncomfortably. What I did at the book signing was mostly walking around and sitting uncomfortably. What I did on the flights to and from Arizona was mostly walking around and sitting uncomfortably, aside from that night I took the hotel shuttle to the best restaurant in Tucson and treated myself to an amazing meal. If I was going to be uncomfortable, I might as well do it in other places while eating pork belly instead of sitting at home, feeling sorry for myself.

This is also the reason why I flew to New Orleans on a one-way ticket the day my eye doctor said my conjunctivitis was almost healed last May. Even if I looked like a zombie with blood-red eyes, I might as well go to the conference, accept that award, and hang with my friends. It's not like my eyes were going to hurt any more in New Orleans than they were in my own bed.

Sometimes, we're just looking for a reason to say no instead of admitting that it's fear or annoyance holding us back, especially fear of failure. It's awesome to have an inarguable reason for doing nothing. 

DO THE THING. You'll feel better. Doing nothing doesn't make your life magical.

In conclusion, always wear your helmet. Because...

11. Whatever happens to you? It could be a lot worse.

I remember laying on my back on the grass, wiggling my toes and staring at the beautifully blue sky. And I was grateful. Because even if something horrible had happened, I wasn't paralyzed, and my big ol' brain was protected. It could always be worse.