Tuesday, May 24th I hopped on a plane to Paris, anticipating a grand summer full of European adventures; not realizing that just 9 days later, all my plans would be changed.
Spending a summer in Europe, was a bucket list, dream come true for me. It was something I had written in my journal over and over again during the past 3 years, manifesting it and bringing it into form.
Finally, in the summer of 2022, I was making it happen. My business was doing well enough financially for me to comfortably travel around Europe. Covid restrictions were lifting, making travel more feasible. It seemed like the perfect timing.
I was all set to visit a friend staying in the English countryside, hop over to Paris for a girls trip, and then jet off to Poland to start a summer of solo travel through Eastern Europe.
But on June 2nd, I was in an accident that changed everything.
It seemed like an innocent Queen’s Jubilee festival
One week into my visit in the UK, staying with my friend in the English countryside, there was a festival celebrating the Queen’s jubilee. It seemed like the perfect way to experience British culture firsthand and I didn’t want to miss out.
My friend E and I went with the local farmers up to a hilltop for the festivities. A bunch of hay bales were lit on fire, in what was known as a “beacon lighting”. The last thing I remember from the evening was feeling the heat from fire. Then hours later, I woke up in A&E (which is the British name for the ER).
I don’t have any real memories from the accident, because I was knocked unconscious and had a concussion. But I’ll go ahead and fill in the gaps based on what I’ve been told.
Apparently, after the fire from the beacon had burned itself out, the participants from the event (me included) hopped in a tractor bed to be taken down the hill and back home. It wasn’t anything we questioned or worried about as a particularly risky situation. We were all just taking the most efficient route of transportation back home.
The tractor had been driving that same route transporting people up and down the hill, all evening. But, as fate would have it, on that last trip, the driver lost control of the tractor. The tractor gained speed and was flying down the hill before coming to a sudden stop. Three of us were flung off the tractor and landed hard on the ground below.
Waking up in the Emergency Room
But again, I don’t remember any of this. All I remember is waking up in A&E.
The whole period of time from the accident on Thursday, until some time on Sunday is a complete blur. Between the pain, the morphine, and the concussion all of my perceptions from that time were warped in some Andy Warhol style discombobulated swirl of color and light. I don’t have linear memories from those four days, just fragmented pieces.
Waking up and being told that there was an accident. The tractor drive lost control and you were thrown off.
Wondering… “why does it hurt so much to move?”
Looking around and realizing I’m in the hospital, but having no recollection of why I’m there.
Nurses coming in and giving me instructions on what was happening next.
“Ortho is coming to see you”
“You are getting a cast on your leg”
“Here’s some medicine to help with the pain”
“We need to move you to check your skin. You don’t have to do anything”
Doctors coming in and trying to explain my injuries and prognosis.
“You’ve been scanned from tip to toe”
“There’s a contusion on your lung”
“Your ankle fracture is unstable it’s going to require surgery”
“It may be 8 weeks until you can walk again”
“You’re probably going to need a wheelchair”.
None of it was making sense to me
I could understand the sequence of events and what was happening from one moment to the next. Ok, you need to put in an IV, here’s my arm. You need to give me meds, I’ll open up my mouth.
But on a deeper level, none of it was really landing. It all seemed like a disjointed mess. The pieces weren’t clicking together in my brain. I was comprehending their words, but I wasn’t able to really understand what it meant for my life.
It wasn’t making sense. In my mind, this was just a trip to the emergency room. I was optimistic that we would be out of there in time to go to Paris the next day. I wasn’t grasping how severe all my injuries were.
And in the moments when it did make sense, when it did hit me, I would crumble into tears. But the emotional release from my tears couldn’t last long. Crying shook my pelvis and caused way too much pain.
Going into surgery, I was terrified. I was convinced that I would wind up with an anesthesiologist with a substance abuse problem. They would make a mistake while putting me under, and I would never wake up again.
But when I got wheeled into preop and met my anesthesiologist, I immediately felt a sense of relief. She was a woman, and she was wearing a scarf. She reminded me of one of my good friends in medical school, and I immediately felt safe.
The operation went well, and before I knew it I was waking up back in my hospital bed. My injuries had all been stabilized. My vitals were reassuring. My pain was under control. My ankle and pelvis were both fractured. I couldn’t bear weight on either of my legs for 6 weeks, but I was on track to make a full recovery. From a medical perspective everything was looking good.
Grappling with the sudden change in plans
But from an emotional standpoint, my whole world had been turned upside down. I thought my summer was going to look a certain way: spontaneous train rides to Prague, hikes through the Balkans, Mediterranean sunsets and making every gorgeous cafe my “Office for the Day”.
But within one moment everything changed.
Now instead of a carefree, adventurous summer, I was staring down the barrel of a long road to recovery. A summer filled with doctor visits and physical therapy appointments, bedrest and pain meds, wheelchair yoga and board games.
It was so wildly disorienting. My brain couldn’t calibrate to my current reality. I couldn’t reconcile the future I thought I was going to have, with my actual situation. I didn’t want to accept it. I wanted to hold on to summer I initially planned.
But after a while, it slowly started to sink in.
And thought there’s a part of me that is devastated and filled with grief for the loss of my initial summer plans there’s another of me that’s curious. How am I going to cope throughout my recovery? What’s in this for me? Who am I going to become through all of this? Is a summer full of rest and recovery more in line with what my soul needs than a summer full of adventure? Is taking time to slow down and sit in stillness going to serve my highest good in some way?
We make all these plans for our lives. We try to map out our “perfect summer” or our “dream career”, but sometimes even our most well intentioned plans, aren’t leading towards our highest good. Sometimes we don’t know what we actually need. Sometimes a tractor comes along and plows through all your plans, and it’s disorienting. And it doesn’t make sense. And you can’t really comprehend why it’s happening or what it means for your life. But what if you could trust that it’s for the best?
What if you could trust that life is happening FOR you, not TO you. What if you believed that everything was working out in your favor, even if it seems like everything is falling apart.
That is the perspective I am cultivating throughout my recovery. Right now, I don’t know why the accident happened. It feels completely unfair. But dwelling in that energy, just makes everything worse. So instead, I’m choosing to believe that there’s something in this for me. That all of this is happening for my highest good. Because when I think that way, I feel both empowered, and at peace.
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